‘Lovecraft Country’ Episode 5 Recap: I Want Your Body

If there’s two things I like about television drama, it’s a sudden uptick in quality I never saw coming, and a shocking twist that in retrospect I should have seen coming but didn’t. “Strange Case,” the strongest episode of Lovecraft Country so far and by far, presented me with both scenarios, and I couldn’t be happier.

Because I’ve wanted to like this show, really I have! As a critic, I consider myself to be in the liking-things business, and I honestly try to go into every new show with no more or less an expectation than assuming it will be good until shown otherwise. In Lovecraft Country‘s case, that’s meant enjoying the dynamic, lived-in performances of the show’s leads, Jurnee Smollett and Jonathan Majors, even when the material surrounding them has been shoddy. So it speaks to the quality of the show’s fifth installment that it’s as impressive as it is despite moving those leads largely to the margins, one steaming-hot sex scene excepted.

No, the real stars of this episode are Wunmi Mosaku as Ruby and Jamie Neumann, who previously played a racist local yokel near the Braithwhite’s lodge, as Ruby’s white alter ego Hillary Davenport. Together they craft a singular performance across two different bodies, inhabiting one another via the magic of Braithwhite hanger-on William. William gives Ruby the power to transform into a white woman in exchange for a favor to be named later (she plants a magical maguffin in the office of William’s rival, Captain Lancaster, who we learn is somehow stitched together from multiple bodies), but that’s not really the important thing. What matters is that Ruby gets to experience whiteness, a currency that corrupts the user.

As Hillary Davenport, she enjoys the empathy of passers-by, the deference of soda jerks and store managers, the ability to be just one of the girls among the white women who work at the department store where she gets a high-placed job after a single truncated interview for a lower position. She finds herself alternately desperate to give the store’s only Black employee, Tamara (Sibongile Mlambo), advice about how to succeed in white people’s world, and angrily lording her newfound power over the woman, at one point forcing her to take the white staff to a South Side bar for drinks and dancing. She’s alternately thrilled with the ability to be treated “like a human being,” as William says, and disgusted by the casual racism and racial dilettantism of the people she spends time with on the other side of the color line. All in all it’s a searing exploration of racial and gender power dynamics, brought to life by a pair of actors expertly playing with passing and its emotional aftermath.

It helps that for once, the horror material is gruesomely effective. Ruby doesn’t just instantly shapeshift back into her true self when her time as Hillary is up; her white skin peels away in huge crimson strips and tatters as her body emerges from underneath like a molting insect. In the episode’s most shocking scene, and the show’s most viciously horrific to date, she rapes the store manager with a stiletto heel to pay him back for attempting to rape Tamara, allowing her false white skin to slough off and rain down all around him. It’s explosively strong stuff.

And as such, it’s not alone. Michael K. Williams is able to bring out a whole new side to his closed-off character Montrose when, after being viciously beaten by his son Atticus for burning the pages from the Book of Names and killing its potential translator Yahima, he retreats into the arms of his boyfriend, Sammy (Jon Hudson Odom). The show wastes no time in treating Montrose’s sexuality like a revelation: Within seconds of arriving at Sammy’s place, he’s spitting into his hand for lube in order to kickstart the episode’s second torrid sex scene.

Montrose remains sullen and withdrawn among Sammy and his fellow drag queens, but at the ball where they perform, he finally lets the music and the moment overtake him. I am a huge, huge sucker for scenes about the liberating power of dancing—this one set to Moses Sumney’s lovely song “Lonely World”—and man did this win me over.

Then comes that twist I was talking about before. When Ruby, who’s been dealing with both William and his confidante Christina Braithwhite throughout the episode, demands to know what’s hidden in their house’s basement, William begins the molting process as well. From out of his male skin emerges Christina, who’s been transforming into “William” this entire time. Magic, she told Ruby earlier, is “an invitation to do whatever the fuck you want. That’s the currency of magic: unmitigated freedom.” And what could be freer in the 1950s than being a white man? What could be more magical than the ability of that race and that gender to transform the world around it into one big welcoming embrace, while others are kept at bay? In retrospect this ruse is so easy to spot, but that only makes its solution that much sweeter to discover.

The episode ends with an odd cliffhanger, in which Tic translates a troubling part of the book of names and makes a phone call, presumably to Christina, demanding answers. When we see the ledger where he’s been trying to decipher the ancient alphabet, we see that three runes have spelled out “D-I-E.” “How’d you know?” Atticus demands, as if this is a stunning revelation instead of the horror equivalent of “BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE.”

But that’s small potatoes compared to the feast of race, gender, and body horror served up by this excellent episode. Will the rest of Lovecraft Country live up to this new standard? For the first time, I’m excited to find out.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Watch Lovecraft Country Episode 5 ("Strange Case") on HBO Max

Watch Lovecraft Country Episode 5 ("Strange Case") on HBO Now