Tic finally makes it home to the Southside of Chicago, where he’s reunited with his Uncle George Freeman (Courtney B. Vance), aunt Hippolyta (Aunjanue Ellis), and cousin Diana (Jada Harris), before looking further into his father Montrose’s (Michael K. Williams) disappearance. After some investigating, he decides to travel to Ardham, Massachusetts (aka “Lovecraft Country”) to find Montrose. Uncle George insists on coming along, take the opportunity to add more information to his atlas and the Negro Motorist Guidebook he publishes.
One of the jobs the pilot episode has is to introduce us to characters and make us care about them. We have to have a sense of who these people are and what their motivations might be and, crucially, we have to be invested in their journey. This is something “Sundown” does exceedingly well. In just a few lines of dialogue, a few minutes on-screen, we not only know who these characters are, we want them to win.
We meet Leticia “Leti” Lewis (Jurnee Smollet) for the first time, when she joins her sister Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku) on stage. Their dynamic is clear even before they have a conversation, and their dialogue together says so much about both of them. Ruby is the responsible one of the two, always looking for an opportunity to advance. Leti is a free-spirit who doesn’t plant roots, so it comes as no surprise that she would randomly decide to join Tic and Uncle George on their trip.
We don’t meet Montrose in this episode, but so much of who he is can be extrapolated from the conversations people have about him. We know he drinks heavily, that he was abused as a kid and abused Tic in turn. We know he, like Tic and George, is well-read. I care about and am invested in Montrose, even though he doesn’t appear on screen.
Another thing Lovecraft Country does well in its premiere is establish stakes. Once Tic, Leti, and Uncle George set off, we see them pass through town after town. Eerie string chords backdrop otherwise innocuous scenes of the trio driving down main streets, or filling up at local gas stations. Where traditionally those audio cues might be used to alert the audience a killer is nearby or an evil entity is wreaking havoc in sight of a nanny cam, music in “Sundown” clues the audience into the fact that the trio are constantly under threat. The ever-present enemy is racism.
