‘Lovecraft Country’ Episode 8: 5 Things You May Have Missed in “Jig-A-Bobo”

After weeks of teasing that Diana’s friend Bobo (Rhyan Hill) was not going to have a good time on his summer vacation, showrunner Misha Green confirmed that Bobo was indeed the real life Emmett Till. Tonight’s episode opened on our heroes lining up for the boy’s funeral, confirming that Bobo was lynched while visiting family in Mississippi. Till’s murder is a truly tragic episode in our nation’s history that arguably brought national outrage to the issue of lynching in America for the first time…fifty years ago. (Sigh.)(HOWL OF FURY.)

Green never shows us the sweet boy’s infamously mangled corpse, but characters mention how awful the sight of Bobo’s open casket funeral was. In fact, photos of the event were published in nation-wide magazines, furthering the outrage Americans felt about Till’s grotesque murder and galvanizing civil rights activists to action.

While we only ever see Bobo as a smiling boy, playing with friends, Lovecraft Country re-enacts the specific violence done to him in a scene with Christina Braithwhite (Abbey Lee). She hires men to beat her to death, shoot her, strangle her with barbed wire and toss her, tied to a fan belt, into a river. She’s fine, though, because she bears the “Mark of Cain” and is invulnerable.

But Emmett Till was not okay. He was dead. And the unspeakably awful violence done to him remains a great national shame to this day.

This week Christina revealed to Leti that the mysterious marking we’ve seen on William’s torso is called the “Mark of Cain,” per the Bible. According to her, when you’ve been branded with it, the mark lends its host invulnerability. (Which comes in handy for Leti during the final standoff with Captain Lancaster.)

However, this might be a hint that Tic has his own mark of protection. Just last week we learned that both Tic and a relative on his mother’s side have the same unique birthmark. Since we know Tic’s maternal line also wielded magic, is it possible that his birthmark is his family’s riff on the Mark of Cain??

It’s a wild theory, but not too wild…

After Captain Lancaster spits on Diana’s forehead, she finds herself haunted by a Cream of Wheat Jim Crow-esque advertisement and two hideous girls the credits name “Topsy” and “Bopsy.” These monster girls come alive after Diana looks at a copy of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, with Topsy on the cover. In literary history, Topsy was considered comic relief by people who read Stowe’s book in the time it was published. Today, though, she is a hideous racial stereotype of a Black girl who has been wholly dehumanized by the experience of slavery.

It’s striking that in the wake of Bobo’s murder and Diana’s own violent interaction with the police — one where she even says, “I can’t breathe,” — Diana is beset by monsters who represent the dehumanization of Black people. She is not only fighting ghouls, but real systemic racism. That is what she fears more than anything.

Neither Topsy nor Bopsy are played by girls, though, but women who are professional dancers. Topsy is played by Kaelynn Gobert-Harris and Bopsy by Bianca Brewton.

In Matt Ruff’s novel, Lovecraft Country, Tic’s cousin Horace is visited by Captain Lancaster in a similar scene. However he is haunted by a “demon doll” who looks like a garish racist stereotype of African tribesmen. He’s also followed by Jim Crow advertisements, too. However the end of his chapter is much different than “Jig-A-Bobo.” Caleb Braithwhite helps rid him of Lancaster’s curse, easy-peasy.

Last week we saw Tic pick up a mysterious paperback titled, Lovecraft Country, and this week we learned what happened to him when he and Hippolyta flew into the vortex of the observatory.

While Hippolyta embarked on a journey of self-discovery that she figured out wasn’t quite time travel, but the ability to flit through realities of her own making, Tic went to the future. Or so he believes. He tells his father Montrose (Michael K. Williams) that he arrived in a chaotically violent future, was handed a paperback novel, and sent back to his timeline.

The book is written by George Freeman — whom Tic says is his and Leti’s unborn son — and it tells the Freeman family’s story, with some noteworthy changes. Uncle George survives the encounter in Ardham, Christina is Caleb, and Diana is Horace.

The changes in this version of the story are the way things are in Matt Ruff’s original novel. It’s a nod to the source material, but it also raises a lot of questions about the nature of the future timeline Tic went to. Like…I’m not entirely sure Tic went to the future, or that the future can’t be changed.

Did you find last night’s episode to be thrilling, terrifying, and exciting beyond belief? Don’t give praise to executive producers Jordan Peele or JJ Abrams for it. That was all Misha Green’s genius. In fact, the whole show is her baby, but in this episode, Green went above and beyond.

Misha Green not only co-wrote the script, but made her directorial debut with Lovecraft Country “Jig-A-Bobo.” So if you screamed at Topsy and Bopsy or wanted to scream in anguish over Emmett Till or loved it when that cop went flyin across Leti’s lawn… Thank the woman.

Misha Green deserves all the hype, love, and praise from Lovecraft Country fans. And if there’s one takeaway from last night’s episode, it’s that she might be one of the most exciting up-and-coming directors on the scene. We already knew she was one damn fine showrunner.

Where to stream Lovecraft Country