Warning: This article contains discussion of racism, police brutality, murder, homophobia, and spoilers for Lovecraft Country.

We need to talk about — and by that I mean rhapsodize about — Aunjanue Ellis. Really, we need to do this every week she shows up, but particularly in this seventh episode of Misha Green’s Lovecraft Country.

Before we do that, though, I think it’s important to note that “I Am.” is in many ways two episodes wrapped into one. Changing course or rapidly ramping up at about the midway point of an episode isn’t new for this series, but this episode is particularly striking for how the last half hour or so is gorgeously stronger than the first twenty minutes.

Don’t get me wrong: there were some significant scenes in the first half or so, and I want to unpack those too. That closing half-hour, though, married joy, wonder, fear, rage and ultimately healing with all the incisive and ultimately uplifting presence of a really successful, thought-provoking therapy session.

Part of why I loved this segment of the episode so much is simply a long-awaited centering on Hippolyta. She’s someone I’ve been dying to get to know better, and someone who rarely gets to be at the center of her own story in mainstream media. She is a middle-aged Black woman who is also a fundamentally brilliant, curious seeker: a trope that has nearly always been reserved for young white characters.

It’s certainly true that, in embracing and fully plumbing the depths of this story, Lovecraft Country takes a breather from horror. Instead it plays with science fiction and particularly Afrofuturism — and to be frank, the timing couldn’t be better.

With the hurtful stumbles of previous episodes, it’s been an undeniably refreshing change of pace to step away from the areas where Lovecraft Country keeps stubbing its toes. It is nice to nstead play in the sandbox where possibilities are limitless and healing and closure can truly be achieved. To say nothing of the absolutely spectacular opportunities this episode gave the costume department to truly splash out, experiment, and develop stunning visuals for every character involved.

Hippolyta, (this episode’s beating heart) clearly feels it too. She is expressed with glorious range, spirit, complexity — and, I should add, sexiness rarely afforded to middle-aged Black women in television — by the ever-wonderful Aunjanue Ellis. Her encounters with magic are uniquely intimate and self-revelatory. The journey she goes on to name and love all aspects of herself is undeniably beautiful. She names and loves herself as a traveler, a woman who desires, a woman in fury, a warrior, a genius, a wife and mother, and ultimately a discoverer.

She does so guided by the love, fury and genius of other Black women; with stunning performances of women like Josephine Baker (Carra Patterson), Nawi (Sufe Bradshaw) and the Dahomey Warriors, Frida Kahlo (Camila Cano-Flavia), and Bessie Stringfield. She does so embracing the particular intimacy and sexuality of homosocial spaces between women, experiencing it herself and bearing loving witness to it between others. Hippolyta’s striking speech to the Mino women she leads into battle feels especially contemporary, too:

“We are here because we did not believe them when they told us our rage was not ladylike. We did not believe them when they told us our violence goes too far. We did not believe them when they said the hatred that we feel for our enemies is not godlike. They say that to women like us because they know what happens when we are free. Free to hate when we must, free to kill when we must, free to bring destruction when we must. That is our freedom. That is our prayer, no matter what they think of us. After we grind them into the dust, that is our love!”

It’s all but impossible to watch that scene and not immediately think of the liberal-centrist pushback against protests and property damage that arose in the wake of George Floyd’s and Breonna Taylor’s murders and the surrounding spike in police brutality. Indeed, it brings to mind the insistence that property damage is more hurtful than literal murder.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Lovecraft Country’s writing room knew our thoughts would go there, too. So continues the show’s powerfully evocative through-line that has its narrative just as meaningful to a 2020 audience as to its 1950s characters.

Ultimately, in a story that behaves like a therapy session both for the audience and for Hippolyta, she is at long last able to reckon with who she is and who she has shrunk to be for other people. In particular, her scenes with Uncle George bring some deeply moving, satisfying resolution to a stalled conversation that had been brutally cut short. I can’t stress enough how grateful I am that the show took us on this journey with her — even if I was surprised by how it ended.

Now, I know I’m unpacking “I Am.” in reverse order, but I do now want to move back to the first twenty or so minutes. I’ll own that I didn’t find it as satisfying as the second half, perhaps in large part because I knew I was waiting for Hippolyta’s story to begin in earnest. I was itching to get on with it.

I will say, though, that the relationship between Ruby and Leti is one that I’m deeply interested in. I was heartened to see Leti apologizing for the hurt she’s been causing Ruby, and the resulting rapprochement. Even if they are still holding things back from each other that I’m sure will turn around to bite them, I love the acting chemistry between Jurnee Smollett and Wunmi Mosaku. I found myself thinking more than once: so many other problems would be solved if the other characters in this show could communicate like this!

