Tonight’s episode of Black Lightning — “The Book of War, Chapter One: Homecoming” — finally revealed the origin story of Tyson Sykes (Wayne Brady), the villain known as Gravedigger, and in so doing, gave the Arrowverse its version of Captain America…but with a sad twist. Per his official character description, Sykes is “a World War II-era member of the U.S. military who became a “super-soldier” after a secret experiment gifted him with enhanced strength, agility, tactical genius and hand-to-hand combat expertise. After the war, Sykes defected to the country of Markovia rather than return to a segregated America. His aim to create a sovereign land for metahumans within Markovia has set him on a collision course with the ASA and Black Lightning.”
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And while we have not officially heard of the whole “sovereign land for metahumans” thing on the TV show yet — that feels a little Black Adam to us — what we did get tonight was a look at an origin story that feels very influenced by Marvel’s Luke Cage and Captain America. Unfortunately, in this version, the hero eventually fell and is now a serious danger to the world at large.
Spoilers ahead for “The Book of War Chapter One: Homecoming,” which airs tonight on The CW.
After lashing out at a pair of racist soldiers who had physically abused him, American GI Tyson Sykes was offered an option: take a court martial, or volunteer for a program that was aimed at building a generation of super-soldiers. He volunteered to be a guinea pig, not realizing that he had a latent metagene in his body. When the experiments — which had killed a number of previous volunteers — awakened his powers, Sykes became the first known metahuman on Earth-Prime, and a secret weapon for the U.S. government.
Eventually, he found himself embroiled in a coup in Markovia, where a proto version of the ASA had been experimenting on people during the Cold War — but when the U.S. was forced out of the country, Sykes remained behind instead, deciding that he had no interest in returning to a country where he had been discriminated against and abused.
In addition to the surface level similarity that Sykes was created using a super-soldier serum, there’s another element of his story that closely mirrors a detail from the comics: Sykes was the only soldier who successfully “took” to the serum, and the project was “destroyed,” except for him. There is no indication in-story as to how or why it was destroyed (in the Captain America comics, it was a rogue German agent who assassinated the man who had perfected the science). In both cases, the U.S. government spent years, and a fortune, trying to recreate the success, to no avail.
The difference is, over at Marvel, Steve Rogers spent his life fighting for the U.S. government. Tyson Sykes? Well, he’s ready to come declare a one-man war on a mid-sized American city.
You can check out the next installment of Gravedigger’s war on Freeland in next week’s episode of Black Lightning. The series airs at 9 p.m. ET/PT on The CW, following episodes of All-American.
