Hey guys, Pete here. This will be my
breakdown for Lovecraft Country season 1
episode 3.
"Holy Ghost" genre hops as we return to
Chicago
and delivers a self-contained haunted
house tale. in Lovecraft Country fashion
the ghosts inside the house are rivaled
by the real world racism our characters
are up against in the world outside its
walls,
and let's not forget the creepy secret
society warlock stuff they encountered
in the last episode. last week i made a
video explaining some things about that
relying on the source material. this week
i don't think i can do that without
giving things away
so i'll do a normal recap with some
thoughts about what i think about the
adaptation at the end. this will contain
spoilers for the first three episodes
so if you're not caught up that far then
this video won't be for you.
okay so what happened this week and what
did we learn? we got a title screen that
said,
"in the summer of 1955 a group of negro
men and women moved into a house on the
north side of Chicago.
ten days later three people went missing
inside the house
never to be seen again." this lays things
out and sets up a countdown of the days
until we get to number 10.
it's been a few weeks since the gang
traveled to Ardham
where uncle George met his demise. back
in Chicago Tic has been staying at his
uncle's house
where it feels like he's worn out his
welcome with aunt Hippolyta.
we'll learn that they decided to keep
the supernatural aspects of what
happened on their trip a secret and i
guess we can't blame them.
but hippolyta senses that they aren't
telling her the whole story which leads
to tension
and Tic going to ask Montrose if he can
stay with him.
montrose is dealing with things in his
own way which looks to involve a lot of
drinking
and that leads to him doing a pretty
good job of laying out the situation.
he says, "you want us to tell them wizards
are real?
that white people got magic on their
side?" when Tic mentions he thinks
uncle george might want his family to
know the truth montrose continues,
"Hippolyta can't do shit. we can't do shit."
and
it is where they're at. telling hippolyta
and diana what happened to george might
give them some kind of peace of mind,
but there still wouldn't be anything
anyone could do about it.
so maybe ignorance about the secret
society
and their lovecraftian monsters is
actually bliss in this case.
Letitia is also dealing with things in
her own way,
which turns out to be buying a house in
an all-white neighborhood.
pioneering. she also makes a decision to
keep the truth about what happened in
Ardham from her sister Ruby
and goes one step further when keeping
the truth about where she got the money
to buy the house.
instead she convinces Ruby to move in
with her so that they can begin to heal
their relationship, which does seem like
something that she wants to do,
but later in the episodes things will
fall apart when ruby finds out that she
didn't win the money by playing the
numbers.
the house in question turns out to be a
handful in a couple of different ways.
first the fact that it's haunted
probably played a big part in how Leti
was able to afford it
and establishing a boarding house for
black people
in an all-white neighborhood in 1950s
chicago
isn't something the neighbors are ready
to let go unnoticed.
these are the two things Leti is up
against and to be clear
this is a Leti episode and both of
these things come at her at the same
time.
on the haunted house side things
escalate quickly. while in bed something
that Leti can't see
is pulling at her sheets. she finds
herself sweating when she wakes up and
that leads her to check the boiler in
the basement where she hears what sounds
like someone trying to escape from yet
another room below.
as the idea that her new house is
haunted is dawning on her
she's also putting up with the fact that
the white neighbors are trying to
intimidate her.
everything comes to a head at a
housewarming party where someone decides
to burn a cross on the front lawn
to let Leti and her housemates know how
they really feel.
it's enough to get Leti out there
showing how she really feels.
she grabs a bat. unleashes on the cars
parked out front,
silencing the blowing horns that
neighbors have been using to terrorize
them since they first moved in.
it's the first of two scenes where we
see letitia fucking lewis in all her
glory
and i've gotta mention that Jurnee
Smollet really rises to the occasion here.
it's a great scene and it is put
together really well.
of course leti doesn't live in the
world where if someone comes to your
house
and burns a cross out front you'd be
forgiven for losing your temper. when the
police arrive
they're not there to investigate the act
of terrorism but instead take her into
custody
and give her a rough ride with another
helping of intimidation.
on top of clearly enjoying the power he
has over leti
the officer has some questions about the
house he asked her if anything weird has
been going on inside
and if someone told her to buy the
winthrop house in the first place
he can sense that she doesn't know what
he's talking about so he tells her that
the police found the parts of eight dead
black people in the basement
using the n-word to drive home the idea
that he won't lose any sleep if the same
thing
happened to the current occupants. the
next day
she meets the ghost of the previous
homeowner face to face
or at least she inadvertently conjures
his face which tells her to get out of
his house.
this leads her to investigate where she
learns that the head belongs to a fired
university professor named hiram epstein.
