Lovecraft Country — Series 1 Episode 9 — Rewind 1921: A Review

2nd November, 2021.

Right … You’ll possibly realise that I’ve started this post on Tuesday,

I’m starting to think I should call it TV Tuesday, but who knows!

And yes: I’m going to finish writing this post about the ninth episode — the extremely watchable ninth episode — of Lovecraft Country, tomorrow night.

But yes, and as mentioned in that intro: I’ve recently seen Dune and Candyman and can recommend both.

The Halloween Apocalypse, the first episode of Dr Who, series 13, is just as good!

Before I hit the sack?

Feel free to enjoy the video versions of the reviews!

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Episode 9 — Rewind 1921 opens with a summary of earlier episodes.

Then shifts: showing us Ruby, ’Tic, Leti and Montrose (Wunmi Mosaku, Jonathan Majors, Jurnee Smollett and Michael K. Williams) trying to work out how to left the curse on Diana/Dee (Jada Harris).

The group are forced contact the only wizard they know who could help: Christina.

Who says she can reset the curse but can’t lift it: without Captain Lancaster’s blood.

She can get that.

But, in return?   She want’s ’Tic to meet her at the Autumn Equinox: she has a plan for him.

In the meantime … ?

Hyppolyta, Dee’s mother, works out that — as the curse on her daughter is powered by magic, and the source of that magic is the Book of Names — the group need to get the book in order to permanently lift the curse on Dee.

The only problem there?

The last time the Book was seen … was in ’Tic’s mother’s house: burnt down in the Tulsa Massacre’s in 1921.

The only way to retrieve it?

Is to go back in time to get it: before the riots kick off …

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Now … what did I make of Rewind 1921?

Good?   Bad?   Indifferent?

Bound up in the whimsies of fate, and dragging its bedraggled corpse through the wainscoting of time, with hellhounds on its heel, and murder on its mind?

Yes: I think we can ignore the pretentious bits, can’t we?

Rewind 1921 is a superb penultimate episode.

There’s an on-form cast: Jonathan Majors and Jurnee Smollett are great as ’Tic and Leti, as is Aunjanue Ellis as Hippolyta, Abbey Lee and Wunmi Mosaku as Christine and Ruby are doing well.

Then there’s the late Michael K. Williams: giving what I felt was a career defining performance as the conflicted Montrose in the highlight of the episode*.

Add that to a plot that kept me on the edge of my seat … ?

And we have a penultimate episode that is the strongest thing I’ve seen on TV for a while few weeks.

Frankly?

I’ll be watching the last episode of Lovecraft Country next Tuesday, on 9th November: and reviewing on 10th November.

It better be good.

Rewind 1921.

★★★★

*        In episode one, we see ’Tic rescued from the clutches of Cthulhu by an unnamed African American baseball player.   In Rewind 1921?   We see Montrose telling ’Tic how his younger self, and his friends, were attacked by white thugs: until they were rescued by a stranger with a baseball bat, acting ‘just like Jackie Robinson’.   It’s at that point ’Tic’s steps on a discarded bat: and the pair realise interfering in history isn’t as simple as they thought.