'Black Lightning': Breaking Down the Season 2 Finale Ending

All throughout Season 2 of Black Lightning the Pierce family has been dealing with a very different Freeland than we first met them in back in Season 1. Tobias Whale made his presence known and made some bold moves towards his nefarious plans. Metahumans began showing up in larger and larger numbers, and the A.S.A. may not be quite the sinister organization it was last season, but they're still plenty shady. Tonight, though, all of those elements and more came together for the season finale and brought with it some shocking twists that will have huge impact on Season 3.

Spoilers for tonight's Season 2 finale of Black Lightning, "The Book of Apocalypse: Chapter Two: The Omega", below.

A lot happened in tonight's episode. Jennifer got a grip on her powers, Tobias made a major play to take out Black Lightning, and the Pod Kids had a major part of the story, too. However, it's the last few minutes of the episode that packed the biggest punch. As we roll into those last minutes comes perhaps the biggest reveal: Khalil/Painkiller is inside one of the pods at the A.S.A. and more than that, he's alive. That reveal came as Agent Odell, alone in the facility, inspects the three pods there, making the shocking (to viewers) reveal.

Audiences don't have a chance to recover from that before the next big shock. Tobias has been taken into custody, but not just any custody. He was taken into custody after being defeated by Lightning and Black Lightning and it looks like he's going to be neutralized for the time being -- he's being kept in an ultra-high security facility prepared for his metahuman powers.

That's a pretty big punch, too, but the last one is the one that probably has the highest stakes for Season 3. At the Pierce home, as the family is preparing to sit down to dinner somewhat celebrating that they've defeated their enemies at long last, Agent Odell shows up. He barges in and makes it very clear that he knows who they are. He is aware of their metahuman status and now, they're being drafted. You see, Dr. Jace was apprehended earlier in the episode, but the mysterious time-travelling metahuman we previously saw in a bar comes and takes her away. It seems that taking her away meant handing her back to the Markovians which is problematic by itself, but it gets worse.

Markovia has the most metahumans in the world -- except now Freeland also has a large metahuman population. This makes Freeland the largest threat to the Markovians and that's why Agent Odell is there. He's drafting the Pierce family into the coming Markovian war with Freeland as ground zero.

Black Lightning has spent a lot of time over the course of the season leading up to something major with Markovia. Early in the season, a news report in-universe references the nation as well as the Markovian royal family. Later, they introduced Dr. Jace who was revealed to have been doing experiments on Markovians -- including the King's son -- in order to create metahumans, giving the nation a metahuman army. Then, just a couple of weeks ago, Markovian intelligence agents attack Lynn.

With Markovia having been woven through all of Season 2 and with Agent Odell declaring that an actual war is coming, it certainly seems that Markovia is being set up as being the "big bad" for Season 3. It's something that could prove to be not just an interesting story as it would be very different from what we've seen with Black Lightning's fight against Tobias for the first two seasons, but it also may see the introduction of further members of the Outsiders team from comics -- including Brion Markov, better known to book fans as Geo-Force.

What did you think about Black Lightning's second season finale? Let us know in the comments below.