Warning: This article contains discussion of homophobia, transphobia, death, suicide, and spoilers for Lovecraft Country.

Lovecraft Country‘s season 1 finale has come and gone. As it ends, it leaves us sitting on the other side of a wild ride of trauma, grief, violence, love, joy, and all things in between. While my earlier concerns about satisfyingly addressing all the many subplots at work here weren’t unfounded, I do want to say that the story elements that were given adequate breathing room were wrapped up with an appropriately tender bittersweetness.

Indeed, “Full Circle”‘s first forty minutes or so revisit, recapitulate, and rearrange various ideas and images seen from previous episodes in ways that are both new and familiar. These moments no doubt give this episode its title, but also offer a clever way to (for now) conclude conversations that felt unfinished.

We saw the weaving together of Leti’s Christian faith and her syncretic encounters with Yoruba traditions, coming together in both Atticus’ baptism and the ritual they perform to summon Titus. With the help of the ancestors, it’s an obvious nod back to episode 3, “Holy Ghost,” and the exorcism performed on Leti’s house and the ghost of Hiram Epstein.

Hippolyta’s scenes with Dee were a meaningful answer to the missing links and conflicts of previous episodes, with Hippolyta answering her daughter’s anger and hurt in ways that felt validating and honest. It was a breath of fresh air in a show that has often focused on miscommunication and dismissal between parents and children, or between siblings. I admit that I have some reservations about what came of these interactions later, though.

On the one hand, I love Hippolyta using her knowledge of the future to provide her daughter with a bionic arm reminiscent of Mad Max: Fury Road‘s Furiosa, gifting the audience a character that is now effectively a disabled superhero. On the other hand, while the black Shoggoth continues to delight me, I’m admittedly unsure how I feel about Dee’s role in Christina’s ultimate demise. These reservations are due to both her youth and my mixed feelings about the first on-camera usage of Dee’s new arm being an act of rather graphic violence.

Nonetheless, these were easily some of the most striking and well-acted moments in this episode. I wish Aunjanue Ellis and Jada Harris had been given more room to really let this relationship shine throughout the show.

Similarly, Atticus watching his family — biological, found and all things in between — working together in preparation for the showdown with Christina in the book store that had been his Uncle George’s while Nina Simone’s “I Am Blessed” plays, gave me chills in all the right ways. It felt like the perfect set-up for what was to come. While I didn’t feel ready to watch Tic’s loved ones grieve him, it seemed like a rare instance where a character marching off to face his almost-certain death actually felt organic and true to something meaningful.

The thing is, this bittersweet tone worked for me because it lent some gravitas and sensitivity to the “heroic sacrifice” motif that I’m usually not interested in. Usually, it’s at best trite/overdone and at worst — I know I’m not the only one still recovering from The Magicians slapping me in the face — it’s triggering and even cruel.

It’s frustrating, then, that an episode with such a strong, heartfelt start as a love letter to all its moving parts ultimately let itself down in the last twenty or so minutes. It undercuts, for me and for other viewers, the weight and sensibility behind Tic facing off against Christina and knowing he might die even if they succeeded in stopping her spell.

I had accepted the logic behind Tic’s journey through anger, through denial, and ultimately to acceptance. If the messianic comparisons got a little heavy-handed at times, the similarities were nonetheless clearly deliberate. I was on board with it by the time Tic had reached his allegorical Garden of Gethsemane in his baptism at Leti’s request.

It wasn’t long after that, though, that things started to slip sideways. It takes bravery to square up against something that seems futile, and to know that doesn’t mean your work is done. Indeed, as Tic’s ancestors point out in the early moments of the episode — it was lovely to see Dora and Erica Tazel again, by the way — Tic has his own burdens to bear, and they might be the price for the bigger picture. For, as Hanna so pithily puts it, saving all of them.

Where the story went in the last twenty minutes, then, felt like a hollowing out of that work. What we had been building up to as a moment of grace and transcendence was swiftly and jarringly turned on its head. The shift came quickly, as Christina and the residents of Ardham foiled our protagonists’ plans seemingly with nary a sweat broken.

