At the end of Season 2, the Pierce family found itself in a tense place on Black Lightning. Not only did the family have their own issues to deal with, but the family found themselves enlisted in the coming metahuman war with the Markovians. It’s that conflict that will see the family of heroes a bit divided in the upcoming Season 3 according to series star Cress Williams.
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Williams, who plays Jefferson Pierce/Black Lightning on the series, told Entertainment Weekly that when the new seasons picks about a month and a half after the Season 2 finale, things will have shifted the focus away from the family center as the conflict will have spread them out a bit with different focuses.
“The family is probably the most disjointed we’ve ever had it,” Williams said. “It’s the whole Markovian conflict. It’s pulled everyone in different directions because they’ve gotten a little bit divided, in the sense there are just different focuses that they have and different motivations that they have.”
“We’re filming, I think, episode 4 right now, and [for] a lot of the family members it’s like, ‘Oh here’s our first scene together’, because just where the drama has taken us has really spread us out.”
On Black Lightning, it isn’t just Williams’ Jefferson who is a superpowered hero. His daughter Anissa (Nafessa Williams) is the hero Thunder and daughter Jennifer (China Anne McClain) is the new hero Lightning. Wife and mother Lynn Pierce (Christine Adams) may not have superpowers herself, but she’s also in the thick of it, a doctor who spent most of last season working save the so-called Pod Kids, superpowered youth who the A.S.A. have been keeping in stasis in some cases for decades. It’s that involvement that gets the whole family drafted by Agent Odell for the coming fight with the Markovians, but according to Williams, Jefferson is doing all he can to protect his daughters — including a significant sacrifice he makes for them.
“[Jefferson] makes a really big sacrifice,” Williams said. “That sacrifice is what really propels him at the beginning of the season.”
And the Markovian war may not be the only thing keeping the Pierce family divided on Black Lightning. The hero Black Lightning is set to appear in the upcoming Arrowverse crossover “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, something that will see the character leave the city of Freeland to join the superheroes in their upcoming battle against the Anti-Monitor for the fate of all the worlds in the Multiverse.
“You asked for it, you got it,” Cress wrote on social media when the news first surfaced earlier this year.
Black Lightning will return for its third season on Monday, October 7th on The CW.
