LOVECRAFT COUNTRY Episode 9: Rewind 1921 Review

With Dee in magical stasis, the search for The Book of Names becomes more urgent than ever as our heroes are forced to travel back in time to retrieve a copy from 1921 before it is destroyed in the Tulsa Race Massacre. But doing so will force Montrose to confront some very dark memories.

It gives me no pleasure to say it, but Lovecraft Country has jumped the shark. What started as a smart, socially relevant take on Lovecraftian horror has collapsed in a pile of tropes with only the thinnest thread of plot to bind them together. It’s a goddamn shame, because it started so promisingly as the story of a young black man bound by blood to the leader of a malevolent cult founded by slaveowners obsessed with breeding monstrosities. There were a lot of meaty plot and subtextual possibilities there, most of which are only half-explored.

What exactly are we to take away from the last few episodes, which have meandered from Korean fox spirits (which conveniently go away when asked, evidently) to Many Worlds quests for identity to time travel? How is it that Aunt Hippolyta conveniently knows how to repair a dimensional gateway machine and why exactly is Leti magically protected from fire? These and many questions like them are either incompletely dealt with or unanswered as the show’s plot turns to an incoherent soup.

I really want to like Lovecraft Country because it was once exciting and new and atmospheric. I want to enjoy the talented acting as part of a cogent, logical story. I really want to believe that creator and writer Mischa Green will pull some fantastic twist out of her sleeve that will knock me on my ass with its power, unexpectedly unifying all these disparate elements.

But with one episode left, it seems increasingly unlikely that will happen.