he was the last person who lived there
he had a connection to the police
officer who was asking her questions
and this probably involved human test
subjects for the kind of experiments
that epstein got fired over. leti lays
out everything she's learned to tic
who has also moved into the house at
this point she hasn't been able to learn
anything about how the house came to be
known as the winthrop house
but she has identified the eight victims
whose bodies were found in the basement
he tells her it's time to move out but
she isn't convinced
she says, "i thought the world was one way
and i found out it
isn't it terrifies me but i can't live
in fear
i won't i gotta face this world head on
and stake my claim in it."
she reaches out for the help of what i
guess you would describe as a medium
there may be some voodoo stuff going on
they don't really make it clear
but they go to work trying to expel
epstein's spirit from the house
and during the chanting he starts to
fight back he's able to take control of
the medium's body and then
tic's. as he's coming for leti things
get really good
she yells out the names of the eight
victims saying you're not dead yet you
can still fight and we see
them all start to materialize as they
were during the haunting they start
chanting together
forming a circle and we see them
transform back into their human forms
as leti yells get the fuck out of my
house
as she's successfully casting the
spirits out three of the white kids from
the neighborhood break in
the house itself gets rid of them
killing two with the radiator and
decapitating one with the elevator
all of this works really well with the
basement scene and smollett's
performance stealing the show
before the episode comes to a close we
get a glimpse of the elevator continuing
to descend
below the normal floors after leti gets
out of it we see what looks like the
language of adam lighting up on the
walls
until it opens up revealing the bodies
of the dead white intruders
beyond them we see a man-made cave
littered with skeletons that
by their nature look to have been there
for a very long time
at the end we learned that tic was
doing an investigation of his own
he figures out that christina
braithwhite orchestrated everything
behind the scenes
and he tracks her down at the realtor's
office that she used he pulls a gun with
the intention of shooting her but isn't
able to do it as she's protected
by a spell she explains that this was
her father's claim to fame and that he
believed if you couldn't be harmed you
could live forever
unfortunately he had to let down his
guard during the ceremony when he tried
to enter the garden of eden
and well that was long enough to
undermine the whole immortality angle
after she makes it clear that she's
learned some things from daddy we learn
some
important information all of the spells
the sons of adam have mastered came from
one chapter of the book of names that
titus passed down the book itself is
gone which was hinted at in the last
episode when we saw the vision of hannah
running away
carrying it horatio winthorpe was also a
founding member of the group
christina ponders out loud imagine the
possibilities
if horatio winthrop's pages were to be
found
the language of adam could finally be
decoded in its entirety
then she gives tic her number and tells
him to get in touch
when he's ready to learn more about
their family's history on the way out
she tells him to be smarter
after all he can't just go around
killing white women and that's where the
episode ends
so things are starting to take shape as
far as christina's motivations
i mentioned in my last video that she
probably had something to do
with the ceremony going wrong now that
we see that she's doing all this after
the fact it sure looks like her father
was probably in the way of what she's
trying to do
getting leti into this house which
belonged to one of the original members
of the sons of adam
would indicate that she's trying to find
those pages that she mentioned to tic
so even though they made it out of the
situation in ardham they're still
important to whatever these secret
society warlock types are trying to do
so i think it was a pretty good episode
i like the show's version of leti
even if i'm a little uncertain about
where things are headed
after she hooked up with tic the core
elements pertaining to who she
is are all there and the performance
really elevates things
i think it is a better episode than the
last one the pacing and transition still
seem a little off but i think they moved
from one story to the next in a way that
worked i wasn't a fan of the epstein
head coming up through the ground scene
but then really enjoyed the basketball
player with the baby's head
and the whole sequence where leti
managed to cast the spirits out it's
hard for me to look at it without
comparing it to the source material and
the expectations that go along with
having read it i was hoping they were
going to build the story out and go
deeper with things
but they decided to lean into the
monster of the weak format which is
probably what i liked
least about the book i'm still
interested to see where it goes from
here though
i will mention that they cut out a
pretty important part of the haunted
house story and that makes me believe
that they will probably circle back to
it
and that might mean that they're going
to blend the upcoming stories together
we only got a little bit of hippolyta
diana and montrose in this episode since
they didn't play a big part in what leti
was going through at the house
i should mention that we saw hippolyta
find a model of the solar system which
definitely caught her interest
we also saw diana and her friends
playing with the ouija board
when they asked who they were speaking
to it spelled
george which might be her dad trying to
contact her but what it's spelled after
wasn't completely clear it's moving on
its own and it spells out the word dead
but there's also more letters that we
don't see on the screen
this stuff might have seemed a little
bit out of place but don't worry
you probably noticed by now that each
story sort of focuses on a particular
character
and just because they didn't play a big
part in this story doesn't mean they
aren't important and with that i'll
leave it there
let me know in the comments what you
thought about episode three
do you like the monster of the week
style or were you hoping for something
more akin to prestige tv
for lack of a better term did you like
the bat scene
or did you like leti bringing the
spirits together better
or if not one of those then what was
your favorite scene
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thanks for watching i will talk to you
soon
