Lucky is far away from her family, rendered to a hospital for the mentally ill although it is quickly clear that her fellow patients are all Black women.

Just when you thought you’d reached the end of the way White power hits Black bodies we’re into healthcare. Not the sub-optimal outcomes that people of colour experience today but full on prejudiced healthcare where Black bodies, particularly those of women, are subjects for White people to experiment upon as they see fit.

The reasons here are complex – stemming as they do from Victorian ideas about progress and modernism and how Black bodies are close enough to White bodies to provide insight for medicine but not close enough to be treated with the same dignity. We see this in White supremacy whether they are Black bodies or Brown or Jewish throughout the 20th century and here it’s just another example of a long line of wrong-doing by the medical profession.

But Lucky is not here to advance medical science, she is here to be suppressed and controlled, separated from her family and denied access with lies, threats and obfuscation.

In a parallel thread we see Betty is also now incarcerated and the parallels, while feeling deep, are actually superficial. I struggle to see the point of Betty at this stage in the show. It is a shame, as Alison Pill does an amazing job portraying what she is going through. More happens because of her absence then her presence and I wish that was not so.

The Emorys’ arrival in Compton is breaking them from the inside regardless of what they might have brought with them. Their baggage, for lack of a better phrase, is providing fuel for the fire that is lit elsewhere. Denied their chance to escape they are now trapped whether by physical walls or their own personal hells.

This show has a clear message about the burden of Black motherhood. It is mothers who have brought their community so far, it is mothers who have done the emotional labour, the lifting, the work. And yet it is they who appear to be most invisible; overlooked by their families as much as they are overlooked by wider society.

If Henry and the children remain locked in whatever torment being delivered upon them, Lucky remains clear eyed and in a moment where the spirit and she talk, it becomes clear she is the only thing it fears – although we do not know why.

For the first time I consider that Lucky and the family might survive, although I am certain the death toll is not yet fixed. Around them circle antagonists whose voices grow more shrill, and whose courage to do that which they fear starts to blossom. Talking themselves into righteous fury, attacking those who disagree with them and desperately, desperately looking for the path which will take them to the catharsis of murder.

Hatred doesn’t bloom into torture, murder and violence all in one day because even racists have ideas about themselves which they find it difficult to let go of, namely that they are decent people only doing what is right. In order for them to really destroy that which they hate they need to come to agreements with themselves and their ideas about what is permitted and what is necessary and what must happen. They look for reasons to let loose, they look for justification, it is never as simple as just doing.

They find their courage in the end and do that which they were so close to doing at the end of last episode. Henry and the children suffer, and of course they are innocent, as much as anyone is innocent.

Our sympathies here are with the Emorys, but the actions we hoped for should have the audience pausing and reflecting because in our own bloodlust towards the antagonists in this show what are we really hoping for? In the deaths of their tormentors do we find catharsis and what does that say about us? Are we pleased with the bloodshed, does that make us righteous too?

We come back to Black suffering as entertainment, and I am not sure my soul is better for experiencing this alongside the Emorys.

At this stage everything is set up for a finale so I will be intrigued to see what episode 9 brings.

Rating? 8 out of 10.

Stewart Hotston