Review: Lovecraft Country finale, “Full Circle”

Lovecraft Country comes to a close in “Full Circle,” and while much of the episode is terrific, it doesn’t feel like the finale the show deserved.

“Full Circle” throws us right into the thick of things, with Tic, Leti, Montrose and Hippolyta healing Dee with the Book of Names. The second they get it open, Tic and Leti fall comatose, transported into the past where Tic’s ancestors teach them how to use it, and how to cast a spell that will change things forever.

Tic is taught by his mother. Seeing them together for the first time is powerful, with Jonathan Majors selling us on Tic’s buried pain. But overall, this part of the episode felt jumbled. While I love the idea of multiple generations of Tic’s family coming together to fight back against the Braithwhites, it leans hard on the show’s mythology, which has long been one of its weakest aspects. We don’t learn exactly what spell they’re trying to cast, but it requires summoning Braithwhite family patriarch Titus Braithwhite back from the dead and tearing off a hunk of his flesh, which they do, and then it’s over.

Things improve after Dee is healed and the gang resolves to make their way to Ardham, where Tic has agreed to be part of Christina’s immortality ritual even though it will mean his death. We get easily the happiest scene of the entire show when everyone piles into the car and sings their way through “Sh-Boom” by The Chords, with Montrose naturally joining in last and only reluctantly. This moment drove home how much time the show had spent developing these characters, and how much I really liked them. Sure, I had no idea why they were taking Dee with them to witness Christina kill her cousin/half-brother, but I still had a big dumb smile on my face.

Things ramp up considerably when they reach Ardham, with the big twist coming when Ruby reveals that…wait for it…she’s been Christina for the entire trip! It ends up that Ruby decided to side with her family over Christina, and when Christina found Ruby trying to sabotage her, she turned it to her advantage. With knowledge of their plans, Christina is able to stop the gang from doing whatever it was they were trying to do, pushes Leti off a tall tower, straps Tic to an alter with the help of her goons, and begins the ritual.

Typical for Lovecraft Country, the ritual is gross, with Christina slashing open Tic’s wrists and bathing in his blood. The scene definitely has a macabre visual flair to it — the image of Christina, who always seems almost preternaturally put together, drenched in blood is a memorable one — but it still made me want to look away, which probably means it’s working.

The ritual is a success. Christina becomes immortal and laughs maniacally like the mad magician she is before Leti shows up and starts chanting some magic words, part of their original plan. It doesn’t seem to be working, but then Ji-Ah (she came with, BTW) steps into some whirling swirl of darkness, holds Christina prone with one of her nine tails and lifts up Tic’s lifeless body with another. Together with Titus’ flesh, this completes the components for the spell they needed, and the next thing we know, Christina is trapped under some fallen rubble of her old manor house, and Leti tells her that white people no longer have access to magic. It belongs to them now.

The final scene is Dee confronting a barely alive Christina and choking her to death with her new robotic arm, replacing the old one she lost use of after Topsy and Bopsy infected her; Hippolyta, who remember has spent eons learning the secrets of the universe, fashioned it for her. Dee’s new shoggoth protecter, the same one that protected Tic from the police a couple episodes back, roars in the moonlight. Roll credits.

Why “Full Circle” felt a little empty

Overall, “Full Circle” was a fun episode, particularly once the gang got to Ardham and Christina revealed her (latest) treachery. Christina was a highlight throughout. She’s always danced on the edge dividing ordinary uncaring everyday villainy from over-the-top supervillainy, and it was fun — and scary — to see her finally step over the threshold.

And yet Christina had probably her most sympathetic moment in the series so far. She’s always seemed nigh-untouchable and unknowable, but we actually see her a little nervous when Ruby — as Ruby, mind you, not Hilary or anyone else — leans in for a kiss. We don’t actually see the love scene that follows, but it appears that Christina finally managed to make a human connection before she died.

But Christina is selfish to the bone and still ends up sacrificing Ruby on the alter of her ambition…although it’s not 100% clear by the end if Ruby is alive or just in a coma, with Christina using her for genetic material. In fact, there were a lot of loose threads hanging at the end. The episode ends with the villain dying, but we don’t have resolutions for any of the characters. Is Montrose ever able to move towards accepting himself? Can Leti revive Ruby? Will Hippolyta stay and raise Dee or leave to have more adventures, perhaps with Dee at her side? I didn’t need all of these questions answered in detail but I wanted some scenes to wind down the story. This felt like the finale of a show that badly wants a season 2.

If that actually happens, maybe I can revise some of these opinions, but as it stands it feels like the finale didn’t make full enough use of its component parts, Ji-Ah being the most obvious example. She had such a strong showing in Episode 6, but here she feels very tacked on. She and Tic rush through a resolution, suddenly she’s making nice with his family, and finally she plays her part in the ritual. They try to act like this pays off the premonition from the shaman that she “hadn’t even become one with the darkness yet,” but that reveal deserved more dimension than “Ji-Ah steps inside an evil tornado.”

Dee seems like an odd choice to kill Christina. Everyone in the family has good reason to be mad at Christina, but Dee probably the least. (And really, why bring her to her uncle’s human sacrifice at all? No one would babysit?) After that ending, I kept waiting for a post-credits scene to give me the real conclusion.

Finally, the solution of taking all magic away from white people — “It’s ours now,” Leti tells Christina — feels a little pat. I was expecting something more transformative, but this feels like shifting the pieces around rather than upending the board.

This episode still had a lot of what made Lovecraft Country great, from the wonderful special effects to the creative set pieces to the incisive satire. But it wasn’t quite the final word I was looking for.

Episode Grade: B

Bullet Point Country

• I liked Ji-Ah’s response to the man who was flirting with her at the bar. “Would you be willing to die to f**k me?” Buzz off, dude.
• Like I said, the mythology was never the show’s strong suit, but I was still scratching my head over some of the magic shenanigans. How did Leti survive that fall, exactly? Did Ruby/Christina spare her…? And why was the evil tornado there in the first place? There’s something to be said for preserving the mystery of magic, but I feel like it should at least make some emotional, instinctive sense.

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