ou often get the sense, watching Lovecraft Country, of a show that knows tomorrow is never guaranteed and a second season is even less bankable. These guys are determined to give it their all in whatever time remains. To that end, we have had a haunted house episode, an Indiana Jones-esque episode, body-swapping, erotic K-horror and afrofuturism meets The Jetsons. This week, though, it was time to go back to the future in Hiram’s time machine. Sorry, make that “multiverse machine”. We stand corrected, Hippolyta. Yes, Hippolyta (Aunjanue Ellis) was back. How could she remain absent when her daughter Dee (Jada Harris) was at death’s door following last week’s run-in with that Capt Lancaster-conjured Topsy. We didn’t find out where she had been all this time and my hunch is we probably won’t. There is already so much to catch each other up on. At least Hippolyta didn’t require any long-winded exposition, because, after her mind-expanding interdimensional voyage, she knows it all already. (Didn’t I say waaaaay back in the episode four recap that they were foolish for underestimating this woman?) Still, Hippolyta’s return didn’t come soon enough to save Tic from discovering the truth about his parentage. When Christina (Abbey Lee) instructed them to use the blood of Dee’s closest relative in the restoration spell, Montrose was forced to confess that Tic might actually be Dee’s half-brother and not her cousin; that is, George’s biological son and not his. Meanwhile, the hunt for the Book of Names was on – it was the only way to permanently save Dee – and with Capt Lancaster dead and his pages destroyed following last week’s shoggoth attack, the only route to securing it was to go back in time to the book’s last known whereabouts: Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1921 (I have lost interest in Christina’s revenge plot on Lancaster, suffice to say that, first, it worked and, second, performing transplant surgery without proper sterilisation is a terrible idea). Now, you may wonder why it was necessary to go back to the exact date of the Tulsa race massacre, a real historical event in which hundreds died and an estimated $32m-worth of mostly black-owned property was destroyed? Why not a few days before, when the Book of Names would still have been in the same place and it might have been less dangerous to retrieve it? A reasonable query, but who dares question the wisdom of Hippolyta? As she herself said: “It was on Earth 504 and I was there the equivalent of 200 years on this Earth. I could name myself anything, infinite possibilities, that came with infinite wisdom and I’m gonna use of all of it to save my daughter. Now get in the fucking car.” Personally, I had my seatbelt on before she had got halfway through the first sentence. Speaking of powerful women, what are we thinking regarding Christina? Ruby “daughter of a hustler” Baptiste (Wunmi Mosaku) seems to trust her, even urging her sister, Leti, to do the same, but I am not buying it. Tulisa’s 2012 album The Female Boss had a more coherent feminist philosophy and openly planning to murder Tic in order to secure her immortality seems like a red flag, no? Ruby, once again, I am asking you to reconsider your terrible taste in women. Ruby might not think much of her sister’s new beau, but he is pretty important to everyone else in the show – especially Montrose. I was glad to see the show exposing the raw wound of their father-son relationship to more healing air this week. Even before Montrose opened up about the heartbreaking murder of his first love, it was understandable that he would find reliving a massacre traumatic. Yeah, maybe he had had a few too many shandies before jumping through the portal, but wouldn’t you? Tic’s insensitivity to that seemed to speak more to his pain and emotional dysfunction than his father’s. So, that scene in which Tic, Leti and Montrose observed from a distance while young Montrose took a beating from his father was an efficient and moving piece of drama. We would forgive our parents a lot if we could witness their childhoods, wouldn’t we? The usual time-traveller’s problem of attempting to avoid altering the past for fear of changing the present (sometimes called the grandfather paradox) were enjoyably explored here, too. Leti’s life was saved by Tic’s two grandfathers and she found herself holed up in his mother’s soon-to-be-burned-down family home, awkwardly reassuring one of his aunts that “everything will be fine” (it definitely won’t be). The most glorious moment, though, was Tic picking up that baseball bat, like King Arthur laying his hands on Excalibur, and realising that he had been his family’s mysterious Jackie Robinson-esque saviour all along. He could be forgiven for taking his time over it. He wasn’t to know Hippolyta was struggling to keep the portal open, risking them all being trapped in the past for ever. Meanwhile, Leti, with the Book of Names in her hands, was making full use of her new invulnerability by strolling leisurely down the middle of Main Street as bombs rained down and shops and cars burned around her. Sure, it is not every day you get the chance to re-enact the Angela Bassett-exploding-car gif, but she still should have got her arse in gear. Somehow they made it. The episode ended with everyone, plus the Book of Names, alive and on the right side of the portal, all set up for a magicallyenhanced finale. As an added bonus, Hippolyta now has a ravishing blue rinse hairdo. Mrs Slocombe, eat your heart out. Listening guide The orchestral music that brings a sense of occasion to Tic’s Jackie Robinson moment? It is not the theme to 1985 time-travel classic Back to the Future, but do I detect some influence. This episode might have had the best use of spoken-word interlude yet. Sonia Sanchez’s words sounded so powerful as two flame-engulfed women embraced their destinies: “Where is your fire? I say where is your fire? / Can’t you smell it coming out of our past?” Awkwardly, the full title of the 1994 poem is actually Catch The Fire (For Bill Cosby), but for guessable reasons that dedication tends to be omitted from modern recitals. Additional notes “What’s a motherboard?” Hippolyta’s definition might not pass muster with a computer engineer, but it was a nice tribute to the power of maternal love. “They closed the school just hours before the mayhem started.” Booker T Washington high school was – and still is – a school in Tulsa. In 1921, the school was situated in the prosperous African American neighbourhood of Greenwood, known as the Black Wall Street, and it was indeed due to hold a senior prom on the evening of 31 May. So Leti’s episode seven dream was as much a premonition as a message. Here she is escaping a burning building while pregnant and clutching the Book of Names, just as Tic’s ancestor Hannah once did. “Commodore Knox, they did him in the worse …” The list of names that Montrose recites while looking out over the devastation are real people caught up in the Tulsa massacre. Nearly a century on, the numbers of dead are still disputed – ranging from 36, the official reported tally in 1921, to more than 300. Since the Tulsa Race Massacre Commission released its findings in 2001, there have been efforts at community reconciliation, but the campaign for reparations and the search for a mass grave of the missing continues. Montrose might be surprised to learn that one name on his list, Horace “Peg-Leg” Taylor, actually survived that legendary last stand on Standpipe Hill and went on to live for another three decades. A podcast called Black Wall Street 1921 tracked down and interviewed his descendants earlier this year. Quote of the week “When my great-great-grandson is born, he will be my faith turned flesh.” In an episode full of moving exchanges, I found this line delivered by Tic’s great-grandmother (Regina Taylor) particularly moving.