Lovecraft Country Episode 3: Holy Ghost picks up this week after the protagonists escape from a secret society attempting to sacrifice them to return to the Garden of Eden. Letitia (Jurnee Smollett) has purchased a large house (“three stories, 12 bedrooms,” she excitedly announces to her friend). But like any good fortune given to people of color in 1950’s America, the white folk are suspicious. As is evident by the three cars parked outside the house with bricks tied to the car horns.
Car horns by racist neighbors aren’t the only unwelcome noise Letitia has to face. Hearing bumping noises in the basement, she goes to discover the source. When she finds a storage shelf jumping on its own, she notices a door under said shelving. When the structure finally moves, scattered voices rocket out from the dark chasm.
“Holy Ghost” is full of a lot of anxious moments and nail-biting suspense. A town full of white neighbors who think Letitia has bought the house through nefarious means, law enforcement who side with the neighbors and abuse Letitia, and now a haunted house.
It would be unfair to compare the series to something like American Horror Story, but the contrast is purely on a surface level. Much like how AHS has a different story line each season, perhaps connected through characters or their descendants, that seems to be the trend Lovecraft Country is following, except on a per-episode basis. The same characters, in the same universe, experiencing the same injustice, only facing a different horror element. Someone could start playing Episode 3 with little, or no, awareness of the previous two and not be lost by any of the story.
“Holy Ghost” made me wonder the same thing as many other TV shows I watched growing up, only amplified through the social circumstances of the era in which Lovecraft Country takes place. The characters are fighting a lot of battles, and doing it often. After coming away from battling vampire aliens, and privileged, powerful occultists, how would they have the energy to continue fighting? When do they get a moment to breathe and center themselves? But it’s obvious that if you want something bad enough (in this situation, to live), you will do whatever it takes to make it happen.
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