The latest episode of Lovecraft Country was one of the show’s strongest to date. “Strange Case” followed Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku) after her sexual encounter with William and featured her living a brand new life with the help of some magic. Warning: Spoilers… William gifts Ruby a magic potion that gives her the ability to turn into a white woman. While the idea is terrifying at first, Ruby quickly learns how much easier it is to go about life this way and the episode becomes an eerie and gruesome look at inequality and power.
The episode begins with Ruby waking up in a white woman’s body. She leaves William’s and returns to the South Side, terrified and frantic. She bumps into a Black boy, and two cops immediately pull over and try to beat him, accusing the boy (who was only trying to offer her assistance) of attempting to molest her. Ruby gets them to stop and gets her first taste of how much easier it is to live as a white woman. The cops return her to William, who explains that she can use the race-changing potion to be whoever she wants, and she chooses to use her new persona, Hilary Davenport (Jamie Neumann), to finally get her dream job at Marshall Fields.
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Not only is Ruby instantly hired, but she’s given a managerial potion, and quickly learns that Tamara, the Black woman she met the week before who got the position she had longed for, didn’t have any training or credentials. It becomes clear to Ruby that her experience never mattered when she was living as her true self. She becomes bitter towards Tamara and treats her harshly, however, she eventually catches her new boss trying to assault the young woman and decides to take her newfound power a step further. Towards the end of the episode, she makes her boss think she’s going to have sex with him, but instead ties him up and assaults him with a heel as her skin sheds back to her true form.
The gruesome transformation that occurs whenever Ruby returns from her Hillary state is wildly grisly and gory and showcases what is clearly a traumatic experience for the character. It’s gripping on a horror level as well as a racial one, and now that Ruby knows what she’s capable of with her newfound power, we cannot wait to see what the show has in store for her. Especially now that she found out she’s not the only one using the magic potion.
What did you think of tonight’s episode of Lovecraft Country? Tell us in the comments!
Lovecraft Country airs Sundays at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and is available to stream on HBO Max.
