‘Black Lightning’: Synopsis For “Pillar of Fire” Released

The CW has released the official synopsis for next week’s episode of Black Lightning, titled “Book of Secrets Chapter Three: Pillar of Fire.”

Legendary performer and filmmaker Robert Townsend, who directed the 1993 superhero film Meteor Man, helmed the episode.

The episode will follow this week’s episode which dealt with the fallout from Khalil’s death last week. For the rest of the season, Jennifer Pierce will be looking to channel her grief into getting justice for her boyfriend — even if in her eyes justice looks an awful lot like revenge.

You can see the official synopsis below.

ROBERT TOWNSEND DIRECTS

Lynn (Christine Adams) works on two of the pod kids in a segregated safe room. Meanwhile, Jennifer (China Anne McClain) plots revenge and Jefferson (Cress Williams) receives some interesting news. Lastly, Anissa (Nafessa Williams) makes a shocking discovery. Marvin Jones III and James Remar also star.

Robert Townsend directed the episode written by Lamont Magee.

It’s understandable that Jennifer, who is growing more comfortable with her powers, would want revenge. In the midseason premiere “Angelitos Negros”, Tobias Whale (Marvin “Krondon” Jones) took his own sort of revenge on Khalil (Jordan Calloway) by ripping out the young man’s spinal implant after Khalil first attempted to escape his clutches and then had planned to turn against him to the authorities. After ripping out his spine, Tobias left Khalil in the street and while he was taken to the hospital for medical care, there really were no solutions for the kind of trauma he had experienced. The toxins that his body had been producing since receiving his implant initially went into overdrive, ultimately poisoning Khalil and leading to his death.

Khalil Payne died, but not before he and Jennifer were able to share a touching goodbye inside the safe space she had created inside her mind. The pair reaffirmed their love for one another before Khalil literally vanished from Jennifer’s arms, dying surrounded by the Pierce family as well as his mother in the hospital.

It’s a heartbreaking end for the young man who started with such promise as a star athlete, but in a sense his love for Jennifer brought him full circle, restoring him to his good self after a detour on the dark side working for Tobias. Ultimately, he died on good terms with Jennifer, something that Black Lightning star Jordan Calloway told ComicBook.com during a visit to the show’s set last year was the one thing he wanted at the end of the day.

“The thing about it is that they both fight against their hearts desire for one another,” Calloway said. “And for my character, for Khalil, his grounding, his rock, his North Star… She’s mad at him. She’s not talking to him. I mean that’s the love of his life. He can’t keep going on without knowing that they are on good terms at least. He may love her, he may want to be with her, but at the end of the day, he just wants her to be okay. You know?

“And so after the whole fiasco over at the school, he has this sort of weight on him. He has this sort of chip on his shoulder where he’s like, “Dang I caused this. What have I done?” He’s be doing some self inventory of, “How did I get here?” And I think that’s a great question that a lot of kids can ask. A lot of us ask ourselves as well. It’s like, “How did I get here? This series of choices that I made.” And you’re going to see a lot of that in this second season. Where he’s realizing that.”

Black Lightning airs at 9 p.m. ET/PT, Monday nights following Arrow on The CW. “Book fo Secrets Chapter Three: Pillar of Fire” will premiere on February 11.