Gambi saves Jennifer and Jefferson discovers the pod kids. Then all Hell breaks loose, everywhere.

There are two really smart choices this episode makes which lock it in as something special. The first is that this is a pretty definitive win. Tobias is in prison, the Pierces are together and all’s well with the world, for a while at least. The show’s biggest dramatic engine across the last two seasons has been the way the family’s individual agenda collide. Here, those agenda become one, leading to some very pleasant surprises. Lynn’s knockdown drag out fight with Jace is a moment of catharsis she’s had coming all season. Jefferson breaking down when he realizes it’s all okay is welcome too. These are real people with desperately weird lives and every now and then they’re going to realize that.

The second great choices it makes is ensuring that isn’t the end of the episode. As Bill Duke’s wondrously cadaverous Agent Odell informs them, a war is coming and Markovia is bringing it. The offhand way Odell deputizes all of them, seeing through their identities is one of the best delivered gags all season but it’s what the conversation says that really matters. It’s no longer just Freeland. It was never just Freeland and now, with his daughters, wife and adoptive dad on staff, Jeff is finally able to do something about that.

This has been a season of massive change in Black Lightning and it’s all paid off. The show bows out of its second season with a new metahuman, a new family dynamic and a new enemy on a new landscape. That’s deeply complex, ambitious writing and the show is more than capable of supporting it.

Verdict: Complicated, ethically nuanced and fun, this is a hell of a series. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart