Review: Lovecraft Country Episode 8, “Jig-a-Bobo”

With only two more episodes to go, Lovecraft Country drops a bombshell and begins setting up the season’s endgame in “Jig-a-Bobo.”

Lovecraft Country wastes no time going straight for the emotional gut punch this week. “Jig-a-Bobo” begins with a memorial for Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy who was kidnapped, beaten, shot, tied by the throat to a cotton gin fan with barbed wire, and thrown in a river in the summer of 1955. The murder of Till became one of the rallying cries for the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

While it might seem like a bit of a departure that “Jig-a-Bobo” starts with a real historical event, it’s actually something that Lovecraft Country has been quietly setting up in the background since its third episode, which featured a cameo by Till (played by Rhyan Hill). In that episode, Till is playing with a  Ouija board with Atticus’ cousin Diana (“Dee,” played by Jada Harris) and a group of their friends. When he asks it if he’ll have a good time on his trip — referencing the real-life trip Emmett Till took to Mississippi, where he was killed for allegedly flirting with a white woman — the board quickly gave a resounding “NO.” The name used for Till in that scene was Bobo, an actual nickname Till went by, and one piece of the multi-layered title for this episode.

All that from just the opening scene. There’s always a lot to unpack with Lovecraft Country, and this episode had more than most.

From there, we’re launched into one of the main plotlines of “Jig-a-Bobo,” as a grieving Diana is cornered in an alley by two police officers who grill her about the disappearance of her mother. Harris really has a chance to shine this episode, and does a fantastic job with the heavy material she’s given, from her grief-stricken outburst at two other girls outside the alley to her panicked utterance of “I can’t breathe” while police captain Lancaster (Mac Brandt) casts a curse on her.

If I had one main concern about Lovecraft Country before tonight, it’s that some parts of the last few episodes felt largely like diversions or like they were filling in backstory rather than advancing the overarching plot. Luckily, “Jig-a-Bobo” finally finds balance. Immediately following Dee’s run-in with the cops, the scene shifts back to Leti, who has a mysterious guest waiting for her at the Winthrop House: the kumiho Ji-Ah (Jamie Chung).

That first crossover moment is only one of many in this episode, and all of them reassured me that Lovecraft Country was finally bringing all of its various plot threads together. That continued in the following scene when Atticus has a secret meeting with Christina Braithwhite (Abbey Lee Kershaw), where he trades the key from Hiram’s orrery so she’ll teach him a protection spell. Atticus has been acting a little jumpy this episode…and as Christina leaves the tomb where they meet, we start to learn why.

“The Autumnal Equinox,” he says, stopping Christina in her tracks. “What’s going to happen?” Christina tells him that she’s going to achieve immortality (because THAT always works out well) while ominous music plays in the background. I smell an endgame approaching!

Image: Lovecraft Country/HBO

We then switch to Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku). Like Dee, Ruby is grappling with her own grief over the brutality of Emmett Til’s murder. She seeks solace with William / Christina in one of the craziest scenes of the episode. Ruby takes a potion to turn into her white alter-ego Hillary (Jamie Neumann), and as she and William have sex, her fake skin sloughs off of her. It’s a powerful scene thanks to the insanely gross VFX, the commitment of the actors, and the haunting rendition of “I Put a Spell on You” in the background. Seriously, if this visual effects crew doesn’t win some kind of award for Ruby’s gut-turningly gnarly transformations, it’ll be a crime.

Speaking of gnarly, it’s not long before we get a better idea of how Lancaster has cursed Dee. As she stands waiting on a train platform, she catches sight of two young girls dressed up like the characters on the front of her copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, except that these girls have deformed grins, fingernails so long they may as well be talons (which they can grow longer at will), and move in a dancing motion that is, in a word, freaking terrifying. Something I’ve loved about Lovecraft Country is how every episode has had its own Twilight Zone-esque plotline, and the little girl demons’ pursuit of Dee certainly fills that role here, and gives me nightmares in the process.

Dee escapes, but unfortunately we see plenty more of the girls. They chase her constantly throughout the episode. In one great scene where she confronts Lancaster about the curse, we learn that he put it on her so that she couldn’t tell anyone about their encounter (when she tries, she isn’t able to talk). He tries to use it to blackmail her into stealing the orrery from the Winthrop House…but Dee refuses, and instead sets out to confront the curse on her own terms.