Characters that had meaningful, compelling scenes earlier in the show and even in the episode were sidelined. All that knowledge, experience and life in Hippolyta and her contribution to the climax was to stand helplessly by and state the obvious? Otherwise, we saw Ji-ah situated as an under-developed deus ex machina in an already foregone conclusion. These clumsy and shallow writing choices ultimately knocked me out of that acceptance of logic I had taken on. Additionally, it dragged Tic’s death back out of the realm of the narratively salient and into something that felt cheap and fruitless.

So too, then, Leti’s spell to remove all access to magical power from white people. It’s clearly meant to be a win for a promising and vibrant future, if a costly one. When it’s sandwiched by frustrating writing and rules of magic that continue to be unclear though, its impact feels someway muddled or lost. How will the newly magic-imbued know what happened? Did the spell’s wording leave room for biracial magic wielders?

I can, at least, say that I can release the long exhale I’ve been holding since episode 4. It assuaged my fear that Montrose would be sacrificed to protect Tic and Leti, and the child none of us had met yet. Despite my deep, lingering hurt and anger over how Yahima was treated in that episode, I’ve understood that many of my problems with Montrose are more a product of the writing than of an internal character logic. I was dreading seeing him sacrificed to protect the heterosexual family of a son who would go on to call him the f-slur to his face.

In that sense, Tic’s letter to Montrose did strike a resonant chord with me, when we think about radical acts of love, acceptance, and forgiveness. It didn’t heal, justify or make right the hurtful decisions made in the creation of Montrose’s character and his arc to date. However it was a bright (if deeply melancholy) spot in what otherwise felt like a clunky closing twenty minutes.

I only find myself wrestling with Sammy’s absence from the episode. While I like to think Montrose would have returned to him after interring Tic, we neither see nor hear any mention of him. Granted, in some ways, I would prefer he be absent than be rushed through a rapprochement due to the episode’s time constraints. Still, it’s disappointing that the last time Sammy saw his partner was Tic calling them a slur to their faces. Furthermore, it is disappointing that the show might never allow these two a moment of healing and grace not just separately but together.

On the note of the queer characters in this show, boy, do we ever need to talk about Ruby. I hate to be this cynical, but the moment we saw her and Christina kiss as themselves for the first time, the rest of this show’s track record made me absolutely sure she was doomed.

Now, I can accept that Ruby might have a naivete problem when it comes to Christina. Certainly, we the audience know Christina is and has been a walking red flag since her introduction. Nonetheless, I’m struggling to find any scenario in which Ruby’s purported death doesn’t just feel like an insult and a punishment. I say purported because it happens soullessly offscreen and seems to mostly be a vehicle for Christina’s anger.

I struggle to find the logic of leaning into homophobic and transhobic tropes since the beginning of this “romance,” and then — in the moment that Ruby finally decides to explore the idea that she might not be uniquely attracted to men — briskly turn around and punish her for “being in a (bad) relationship with someone who wasn’t a man”.

You know, unless that logic is, itself, homophobia. I’m struggling to identify any other reason why a plus-sized Black woman would be punished for her (white and thin) girlfriend’s cruel behavior. This writing choice does feel like another slap in the face. No doubt it is more of a slap in the face to viewers for whom Ruby was someone to identify with, at least until the writing took that from them. Ultimately, it undercut my ability to enjoy Wunmi Mosaku’s incredibly nuanced acting of Christina-in-Ruby’s-body with the tiny differences that you wouldn’t even notice unless you knew ahead of time.

In many ways, this final episode — I say final because it’s as-yet unclear if there’s a second season on the way — is a perfect demonstration of my experience with Lovecraft Country all along. The things it does well, it does very well. Additionally, I do believe I am a smarter audience member and overall person for having watched and engaged with it this far. I continue to be deeply enamored with the cast and their obvious love for the characters they portray.

Also there’s a great deal about the stories they’ve brought to life that is not just important but, I feel, vitally necessary. When it drops the ball, though, it does so with an impressively loud clang, and I find myself torn between wanting a second season for some of these mistakes to be fixed, and wanting to call it a day.

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Lovecraft Country

6.5

Score

6.5/10

Pros

• First half of the episode was tenderly bittersweet
• Compelling acting
• Solid set designs

Cons

• I wanted more from Hippolyta and Ji-Ah's contributions to the climax
• Ruby's death feels hurtful and frustrating