On that note, it needs to be said that a review of this episode wouldn’t be honest or complete without addressing Tic and Montrose’s confrontation. The best word I can come up with for how I feel about it is still “struggling.” Lovecraft Country Radio podcast hosts Ashley C. Ford and Shannon Houston give at least some time to breaking down what was going on in this scene, and I do think much of the idea behind the scene has its significance in the conversations Lovecraft Country is trying to have.

The show has spent several episodes problematizing the idea of the hero. It has been confronting the ways in which Atticus is a deeply flawed man and ways that he has inherited violence from his father. That confrontation requires continuing to acknowledge intra-community conflicts and wounds. Wounds that arise when people that carry within them multiple identities — something at the heart of this episode, too — are not seen and loved in their entirety.

In an episode that grapples with the failure of the men in Hippolyta’s life to show up for and support her as a Black woman, I understand why it tries to grapple with patterns of toxic masculinity and internalized homophobia. Montrose fails to show up for and support Sammy as a queer Black man. So too does Atticus fail to show up for his father.

In each of these cases, the trauma that Montrose and Atticus have inherited and experienced is an inextricable part of the violence that they inflict on each other and the people they love. This is true whether we’re talking about violence on a physical level, emotional level, or both. For whatever this is worth, the show is clear in its maintenance that it is not an excuse.

However (a very big however) I am confident in saying that I am not the only person who flinched at the scene’s execution. I don’t doubt that the writing room heavily discussed, maybe even argued over, the choice to have Atticus utter a homophobic slur. I still strongly feel that they could have made the choice to have him say something else.

There were ways to have Atticus experience his anger and confusion and express the hurtfulness the writers wanted him to, without using language that’s a slap in the face to the audience. Engaging with more complicated or “messier” experiences of queerness is something I often want from fiction. Fiction is a space in which we’re often sanitized by straight writers afraid to write us as flawed human beings. However, it should feel revelatory and cathartic, not just painful and hard to swallow.

In an episode that’s so aware of the significance of names, both what you name yourself, and what others name you; it is painful to watch Atticus given room to name Montrose a word rooted in hatred and fear. All while Montrose is still not allowed to name himself and live his truth. So too does this sit uncomfortably against the presentation of other queer relationships and forms of queerness in this show. I’m still grieving the choice to have Montrose, a queer man, murder Yahima, an intersex two-spirit person. Yet “I Am.” brings other identities to the table, too.

For instance, it includes Christina explaining to Ruby her motivations behind taking on William’s body and what she is trying to achieve. With the exception of the one line in which Ruby refers to Christina wanting to “f*** her as a man,” Ruby seems more bothered by Christina lying to her about magic than she does about the idea that she had sex with a woman.

“I Am.” also makes reference to a romantic relationship between two elderly Black women; Osberta and Tic’s aunt Ethel, two women who got together after their husbands died. The show only speaks to this relationship fleetingly, indeed so much so that I didn’t quite realize they were depicting a romance at first. However, it is presented as an undeniable source of light, warmth and intimacy.

Hippolyta’s fantastical trips through times and places also center her in undeniably homoerotic sites of love, resilience, rage, desire, and intimacy between women. This too is framed as a site of healing, liberation and self-actualization.

Ultimately, then, I struggle with the ways that “I Am.” has connected queer masculine identities and queer relationships between men to violence and hatred. At the same time, queer feminine identities and queer relationships between women are deemed at minimum “safer” and at best liberating and beautiful in their intimacy.

My queerness as a bisexual non-binary person perceived by many as a woman, is not a safer or more diluted or sanitized “version” than that shared between men. In an episode that otherwise felt in many ways healing, uplifting and overall really beautiful, continuing to lean into this dichotomy strikes an uncomfortably and even painfully false note. The reason I say I struggle is because this episode is (otherwise) so gorgeous. Visually, musically, in its story, in the dizzy joy of its highest peaks, I’m in many ways in love with what it had to offer. I’m certainly in love with Hippolyta.

I’ve written before about the ways that successful horror works like a kink relationship between writer and audience; as long as everyone involved understands and consents to the rules and boundaries. When Lovecraft Country is doing what it does best, it brings the viewer into its universe and provides that dizzyingly intimate space for play and exploration that terrifies, but then also enlightens, invigorates and thrills, its audience. I’d love for the show to pivot toward treating its queer characters (and queer viewers) with the same care and respect.

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Lovecraft Country

0.00

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Stellar acting from Aunjanue Ellis
• Gorgeous exploration of Afrofuturism
• Centring the experiences and desires of an older Black woman
• Great soundtrack
• Fantastic costuming

Cons

• Continuing missteps with queer representation