Television 

Five Thoughts on Lovecraft Country‘s “Rewind 1921”

By | October 13th, 2020
Posted in Television | % Comments

Welcome to Multiversity Comics’ coverage of Lovecraft Country! This week, the show takes us to Tulsa, 356 days after our last HBO portrayal of the 1921 tragedy.

1. It’s All About Trauma
“Rewind 1921” is a crazy episode of television. To be clear, it’s not the craziest episode of Lovecraft Country (that would be “I Am.”) but it’s the only episode of television whose proper description is “Back to the Future except it’s about generational trauma and historical Black tragedy.” Here, instead of Marty McFly making sure his parents get together in a ‘50s town, it’s a family getting a Book of Names as part of a devil’s bargain with a witch seeking immortality at a site of one of a mass hate crime. Oh also the clock tower is a Black woman with cosmic powers. That weirdness also speaks to a tension in the episode- the innate fun of time travel and the innate grief that comes with the actual circumstances and setting of the time travel. The result of that tension is an average episode of Lovecraft Country. That is to say, we’ve got big ideas and stellar performances, but some real deficits as well.

2. D-R-A-M-A
There is a lot of drama in “Rewind 1921.” This is a drama series so that is to be expected to a certain extent but man is there a ton of interpersonal anguish here. Mostly, it boils down to a lot of family arguments in the first 10 or 15 minutes of the episode. First, Montrose lays into Leti for becoming invulnerable which is nice in that he shows how much he cares for Tic but mostly very unfair to Leti. Then there’s the disagreement between Ruby and Leti over whether or not they should be actively trusting Christina. They’ve been laying the groundwork for this confrontation smartly, giving both very well-reasoned opinions on the matter but also Leti is right. Their debate then carries into a moment between Christina and Ruby that results in Hillary (Ruby’s white self) being retired and Leti being protected. Really all of this drama has Leti coming out in a pretty flattering light!

3. Michael K. Williams GOAT
God, Michael K. Williams’s performance carries this episode. That actually has nothing to do with any shortcomings in the performances of anyone else- the cast is just as strong as ever. But Williams delivers a real knockout in this one. He’s done great in all seven episodes as Montrose has to literally confront his trauma, he truly shines. Every time that Montrose provides live reflection on or tries not to intervene in horrible moments he’s watching with Tic and Leti, it just hits you where it hurts. Then there’s my personal favorite moment, the moment that solidified Michael K. Williams as MVP of the episode- when he tells Tic “The only thing I ever wanted to be was your father.” It’s a moment that brings such clarity for Tic and for us and it’s read so incredibly well that it’s impossible not to be moved.

4. The End is Near
So this is it- the table is set for the final episode of Lovecraft Country and it may have been set messily, but I’m intrigued to see what it looks like when we actually get the main course. Here, I basically just want to tell you what the best parts of the episode are in no particular order and in itemized form:

Hippolyta’s return. She spent the equivalent of 200 years away from her family, though it was only days for everyone here. She bursts onto the scene with the confidence and assertiveness that she gained back in “I Am.” and absolutely saves the day. At the end of the episode, the power she uses to hold the time portal open turns her hair blue, making her resemble the comic book hero her daughter invented. It’s a great fulfillment of her arc and allows her to have lived more that one lifetime of adventure and discovery while still doing right by her family. Her progress also isn’t undercut here; she’s not genuflecting for anybody- she’s a hero.

Leti watching Hannah burn is a powerful and heart-wrenching moment in this episode. Hannah has to make a choice between saving her family in the present (the past in context of the show) and saving them in the future (the show’s present) and that alone is a very genuinely hard thing to imagine having to go through but it’s performed well enough that you almost can. Then, after Hannah chooses the latter, Leti holds Hannah’s hands and watches her burn alive which is again impossible to imagine and again played with such gusto that it hits home. Sadly, it’s immediately followed by a moment that really doesn’t work: Leti’s walk through a burning Tulsa. The moment looks very good and there’s powerful music behind it but what does it actually add to the episode? It’s certainly not empowering given the context but it doesn’t further the tragedy of it all in any meaningful ways. It seems like they just thought of a good visual and ran with it. That moment in the house really is great, though and Jurnee Smollett is great, as per usual.

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Tic saving his father in the past. It’s by far the most triumphant moment of the episode and it’s the one that plays with time travel in the best way by far. Tic is a mysterious man that his father has remembered for decades and he gets to be the center of a truly great fight scene. On top of the familial significance and the time travel fun, seeing racists getting beaten up by an absolutely jacked Black man is, in fact, the height of entertainment.

5. “Everything Isn’t Peak TV”
Recently I read a tweet that was essentially the title of this thought and it immediately brought my mind to Lovecraft Country. That tension between fun and seriousness that the time travel premise of the episode brings is something that’s been present in the whole show thus far. But while the product of that tension was pretty high quality at the start, it’s gotten more messy as the series has progressed. It’s not that great tv can’t be messy- many of the most revered series of all time have been messy at some point or even for long stretches. There’s something missing in Lovecraft Country though. It’s commentary is often smart, the performances are uniformly, almost bizarrely strong, and all of the little things often work very well. There have been a couple of episodes where the magic has really been there. Overall though, there’s a discord that can’t be glossed over. Too often, one factor being at its best comes at the cost of another slipping through the cracks. I’ve enjoyed watching this show a lot and I’m excited to see what the conclusion does but I can’t help but feel a bit weary as we step enter the last week of waiting for a new episode to air.


//TAGS | Lovecraft Country

Quinn Tassin

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