Lovecraft Country: What does Ji-Ah’s vision of Tic’s deadly future mean?

On last night’s excellent new episode of Lovecraft Country, we saw a vision of Atticus’ future, and it didn’t look bright. Let’s take a close look and find some clues.

Lovecraft Country took a break from its usual story last night to dive into Atticus’ (Jonathan Majors) past as a soldier in Vietnam, and it ended up being one of the show’s strongest outing yet, which is saying something.

In brief, the plot involved Tic’s romance with Ji-Ah, a Korean nursing student who is in a…tricky situation. You see, in an effort to project Ji-Ah from her abusive new husband, her mother — with the aid of a shamen — summoned a kumiho, a nine-tailed fox creature from Korean folklore. It possessed Ji-Ah and killed the husband, but then it stuck around.

The kumiho kills during sex, absorbing the memories of its victims before killing them. Ji-Ah and Tic have a complicated courtship, and she almost kills him this way, but manages to avoid it. But she does absorb some of his memories…and in this case, sees a bit of his future, too.

What does she see? We only see it in flashes, and in some cases it’s hard to separate the past from the present. For example, there’s this shot of Tic torturing a Korean woman, which I assume is something he did on his tour, before he met Ji-Ah:

Image: Lovecraft Country/HBO

We saw Tic engage in some pretty reprehensible behavior in this episode, and I doubt it was the half of it.

We also have a shot of Tic in bed with someone, although it’s hard to tell who from the brief shot we get:

Image: Lovecraft Country/HBO

And then there are the really upsetting images. There’s Tic getting baptized in some kind of ritual:

Image: Lovecraft Country/HBO

And then, worst of all, we have him strapped to a cross, clearly the victim of some horrible plot:

Image: Lovecraft Country/HBO

As the camera moves closer, his head lolls, and he looks dead:

Image: Lovecraft Country/HBO

So what does this all mean? Well, the baptism and Tic strapped to a cross all smack of some kind of ritual, possibly carried out against him by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the secret magical society he and Leti have been fighting since the first episode, with Montrose and possibly Hippolyta and Ruby now roped into their battle, whether they want to be or not.

Is Tic actually going to die? Lovecraft Country is a horror show, so there are no happy endings guaranteed. Mostly, I just wanted to submit these pictures for the fans. What do you take away from these?

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