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So, CW’s 5th superhero series, Black Lightning, finally has a trailer. If you haven’t been following this latest entry into the CW shared universe, Black Lightning seems to be intended to fill the space that Legends of Tomorrow was initially built around.
See, back before Legends of Tomorrow morphed into its own unique thing it was conceived of as a team-up for all the various heroes that had been introduced in The Flash and Arrow, including the title characters. It was going to be a shortened mini-series running during the off-season breaks in the winter and summer.
Obviously, that plan changed, most likely due to CW being unable to get Grant Gustin and Stephen Amell’s schedules to click together for that much filming, and Legends of Tomorrow became the weird superhero Star Trek TOS meets Doctor Who series it is today.
Still, superhero shows are solid business for CW and they’ve been eager to find something new to fill that slot, hence why they’re also still experimenting with animated shows online like Vixen and The Ray. Black Lightning is slotted to be their new answer as to what will air during the mid-season breaks, the story of a retired superhero dad putting the mask back on to battle his old enemy anew and now it finally has a trailer.
So the first thing that sticks out to me about this trailer is that it’s curiously serious. I know the show was pretty much always going to be a serious affair it’s just a little odd to me that a series whose whole premise is “the hero is too old for this shit” isn’t leaning into that angle a little more. Most of the trailer just confirms what we knew from the synopsis and suspected based on the source material.
Our hero is Jefferson Pierce, formerly the superhero Black Lightning he gave up that life to become a more present father for his two girls. More than ten years later, however, his daughters have grown up and the criminal gang he opposed, the 100, have grown even more powerful within the city- thus prompting Black Lightning to come out of retirement and take them down.
Just outwardly, I like the idea that for Black Lighting crime fighting is like an engaging hobby he’s getting back into now that the family nest is empty. It’s obvious they plan to lean heavily on the family angle of the show but I hope they don’t lose the focus on Black Lightning as an older adult superhero because that’s honestly pretty rare. For instance, I like how his new suit doesn’t make him look TOO beefy or cut and is obviously designed to augment his powers, probably as a result of not using them for so long and getting older.
As for the actual visual design of his abilities, I don’t love it but it’s about par for the course in the lesser tier CW stuff. It’s weird that “electricity” here seems to function as basically telekinesis but then again Heat Wave’s flamethrower in Legends of Tomorrow only ever “knocks people out” so I can certainly let that slide.
We also get pretty clear confirmation of the fact his daughters will be getting superpowers of their own. As I mentioned in my character breakdown piece, that was always to be expected. I believe the trailer is being narrated by Black Lightning’s younger daughter Lightning, who develops electric powers like her old man- though her abilities also come with involuntary EMP generation and a weird lightning transformation costume.
On the flipside, his older daughter, who doesn’t get very much screen time at all here and is named Thunder, has density control powers, which are overall harder to convey in immediate visual language.
Of the four main super members of the cast, the only one not to appear in this trailer is Tobias Whale, the show’s main mob boss bad guy. Still, the 100 are all over this trailer and we’re getting a better sense of who they are in this adaptation. In the comics, they’ve always been plagued by conflicting identities but here it seems like they’re basically a very expansive street gang whose violence has always plagued New Orleans and Black Lightning in particular. I’m still very interested to see where they ultimately go with the 100 because there are some pretty subversive routes they could take with this but if that’s coming it’s not evident from this trailer.
As for the main fight scene and all the money shots, I think it’s pretty fun. I really like that they’ve built an in-universe reason to have random sparks pop up around Black Lightning’s hands and explode from things whenever he’s stomping around, that feels very Power Rangers. CW has always drawn heavily from Power Rangers and so I’m on board with the show drawing from the visual language of some of the later seasons here.
Overall though, the visual language of the fight scene feels A LOT more grounded in the realms of Marvel’s Netflix offerings than The Flash or even Arrow. Partially I suspect that’s a response to the cost- this is meant as a shorter season made for less so it makes sense they would shun the big, FX-driven, multi-hero fights of the other superhero shows.
I actually think it also fits the tone of the show as well though that’s probably because the show was built from the ground up with the understanding cost was going to be an issue to keep in mind. Still, I like the harsher edge to this show and I think it’s a nice change of pace from the fanciful goofiness of Legends of Tomorrow, The Flash’s high concept sci-fi, Arrows’ globetrotting mysticism, and Supergirl’s alien contact stories. Much like Marvel, the CWniverse thrives on variety of experience and genre so using this show to dig into the grimier street level side of super-heroics seems like a smart play.
Overall I’d say this trailer was a pretty solid intro to the show and what it’s about. The Black Lightning costume looks solid in action when the visual FX department is backing it up and his broader build ends up working well with the character's origin. I like the tone and it’s pretty cool that CW is looking to get their answer to Black-ish, Empire, and Luke Cage. The series is being developed by wife and husband pair Mara and Salim Akil so it seems like there’s going to be a strong black perspective behind the camera as well as in front of it, which is probably why this trailer doesn’t feel the need to focus on the white supporting cast.
Honestly, it’s really refreshing and definitely a good move for the genre on the whole. As we move into the 2020s the superhero genre is going to need to find new horizons to chart and part of that is finally getting out from under white dominance- that may have started with Luke Cage with a spiritual origin in Blade but that doesn’t mean it should end there and Black Lightning could be the next step forward.
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