‘Black Lightning’: SPOILER Dies in “Prodigal Son”

Tonight’s episode of Black Lightning saw Tobias Whale get closer to his goal of getting to the pod kids, but while the villain moved forward with his plans for another character, their journey came to an end.

Spoilers for tonight’s episode of Black Lightning, “Prodigal Son”, below.

At the end of last week’s “Angelitos Negros”, Tobias exacted his own brand of revenge and punishment on Khalil after the young man not only attempted to break away from the dangerous gangster but attempted to act as a witness against him with the police as well. Tobias ripped Khalil’s spinal implant from his body and dumped him on the street in front of the church.

This week, Khalil was hospitalized with not just the regular medical doctors trying to figure out how to help him, but the ASA via Lynn Pierce doing so as well. Unfortunately, regular medicine had no solutions for him and, without the implant, the toxins that Khalil’s body produced went into overdrive trying to deal with the trauma. Despite Jennifer’s successful please to get her mother to intervene and attempt to move Khalil to a pod until a true solution could be found, those toxins proved to be too much. Khalil’s body was soon overwhelmed and ultimately poisoned by them.

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.”

And when it comes to choices, Jennifer will find herself having to make some now that Khalil has died. The preview for next week’s episode hints that the fine line between revenge and justice will be a real issue for Jennifer, something extra significant as the young woman grows more comfortable with her powers.

Black Lightning airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on The CW.