User Reviews

I only have two things, one about the show: would've made the Tobias fight a bit longer (but I can understand due to budget).

The second: CW I feel is making a mistake by not moving forward with the Painkiller spin-off. Khalil is such an interesting character, and his dual persona in a new city is just too cool, and I wished we could experience that world.

Four years and we get a bunch of "conclusions" that feel rushed, like the production staff got short notice that the show was being cancelled. But we and presumably they knew for months that the show was ending. The staff on 'MacGyver' had less foreknowledge, and pulled off a better conclusion.

First of all, Tobias had Jeff all but dead... and didn't kill him. But put him in a death trap of sorts instead. Villain screw-up trope number one. Naturally, Jeff gets the hope to carry on, breaks out of his coffin, tracks down Tobias thanks to some technical wizardry by Gambi, and the two have a relatively short fight that ends with Black Lightning having to kill Tobias when an accidentally-impaled Tobias (whoops!) opens fire on BL with guns that can't possibly hurt the hero.

Meanwhile, in a thrilling climax, not, we find out that JJ is an alien energy being that has been kinda/sorta duplicating Jennifer all along. And duplicating her memories and DNA perfectly, but not her physical body. We know less about JJ's alien nature, but she makes the same mistake Tobias did: not making sure the person you killed is actually dead.

So Jennifer comes back, which is kinda spoiled by China Anne McClain being listed in the opening credits. Half the time CW shows list the "surprise" cast in the end credits without the co-starring credits, like on 'Supernatural' back in the day. They couldn't do that time? It's nice to have McClain back, but one feels that Laura Kariuki got short shift. She has to step into the role of Jennifer--sort of--when McClain left, then had her character get killed off so McClain could step back in for a series finale appearance.

Grace remains a non-entity, and I pity poor Chantal Thuy. She got less screen time and personality development than Khalil this season.

Speaking of Khalil, TC finds a way to shut off the kill code in Khalil's brain. But it erases all of his memories of the Pierce family. Not only will this leave huge gaps in his memory, but it sets him up to be unburdened when the 'Painkiller' spinoff comes around. Which it isn't, so that's all a waste of screen-time.

Lopez injects herself with meta-booster and gains electrical powers. Hassan finds out, the anti-meta task force can't take Lopez down, and Jennifer shows up as Lightning and takes Lopez down. End of that plotline.

Jeff and Lynn get back together, in case you were wondering what would happened to the world's most non-chemistry couple. Does anyone out there dislike Christine Adams as much as I do? I'm sure she's a nice enough person in real life, but her Lynn has always been hard, brittle, and defensive.

Jeff and Gambi decide to retire. But say that they'll be back occasionally, and leave the city in the hands of Thunder, Lightning, and what's her name. Oh, right, Grace. Or Wylde.

And at the end Lala emerges from his concrete entombment to chuckle over Tobias' body. Which is hanging out on his balcony, impaled, because I guess leaving bodies hanging on skyscrapers is a decorative touch only people in Freeland could enjoy. And other than an "Is it?" ending, I have no idea why they brought Lala back. I suppose he could take over the 100 now that Tobias is dead, and prove a new nemesis to Lightning, Thunder, and Wylde. But unless they get spunoff into their own show, who cares?

So all the plotlines got wrapped up, in pretty short order. Tobias got killed, Jeff avenged his father, Jennifer returned, Lopez got stopped by Lightning because of their rivalry that never was, and we got a lot of running and shooting as Gambi, Thunder, and Wylde took out the emitter. It all pretty much ended as anyone familiar with the medium of TV and superheroes could have predicted. The main bad guy is dead after yelling a few more racial epithets (as did Looker last week), the main hero retired (again), there's an "Evil never truly dies" ending (and I always liked Red more than Lala anyway: Helen Joo Lee is credited but I didn't see Val), the torch has been passed, and that's it.

Basically, all the world-building and racism subplots that developed over the first three seasons and most of the fourth got tossed. Does Jeff still have his job? Who knows? What will Lynn do now? Who cares? Is Freeland now a safe(r) place to live? Who can tell?

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?

I feel incredibly cheated.

I'm not satisfied with how this ending turned out. I guess along with The CW deciding to pass on Painkiller, they decided to pass on giving this show any sort of good ending.

