TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews Black Lightning Season 4 Episode 12: Crossroads

And it all has come down to this… tonight with “Crossroads” we found ourselves with the penultimate episode of Black Lightning (which is a crime because this show deserves to go on a LOT longer, especially now with how much Black Lightning is needed as a show) and I’ll be honest, the episode did setup the finale well enough…if it did take a few liberties.

For example, you notice how “one hour” had a LOT happening in it? Tobias said that to Jefferson while it was daylight out, and yet it was nighttime when they met, and between that time Jefferson met with Gambi, Lyn and then went to his dad’s house, as well as Lyn meeting with Lauren, Anissa and Grace dealing with the server building for the meta gene, and more? Yeah, that was definitely more than “one hour”.

You could definitely feel though that an ending was coming as a lot of pieces got brought together, including Lauren being brought into the fold, Red being captured, Jefferson going to his “one last stand” with Tobias, and so on.

That being said, there were some oddities that can’t be ignored. For example, the “Shadow Board”. I mentioned previously that they were just rushed in without explanation, and I knew that they wouldn’t develop them in a meaningful way, and sure enough, not only did they prove to not have a single backstory, but Tobias overtook them without much effort. And I doubt they’ll be even mentioned in the series finale next week.

Futhermore, the police chief FINALLY got a significant backstory in terms of why she hates metas so much…and yet when Lightning came in to bring Red in after being talked down before about the dangers of meta powers…she decides to say out loud that people like Lightning should be “wiped from the Earth”? Doesn’t that sound exactly like a certain someone from The Flash? Same voice, different skin? Yeah, exactly. And of course, now she decides to go and “join them to beat them”? Really?

Finally, and arguably most importantly, the fight between Painkiller and Ishamel only slightly lived up to the hype. There were WAY too many jump cuts in what should’ve been a pure martial arts spectacle. And for Painkiller to beat him by “cheating” kind of ended it on a sour note.

Almost forgot, Tobias calling Jennifer was great, him saying he killed Jefferson? Yeah, we all know that isn’t happening before the series finale and the trailer for the final episode proved he’s all well and good for the final showdown.

Despite this, there were some good elements to the episode and while I’m sad next week is the end, hopefully the show will go out like it came in…like a bolt of lightning.