The CW has released a new preview for “The Sange”, the seventh episode of Black Lightning‘s second season.
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Given the events of tonight’s episode, the significance of the title is pretty clear, as it refers to the (predominantly white) group of people in South Freeland under the control of Looker (Sofia Vassilieva), who lord over a disenfranchised group called “the perdi”. This week’s episode, appropriately titled “The Perdi”, followed Anissa (Nafessa Williams) trying to save a young mother and her twin babies from Looker and her minions.
This certainly proved to be an interesting direction for the hit The CW series, and one that could inject some social commentary in the process.
“All representation matters in the spirit of, we need to see everybody.” producer Mara Brock Akil told reporters earlier this year. “We need to also see the groups of people, or the types of people, who are often left out of the narrative. I think that’s why we say, Black representation matters, or LGBTQ, because these groups have been left out. Or characters who are paralyzed. It starts to grow in the fiction. They constantly get left out of the narrative, and we need to bring everybody in the narrative.”
“But also doing it honestly,” showrunner Salim Akil stressed. “I’m not trying to be Kumbaya. The shit that I want to say, I want it to be real. I want people to have real representation. It’s like me having a conversation with a Native American about slavery, that Native American is gonna look at me like, ‘What the f— are you talkin’ about?’ Yes, no, that was horrible! But, my people don’t even exist hardly anymore. So, it’s all in degrees, and I think it’s time that we start talking about this.”
The episode will also probably include some major developments for Peter Gambi (James Remar) who turned out to have survived his assassination attempt. As fans saw last week, Gambi’s apparent death took a major toll on Jefferson (Cress Williams) and Anissa, so it will be interesting to see what’s next.
“Sometimes it recedes into the background, but a sense of duty and a sense of trying to balance things out is a guiding theme for a lot of people I know’s lives.” Remar told reporters during a recent visit to the show’s set. “And I don’t feel that Gambi is any different. It feels he has a real responsibility to rub out some of the bad stuff of the past, and balance and equalize things. Now there is, in episode 5 of this season…I don’t know what I’m not supposed to tell, but there’s a tension that occurs. And when the tension breaks, there’s a reconciliation that the fact that Gambi and Jefferson are family is clearly stated. There is no ambiguity about it at all. And my kids have been mad at me for long periods of time, but I’m always their dad and that’s always number one.”
Black Lightning airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on The CW.
