Lovecraft Country Explained: What Is This Show About?

HBO's Lovecraft Country is a bloody good time, mixing history, racial commentary, classic pulp serials flavor, and all variety of horrors, into a strange brew. However, while Lovecraft Country has managed to entertain fans with its weekly episodic stories, the larger serialized portions of the show and its mythology may be a bit hard to follow. Read below for a full breakdown of Lovecraft Country's primary storyline and mythos, as well as an explanation of how all of the show's characters are involved. (NOTE: This post covers Lovecraft Country Season 1 in FULL SPOILERS.)

The Quest

Lovecraft Country began with Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors) returning home to southside Chicago in the 1950s, after his father, Montrose (Michael K. Williams) went missing in the lower Massachusetts region known as "Lovecraft Country" (a region that horror writer H.P. Lovecraft featured in many of his stories). Atticus is joined by his Uncle - and likely secret father - George (Courtney B. Vance) and childhood friend Leti Lewis (Jurnee Smollet), and the trio embarks on a journey across America, where segregation laws and racial bigotry almost get them killed as often as the supernatural terrors that begin pursuing them.

The Cult

Eventually, Atticus, George, and Leti track Montrose to the summer home estate of Samuel Braithwhite (Tony Goldwyn), who is the distant cousin of Titus Braithwhite, founder of the ancient secret cult known as Order of the Ancient Dawn.

The order was split into 35 "lodges" with Titus establishing the "Sons of Adam Lodge" for his family. Titus' power rose when he discovered "The Book of Names", an ancient biblical text that granted Titus access to powerful magic spells - like enhancing his body. Titus' ultimate goal was using the Book of Names to open a portal to the Garden of Eden, from which flows the power to make man immortal again. That power would make Titus and his followers Immortal masters of the world, forever.

Titus and his Sons of Adam Lodge tried the ceremony to open the Garden of Eden portal in 1833 but failed to pull it off, resulting in an explosion that annihilated Titus, the Sons of Adam, and the entire lodge. One person escaped the blaze: Titus' slave Hanna, whom he had impregnated. The side of the Sons of Adam Lodge was passed down to Samuel Braithwhite, who built a summer home there, with plans to make his own attempt at opening a portal to the Garden of Eden.

The Chosen One

As it turns out, Samuel Braithwhite used Montrose Freeman as bait. Montrose was forced to write a letter to Atticus, in order to lure his son into the Sons of Adam's clutches. We learn that Atticus' mother, Dora, was a descendant of Hanna, and therefore an illegitimate descendant of Titus Braithwhite, as well. That makes Atticus the last heir of Titus Braithwhite and a key in Samuel's ritual. Atticus cooperates in order to save Leti and George and is nearly killed in the ceremony. Somehow the ghost of Hanna appears and sabotages the ritual, resulting in Samuel Braithwhite, the Sons of Adam Lodge, and all its members, being annihilated. Leti survives but George dies, and the battle with the Order of the Ancient Dawn is seemingly over - or so the Freemans think.

Christina vs. The Police Captain

After Samuel Braithwhite's death, a power struggle within the Order of the Ancient Dawn begins, with the Freemans (and friends) caught in the crosshairs. Samuel's daughter Christina (Abbey Lee) turns out to have been pulling strings the whole time, including getting Atticus to the Sons of Adam Lodge (and commanding the monsters that chased him there), as well as possibly having a hand in sabotaging her father's ritual. Christina uses her wealth to fake an inheritance from Leti's dead mother so that Leti can afford to buy a haunted house once owned by an old conspirator of Titus Braithwhite (Horatio Winthrop). It turns out that Christina is a more powerful sorceress than any of the sexist men in the Order of the Ancient Dawn ever thought: She has achieved a spell that keeps people from trying to harm her; knows a lot about mystic seals, ghosts, and other mystical phenomena, and has concocted potions that let people transform their race and/or gender. Christina has been using the latter to masquerade as "William," a male alter-ego that allows Christina to travel in male-only lanes.

Meanwhile, Christina has competition from Chicago Police Department captain Seamus Lancaster (Mac Brandt), who is secretly the leader of his own lodge but is considered too low-class to be an official member of the Order of the Ancient Dawn. Lancaster got involved with the Order through a partnership with Horatio Winthrop's follower, scientist Hiram Epstein. Lancaster delivered black people to Epstein as test subjects in his horrific experiments.

Captain Lancaster is now competing with Christina to find the Book of Names, via an artifact Epstein built that may unlock cosmic power. It seems both Lancaster and Christina aren't recognized as legitimate by the Order, but each wants to use the cult and the Book of Names to achieve personal power, while using the Freemans, Leti, and her sister Ruby as their pawns. There's a hint from Christina that things are maybe even more personal than that, as she explains to Ruby in one scene that Lancaster actually nearly killed William in order to steal the lodge from him. It could be that Christina's "transformation" is actually a way of keeping William alive (or at least half alive...).