Image: Lovecraft Country/HBO

With all those various plot points established, the episode spends most of its second half drawing them all together. Ji-Ah and Tic’s reunion goes about as well as could be expected, with him telling her to get out — before promptly storming out on Leti as well so that he can go cast that protection spell he learned earlier. Ruby and Christina’s relationship continues to be complex and impossible to look away from, as they discuss in detail what happened to Emmett Till and how his death means different things to each of them. When Tic goes to Montrose for help casting the spell, the two finally have a non-volatile father-son talk and work through some of their issues.

Those Tic-and-Montrose scenes are also where we find out why Tic has been so jumpy: when he tried to save Hippolyta from falling into the wormhole in last week’s episode, Tic actually fell in as well. It’s not clear what he saw…what he brought back, however, is a dogeared paperback copy of Lovecraft Country, the book. Tic explains that his son wrote the book about Atticus and Leti’s experiences…and that it ends with Christina killing Atticus on the Autumnal Equinox. It’s a little Back To The Future-y, but I love it. And in a stroke of brilliance, the show even managed to throw in some nods to the actual Lovecraft Country novel by Matt Ruff, such as the fact that Christina is a man and that Dee is a boy named Horace.

But the heart of “Jig-a-Bobo” is its commentary on racial injustice. In one of the most gruesome scenes of the episode, Christina pays men to brutally murder her in order to test out her Mark of Cain (which gives her invulnerability). Inspired by her conversation with Ruby, Christina has the men kill her in the exact manner that Emmett Till was killed.

With this scene, Lovecraft Country takes a real-life atrocity committed against a Black child and recreates it so it happens to a white woman. By doing this, the show manages to force viewers to shed expectations about what this sort of violence looks like and where we’re accustomed to seeing it.

Image: Lovecraft Country/HBO

Finally, “Jig-a-Bobo” has one of the best climax sequences of the season thus far. At the Winthrop House, Ruby comes clean to Leti that she’s been in contact with Christina Braithwhite and knows about magic. The confession comes just as Lancaster and the rest of his police buddies show up to try and take Hiram’s orrery…but when the protective spells on the house refuse Lancaster entry, they open fire. The windows of the house shatter, people take cover, and we get a good look at the protection spell we now know Leti has, thanks to Christina Braithwhite. As the bullets bounce off Leti’s impervious skin, Atticus arrives at the scene.

The cops turn their guns on him. Leti bursts out of the building, screaming as she runs toward him. A gun fires.

But before the bullet reaches Atticus, one of the Eldritch horror beasts from earlier in the season bursts out of the ground and takes the bullet for him. What follows is a scene of gleeful carnage, as the monster tears through the corrupt police officers, sends their cars flying, and generally eviscerates anything in sight. The effects in this scene were awesome, and the quick turning of the tables was a fist pump moment if ever there was one.

Yet it’s only as the monster closes in on Atticus in the episode’s final moments that it becomes clear it’s actually there to protect him: summoned, by the spell he and Montrose cast. Now that’s a development I’m looking forward to the show following up on next week.

And that whole scene was cross-cut with Dee’s showdown with the demon girls, where she locks herself in her father’s garage and faces them down with a metal pipe. It’s a recipe for one of the most solid finishes for any Lovecraft Country episode so far.

EPISODE GRADE: A

Bullet Point Country

• Dee’s fate was left hanging, and I’m really hoping she survived. By the episode’s end, the demons finally caught her…thanks to unwitting help from Montrose, since he can’t see them. Seeing Dee swinging at thin air, he catches her in a hug that prevents her from fighting back. Blood splatters across her dress, and we get a final creepy shot of the demons standing to either side of her, one ripping into her arm. Ugh. One more tally for Montrose messing things up, even when he’s trying to help.
• Speaking of Montrose, the reveal in this episode that he is dyslexic was another great addition. The full breadth of the diversity on this show has consistently surprised me, and it only adds to an already complex character.
• I do wish Ji-Ah was in the episode a bit more. Her appearance didn’t really further anything aside from some tension between Leti and Atticus, and I’m hoping she has a bigger part in the final two episodes.
• This week answered a lot of questions, but there are still some big ones hanging. Are we going to see what happened to Tic when he fell into the wormhole? And when will Hippolyta return?

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels