Almost a year ago, Watchmen premiered on HBO with a stunning sequence that brought the horrific Tulsa Massacre of 1921 back into the collective American consciousness. This week, HBO once again took us to the tragic events of May 31 through June 1, 1921 with the Lovecraft Country episode “Rewind 1921.” And when two shows – with very different settings, characters, and stories, but common themes regarding white privilege and the Black American experience that sadly still resonate today – take the time to ground their narrative history in one of the most devastating white supremacist attacks in American history, well, one can’t help but draw comparisons between the two episodes.
It was interesting to see how both shows’ handling of the historical moment intersected with our understanding of the characters and narrative of each series. For Watchmen, since the moment was our first look at what this series was going to offer, it was jarring and confusing. We didn’t know at that time just how important the two young children escaping from the massacre would become to our story. They were simply anonymous characters, surviving against insurmountable odds while their families were murdered. Conversely, Lovecraft Country has mentioned on several occasions that our central characters were indelibly linked to that night in Tulsa in 1921. Moreover, the key to unlocking the mystical side of the series* burned in a fire that killed Tic’s maternal family line on that night, so it makes sense that the show has been building to this moment over the course of the series.
*I keep forgetting about the quest for the Book of Names actually being at the center of the series. There are just so many interesting character beats embedded throughout the series that the mystical issues surrounding the Book of Names seem more like a structure thrown in place to track the series to an endpoint rather than something that is crucial to the themes and heart of the story. I guess it also doesn’t help that the mortally of Tic, which is apparently destined to hang in the balance at the end of the season, isn’t nearly as interesting as seeing Hippolyta in all her glory or hearing Dee explain what the curse did to her or figuring out what side Ruby is really on.
Exploring the Tulsa Massacre with characters we’ve spent eight episodes with lends the experience a different feeling than it had during Watchmen. Both were harrowing to watch, but Lovecraft Country’s take makes the violence feel more personal. Watching characters we know experience the horror of that night allows us to reckon with the events on a different level than seeing (at the time) anonymous people experience unthinkable violence. The emotional impact of both moments hits hard – for Watchmen, seeing the terror through the eyes of a young boy as he was ripped away from his parents forever and for Lovecraft Country, watching a broken man relive the night he lost not only his first love but also forced himself deeply into the closet for the next 30+ years while a young woman watches a family burn to death around her as she is powerless to help them. It’s amazing what a single, terrible moment in American history can do to drive home the truth that what happened then continues to resonate in so many ways today, both on a micro-level within in the shows and on a maco-level within our current world.
If I had one complaint about the episode it would be that Tic and Leti continue to be the dullest and least complex of the show’s wide range of interesting characters. It’s something that was painfully highlighted over the last several weeks as the series focused on its supporting cast to great success and largely kept the duo on the periphery (and when they jumped into the central story, a la Tic in Korea, it noticeably ground the tale to a halt and made it decidedly less interesting). What I wouldn’t have given to have Hippolyta be the one to travel back with Montrose, especially with her new-found abilities. But, it made far more narrative sense to send Tic and Leti back, so that’s what we got. And, this is by no means a slight on Jonathan Majors or Jurnee Smollet, who are doing the best with what they are given to work with. I just wish they’d been given characters that were a bit more interesting.
Speaking of interesting, that scene with Christina and Ruby in the lab was . . . troubling. I like that, with one more episode remaining, I genuinely don’t know which side Ruby is on. There’s clearly a connection between her and Christina that runs deeper than either is willing to openly admit, and Ruby certainly appears to be fully on Team Christina when she unplugs Dell from life support and tells Christina she would prefer to be a redhead (which was one of the most chilling moments of the episode – and this was an episode that included the Tulsa Massacre). Christina all but admits that she wants Ruby by her side even after her ascension, which is no small thing for someone as emotionally distant as she has been throughout the series. If Ruby is being honest and not playing the long game to betray Christina, well, things should be really interesting in next week’s finale when Tic’s life hangs in the balance and Ruby and Leti are on opposite sides. And, frankly, that’s a showdown I’m really looking forward to.
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