Underground Season 2 Finale & Episode 10 RecapBy Kelisha Graves
Birthing A Bleeding Republic
May 3, 2017| Recap 2.10 for “Soldier”
Underground went out with a bang and a birthing! Bumping to the boogie of a bomb soundtrack, the finale was engorged with guts and glory!
The episode opens with Harriet Tubman aiming a rifle at the head of George Sterns (one of John Brown’s “Secret Six”). The opening scene is the last time we see Aisha Hinds as that gun-totin’, bandanna rockin’, skirt wearin’, black body-snatcher Harriet Tubman. I anticipate she will continue to be a central figure in season 3 (there MUST be a season 3). John Brown’s Secret Six was a group of men who secretly funded the 1859 Raid at Harper’s Ferry. George Luther Sterns was an American industrialist and abolitionist who financially supported John Brown until his execution. It bears noting here that Sterns also recruited African Americans for the Union Army during the Civil War.
“I ain’t never been a nigga. I’m just Cato.” -Cato
As to be expected, Cato is completely intoxicated with notoriety and red-headed white women (obviously Patty Cannon seeped deep into Cato’s skin and infected his blood and bones in a weird way). Even if we were tempted to give a fist pump and hail revolution when Cato brings an end to the ginger monster Patty, we are immediately turned off by the fact that Cato is absolutely perverted and damaged. He’s more than a bald-faced colored man with shady tendencies. Cato’s greatest (and worst) quality is that he understands himself to be solely and utterly an individual. He’s driven by ambition, not loyalty. He doesn’t allow his physiological condition as a black man to pre-determine his loyalty to his skin-kin. This makes him a liability. Cato’s integrity is only as thick as his own self-interest.
I mentioned last week that there was a growing sense among each of the characters that there was something gargantuan and bloody on the horizon: War. Well, the finale gives us the battle we’ve been waiting for. In the process of snatching Daniel’s baby from the bedside of the “Massa” of the Fellow Plantation, Noah encourages the enslaved men and women to take up arms for the Cause. When he hands them guns, he in fact converts them into soldiers. What we learn here is that freedom doesn’t require previous training or knowledge, it only requires courage and heart.
The overarching symbols here are: birth and blood. Indeed, what is most poetic about the battle sequence is that it is juxtaposed against the birth of Noah and Rosalee’s baby. While Rosalee is squatting over a basin birthing her own brown baby (Jurnee Smollet-Bell’s performance this season is award worthy), Noah is on the battlefield giving birth to a new nation…in blood. He is writing the curriculum of his own emancipation proclamation with guns, guts, and glory. History would ultimately prove that in order to purge the nation of its original sin, the soil and streets of this nation would run red. The American republic would need to bleed openly and profusely before it could ever begin to heal. To be sure, as a nation we still haven’t entirely recovered.
After drugging August, Ernestine attempts to get her life back and takes off running across a cotton field. She runs smack dab into a pile of smoky residue…the ashes of the Big House she used to “control.” Throughout the season, Ernestine has attempted to come to terms with her damaged womanhood and the choices she’s made as a result. In an accidental sort of way, her trauma has been therapeutic because she’s become more empathetic, she’s become more aware of the fact that her own personal sanctity and integrity matters. She knows now that her woman’s heart (however wounded it may be) matters. As a result, she lets her conscience bleed out randomly, albeit poignantly, and August is a beneficiary of this rupture. If anything, Ernestine’s storyline has been cathartic, a kind of profound confessional stretched out over 10 episodes. After she convinces August not to commit suicide, she walks off with his gun….literally. But, where is she walking off to? At this point, Ernestine’s future is unpredictable. We can anticipate that she will find new purpose and new hair goals next season.
Speaking of unpredictable, WGN has yet to officially renew Underground for a third season. Like hopeless addicts we await the final verdict. Needless to say, fans are getting nervous…
In the meantime, I’ll be watching Queen Sugar which premieres June 20 and 21 on OWN.
