Fans already learned the Jordan Calloway will return to Black Lightning in the role of Painkiller for season two — but Marvin “Krondon” Jones III, who plays the series’ big bad Tobias Whale, might have even more allies this time around.
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That’s according to executive producer and showrunner Salim Akil, who promised a rise in metahumans for the show’s second season.
“You know, one of the things I was saying about the upcoming season is that we’re doing is I want to give a nod to comic books in a stronger way,” Akil told reporters at Comic Con. “The first four episodes are called ‘The Book of Consequences: The Rise of the Greenlight Babies.’”
Greenlight, of course, was introduced in season one and gave its users super powers — at least for short periods of time. It has ties to the same scientific experiments that created Black Lightning and other metahumans decades before…and disproportionately, drug users are likely to end up on the wrong side of the law.
Creating a new community for himself should play to what makes Tobias so interesting — and so tortured — on the show. As an albino Black man, Jones has said in the past that Tobias feels like he has no real community. He has expressed racist sentiments against black people, but finds no acceptance from anybody else, either. Creating more “friends” could make a lot of sense for a character who struggles with being more or less alone in the world — especially after so many of his inner circle did not survive the first season.
“He struggles a lot with self love and love from outside sources,” Jones said. “We saw who he loves, we saw what he loves and he lost what he loves. And that was his community, Joey Toledo and Tory his sister, that’s his community. He has a few cats that he know, he work through that he likes maybe. But those aren’t people that he really loves, the Syonide of course and now Syonide is the only one left and he pretty much raised her groomed her from baby. He’s a lonely guy, the character Tobias Whale is a lonely guy. He’s always by himself, he’s always drinking.”
Black Lightning returns to The CW in October. The series airs on Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. ET/PT following episodes of The Flash.