The one pro of the episode is that China Anne McClain is back. She carries this episode so hard that her back must've broken several times over. At least, at the end of the day, the writers respected her character. She was written exactly like she should've been written all season long, and that's the only satisfactory part of this episode by a longshot. They explained why Jen wasn't acting like herself, and bent over backwards to apologize for how they'd written Jen this season. It wasn't even Jen. It was the Ionosphere controlling her mind and making her more self-centered all along. Whether that makes any sense at all doesn't even matter to me all that much, because this season's slowly lowered the bar so much that China just being in this episode is enough to give it 4 stars on that along. That's how low my expectations were. I just wanted to see Jen acting like herself again, and a big part of that is China Anne McClain. Nobody else could pull off Jennifer Pierce like she does, which is why Laura Kariuki's version of Jen never sat right with me.

Now into the rest of this episode. Khalil's ending was clearly reshot after the writers found out that Painkiller wasn't gonna happen. That's why Khalil chose to forget everything. That's a decision he'd *never* make. This is a dude that, despite being on the run from the police, still tried to reach out to Jen because of how much he loves her. And that was back in season two when the quality of writing was at an all time low. This episode bent Khalil so far out of character that the only explanation is that there were reshoots. Must I remind the writers that the synopsis for Painkiller included the phrase "ridden with the guilt of his troubled past". How does erasing Khalil's memory make him "ridden with the guilt of his troubled past"? It doesn't. The only explanation is reshoots, and it makes for a very unsatisfying ending to Khalil's story.

Nothing else makes sense. Lopez's story was so forced that you could've carved it out with a rusty scalpel, and it wouldn't have made any difference. Jeff can suddenly absorb electricity from minerals underground like promethium, not unlike how Supergirl can drain sunlight from plants. Anissa takes multiple blasts from next gen DEGs and survives when they had built up how dangerous the DEGs were all season long. Tobias's death was incredibly underwhelming, and would have *serious* ramifications for Freeland and the Pierce family. Lala only shows up at the end, though I'm surprised he showed up at all. If the plan was to kill Tobias all along, Lala or Khalil/Painkiller should've been the one to do it.

This was clearly meant to lead into a fifth season where Lala was leading the 100 again; Tobias, despite being dead, still plays a key part since the mayor's death would make Black Lightning public enemy number one; Jeff and Lynn finally get remarried; etc. Unfortunately, their final season was so bad that The CW wouldn't give them the chance to execute on that fifth season they were setting up. And you know what? With how this season went, I don't think I want a fifth season anyway.

This episode is a perfect representation of this season as a whole. A studio with no plan learns that they're about to have their series cancelled, so they begin throwing every idea at the board and using whatever stuck. This season could've worked with another few months in the oven, and a new writing team in charge, but it ended up tarnishing the legacy of these great characters.

Also, is anybody else mad that they didn't call the final episode "Epilogue"? They called almost every episode "The Book of...", with most including "Chapter...", that they couldn't *not* call the final episode "Epilogue". Huge missed opportunity, but hey, that's Black Lightning's final season for you.

Eh. At least it didn't get political. I'll take this mess over an agenda driven trash fire any day of the week.

This episode felt like the writers went home and left the actors to quickly improvise.

After the bombshell of last episode where Jefferson was killed by Tobias, the family are slightly upset and want revenge. Meanwhile there is some crazy story of the original Jen returning out of the sky claiming the current JJ is some sort of Alien imposter so they fight and Jen absorbs her or something.

Suddenly Jefferson is alive but in a grave which doesn't really surprise his family much according to their reactions. He is in a really bad mood, he smashes out of the grave after getting his powers back, rushes around to Tobais place and kicks his butt...why didn't do that in episode 1? The big build up with Chief Lopez comes to the for front when she takes meta enhancements and conveniently leaves the box on her desk for everyone to see. So what does she do with these powers? Well luckily there is a camera pointing right at her who some random investigator finds and they go to investigate only for original Jen to pop up and easily kick Lopez's butt. That is the end of her flat story.

Also no one is interested in where the new elected Mayor Tobias, the Pierces are all home having some lame party without showing us any reaction from the family to the sudden return of original Jen.

As for Khalil all of a sudden TC has found away to stop his killer side but it conveniently means he has to erase all memory of Pierce family so now he can have his own series without asking help from Lightning and co.

It all felt like they threw everything including the kitchen sink at this rushed episode and the kitchen sink broke. But no one wanted to clean up the pieces...what a mess.