Here's What Really Happened to Uncle George in 'Lovecraft Country'
Spoiler Warning: The following story contains MAJOR spoilers for Lovecraft Country Episode 2 and Episode 7. STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE EPISODE!
Episode 2 of Lovecraft Country, "Whitey's On The Moon," continues the story of Atticus, Letitia, and Uncle George.
Midway through the episode, both Leti and Uncle George get shot, and for half a season, our main characters mourn him.
Is Uncle George really dead? We thought we knew the answer, but Episode 7, "I Am," may have changed things.
In Lovecraft Country's first two episodes, viewers get introduced to a trio of protagonists with whom they hop in an old car for the series' initial adventure. That includes the young and sometimes hot-headed Atticus (Jonathan Majors), the outgoing and jovial Letitia (Jurnee Smollett), and the calm, cool, and wise Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance).
Much of the first episode has audiences on the edge of their seats due to the real-life horrors of racism—Atticus, Leti, and George are mocked, chased, and have their lives threatened by police in a series of troubling scenes, only to be bailed out when literal monsters—Shoggoths straight out of H.P. Lovecraft's writing—attack the whole lot of people.
For the duration, we're worried for George, who has already been described as having a pair of bad knees—not exactly ideal for outrunning monsters. But he makes it to Episode 2, when our trio arrives at a giant mansion in Ardham, Massachusetts to meet Christina and Samuel Braithwhite. The plan, as its been from the start, is to save Atticus' father and George's brother, Montrose. But things never go according to plan—while Leti gets revived, George eventually bleeds out; dramatic Leon Bridges song playing as the episode ends, and Uncle George—we believe—is gone.
But when Episode 7 rolls around, things may have changed.
Uncle George appeared to die in Episode 2.
It's never entirely clear who's really dead, and what really happened in a show like Lovecraft Country, where magic is in play and monsters are running rampant. That being said, though, the end of the first season's second episode feels fairly cut and dry (for now, at least): Uncle George passed away. As Leon Bridges plays on the soundtrack, Atticus cries, and Montrose holds his brother in his arms—it all feels very sad, and very final.
It might be hard to keep track of, because so much happened in Epiosde 2—namely Atticus turning Samuel and the rest of the Sons of Adam into dust and the entire Ardham manor collapsing. But earlier in the episode, Leti and Uncle George both got shot by Samuel after the the whole gang tried to escape. We saw Leti get saved, and Christina promised Atticus that the same magic would be used to save his uncle, too. But as Montrose, Leti, and George tried to escape, and Atticus backfired the magic and led to the mansion's collapse, that meant that Uncle George had to deal with the bullet wound to his gut naturally—and as we saw at the end of the episode, didn't make it.
However, Hippolyta's universe jumping in Episode 7,"I Am" may have changed things.
Jumping from a white, sci-fi-esque room, to being a gladiator, to floating through space like an astronaut with blue hair, seems to really have changed Hippolyta. At one point, she flashes back to the scene from the very first episode of Lovecraft Country, where she's in bed with Uncle George. The two talk, and eventually Hippolyta opens up about how Uncle George made her feel; he may not have done it intentionally, but he made her feel small. What he's done prioritizing the Guide at times came at the price of her own personal feelings. George seems to really take this revelation in stride, and considering everything we've seen from the character to make him seem a decent, caring man, apparently makes changes. When he jumps with her to another planet in her Orinthya Blue dimension, it seems like things may have changed.
Throughout the episode, we kind of assume these places Hippolyta jumping to are simply different dimensions, or different planets. But at the end of the episode, it seems like she may have been jumping around the past, changing things and events of the future, Back to the Future style. Hippolyta chooses to leave the dimension-jumping, but when she snaps out of it so does Atticus; Atticus sees a book titled Lovecraft Country, written by none other than George Freeman.
It would make sense to assume that things have changed. In the new reality, Uncle George isn't only alive—he's a bestselling author, having written a sci-fi pulp book of his own. This, in turn, is the biggest cliffhanger that Lovecraft Country (the HBO series, not the in-show book) has had yet. Just how much has changed? Did Hippolyta's changes not only bring Uncle George back, but affect everything we've seen to this point? We also see that Dee's comic book, Orinthya Blue, underneath the body of the police officer who was shot earlier in the episode.
In Lovecraft Country, the 2016 novel by Matt Ruff, things are different.
In the Lovecraft Country novel by Matt Ruff, which Misha Green's HBO series is based upon, Uncle George is almost exactly the way he is in the show. He's one of the sweetest, nicest, warmest-hearted characters in the whole book. As the publisher of the Safe Negro Travel Guide, he cares about his people, and as we see in Chicago, on the road, and in Ardham, he really cares about his family and friends. He never gets a story or segment specifically focused on him, but he overlaps in several different character-focused portions of the book, and his presence is well-written and nice.
Courtney B. Vance does a great job of portraying this warmth in the on-screen version of Lovecraft Country, and even gets to deliver a speech in a big moment that George didn't deliver in the novel—revealing that Atticus is the blood relative of Titus Braithwhite. But there's also another major difference: Uncle George survives the whole book, and that clearly is not the case here.
Could Uncle George come back?
That's a good question. Considering the fact that in Episode 2 we literally saw Leti get shot by Samuel Braithwhite and die in Atticus' arms, only to be revived a short period of time later, it's a possibility. When you're in something of this genre, all options are on the table.
On one hand, Lovecraft Country would probably be a better show to feel like it has real stakes. Remember the first several years of Game of Thrones, when it really felt like any character could die at any time? With Uncle George's episode 2 death, Lovecraft has a little bit of that same energy. Killing a character off, seemingly for real—Atticus' and Montrose's tears at the end of the episode were really real—only to bring them back might feel like something of an undercut.
And as much as we loved seeing Uncle George on screen (and the exceptional performance from Courtney B. Vance), it might serve the characters of Atticus, Leti, Montrose, and Hippolyta all even better to have to deal on-screen with his loss and absence. We'll see how the rest of the season plays out.
You Might Also Like