The dead returning is definitely possible, as Lovecraft Country has revealed that Captain Lancaster personally has the power of necromancy - i.e, the ability to re-animate the dead. In episode 5, Lancaster is found to be using his necromancy to interrogate a dead criminal about where he stashed his heist. The police captain took a shot at Christina, sending goons to rough her up, but Christina (as William) turned the tables. Christina sets a trap by having Ruby plant a mystical artifact in Lancaster's office. But Lancaster is just as cunning and keeps close tabs on Christina's search for Hiram Epstein's artifact, with plans to steal it and kill her, in one fell swoop.

Race For the Book of Names

Fate has now put Atticus Freeman, Montrose, Leti, and Ruby all in the crosshairs of the Order of the Ancient Dawn. But instead of being pawns, the Freemans and their allies are getting into the race to find the Book of Names - though their respective motivations for doing so are very different. The Freemans and Leti have two big advantages in the race to find the Book of Names: The Winthrop House, and their successful raid of Titus' Vault.

Titus' Vault - In order to mine the power of the Book of Names, Titus traveled the world looking for means of translating "The Language of Adam" which the book was written in. He found a translation source in the Arawakan people of the Caribbean, who knew the language from their cave drawings. Titus abducted one of the Arawakans, Yahima Maraokoti, promising only to reunite her with her people only if she translated the book. Maraokoti complied until she discovered what Titus really was (a monster), and refused to translate the Book of Names any further.

Yahima was imprisoned in Titus' mystical vault with the translated pages, where the Freemans and Leti eventually find her. Titus transformed Yahima into a siren (whose only "voice" is an ear-piercing scream) in order to keep her from every translating the Book of Names' pages for anyone else. In order to keep the Book of Names' pages and their translator away from the Order of the Ancient Dawn, Montrose burns the pages from they found and brutally murders Yahima.

Winthrop House & The Orrery - Meanwhile, Leti's Winthrop House residence had secrets from mad scientist Hiram Epstein hidden away inside (besides his ghost). One such object was the "Orrery," Hiram Epstein's model of the solar system, which is actually the key to his supposed time machine. Both Christina and Captain Lancaster want the Orrery and are not happy that black people are now in control of it. However, no one knows the twisted development that George Freeman's widow Hippolyta was coerced by the spirits of Winthrop House to take the Orrery herself, which (literally and figuratively) opens the door to new worlds of possibility (see the section on time travel, below).

Apocalypse Now

Lovecraft Country's strange opening sequence foreshadowed a major H.P. Lovecraft-style horror Apocalypse, whose meaning becomes clear, after episode 6.

The Prophecy - The back story of Atticus Freeman's time in the Korean War revealed that his Korean lover, Ji-Ah (Jamie Chung) is much more than just a strange voice on the other end of a phone. Ji-Ah was a nurse that Atticus' unit nearly executed (and did kill her friend), who sought revenge when 'Tic ended up in her care. Instead, Atticus and Ji-Ah fell in love, in part because both grappled with the monster inside. For Atticus, that "monster" was the war, and everything it made him do (like executing and/or torturing women); in Ji-Ah's case, she is a literal monster - a Korean spirit known as a Kumiho, which inhabits the body of a dead human girl.

It was the Kumiho's mission to consume the souls of 100 men in order to become human again - with Atticus being the final soul. However, when Ji-Ah falls in love with 'Tic, she decides not to kill him - but it's a mercy that can only last so long. One day, in a moment of extreme passion, Ji-Ah lets the soul-sucking beast out and nearly kills Atticus; she's only stopped by a dark vision in which she witnesses Atticus' death. Upon consulting a local shaman about the vision, Ji-Ah learns that Atticus' death will be a small part of a dark time that's coming.

Time Is Relative

Hippolyta unlocks the key to Hiram Epstein's Orrery, and during a struggle with police, both she and Atticus are sucked into a portal. Hippolyta travels across different times and dimensions, as an entity of higher consciousness challenges her to be whomever she wants in the universe, free of all the roadblocks and restrictions that black women face. After living all kinds of lifetimes across different times and realities (in 1920s Paris, as a Dahomey Amazon, or a space explorer), an enlightened Hippolyta decides her identity is as mother - so she returns to the 1950s to help save her daughter from an upcoming calamity.

Meanwhile, Atticus travels to the future and discovers that he has a son with Leti, who has written a book about the Freeman family's struggles against evil, in a novel called Lovecraft Country.

The Book of Lovecraft - Lovecraft Country's opening dream sequence suddenly seems much more on-the-nose with its foreshadowing. Atticus' dream featured Ji-Ah as some otherworldly creature and saw her and Atticus face the coming of the dark god, Cthulhu. Whatever power the Book of Names possesses, it doesn't seem like it's going to work out well for those that (foolishly) try to unlock it. Where Samuel Braithwhite thought the book would provide a portal to the Garden of Eden's vitality, it's not hard to see it actually opening a door to a much darker dimension.

As we saw in Lovecraft Country's first two episodes, Atticus is the last heir of Titus Braithwhite, which makes him some kind of unique conduit for the Order of the Ancient Dawn's rituals. With both Christina and Captain Lancaster hoping to harness that power, it's not hard to imagine Ji-Ah's vision coming to pass, and Atticus being sacrificed to open the door that leads to the Apocalypse. Can Atticus and/or his allies change that deadly fate? When you have a time travel device and/or mystical forces on the table, anything is possible...

Lovecraft Country is streaming on HBO Max.