Lovecraft Country: Lessons on The Journey Back Home To Ourselves
By: Brittany Webb
Tags: Horror, Lovecraft, Healing, Journey

I remember the excitement I had when I first saw the trailer for Lovecraft Country. I was very intrigued and decided I couldn’t pass up a show that starred actors such as Courtney B. Vance, Michael K. Williams, and the talented legend Jurnee Smollett. I also have to mention the cast of the newest eye candy for me to swoon over, Sir Johnathan Majors, was a nice edition to the show.

Seeing mostly Black characters at the center of what seemed like a modern day horror story felt intriguing. I’ll admit that it feels a bit odd to say that I was attracted to such a thing. I have gotten to the point where I no longer care to consume content that depicts how gruesome slavery was or those inspirational Civil Rights Movement movies that depict White people as the true saviors of our people.

Lovecraft Country seemingly provided something different or should I say familiar, both maybe? I’d say in the past several years I’ve come to know and understand that the current climate Black people find themselves in indeed feels like a horror story we can’t escape. We are all carrying years of trauma inflicted upon us and those before us by a racist society with no moral compass. We’re now able to have our trauma instantly delivered to us via our phone screens. Frequently being bombarded by violent imagery of harm and death induces our stress and anxiety, and the scary part is how normal it all seems to feel.

Lovecraft Country was one hell of a ride for sure. It was chaotic and very much confusing episode after episode, but I was determined to hang in there. I found myself searching for recap articles to help me piece everything that was happening together.

I wanted to address Michael K. Williams’ character, Montrose Freeman. We start off the series realizing that Montrose had been missing for quite some time and his brother George, his son Atticus, and the adventurous tag along Letitia would set off to find him.

Once found, in the next few episodes we were made aware of how terribly abusive he was to Tic and how he was very closed off which in most cases made his motives questionable. His actions towards the indigenous Two-Spirit was incredibly violent and confusing to watch. You couldn’t help but think ‘So what’s this guy’s deal??’ It felt like he couldn’t be trusted.

It was apparent he had and was going through something. His relationship with Sammy exposed how Montrose was in a battle with his masculinity and sexuality. It’s clear he cared for Sammy, but like many people, we tend to sabotage the very relationships we long for because we’re trying to protect ourselves from the things we’re most scared to face. Ourselves.

By mid-series I had grown impatient and I was losing my interest with his character arc. But oh how I was mistaken and immediately regretted my attempt to write off Montrose.

Episode 9, “Rewind 1921” finally gave us an in depth look into his life. It was clear we were in for some hard truths when Montrose hesitated to enter the portal. Being thrusted back into your painful past is sure to stir up those repressed emotions and memories you’ve worked so hard to swallow and forget. We’re encouraged to not live in the past, but to have the ability to go back there in real time I’m sure was a whirlwind I myself couldn’t prepare for.

We learn that Montrose as a child suffered at the hands of his aggressively homophobic father. This vicious, violent cycle caused Montrose to elicit that same abuse and pain onto his own son. All in the name of masculinity, Montrose hardened himself to meet the patriarchal expectations that men are to be men. They are to work, start and take care of their families, and raise boys to be men. Rinse, repeat.

This is nothing new to Black community itself. It’s especially hard to see Black men depicted as the champions of violence, while overlooking all the harm they’ve suffered at the hands of a racist, white patriarchal society. Black people are constantly told who and how to be all in the name of survival, and anything outside of those bounds of what Black men are to be is deemed punishable.

We watched as Montrose’s father beat him in broad daylight. Three generations of pain all in one scene was a lot to take in. “I deserved it”, seeped from Montrose’s breath to justify his own abuse. It reminded me of how hard we are on ourselves because of the trauma we’ve endured. We come to convince ourselves that we deserved it, and that we’re possibly better for it because we are stronger even. But in actuality Montrose reminds us that pain undealt with trickles into other relationships we hold dear. While we think we’re doing what’s best for ourselves and others, we’re actually causing more harm by reenacting that pain. Unknowingly most of the time. So we try to control what’s happening on the outside to avoid dealing with that pain, so we’re in fact crumbling on the inside. The chaos knows no bounds, and anybody close enough will catch the brunt of it.

I recognized that Montrose has been living in survival mode. That is being who he had convinced himself he needed to be in order to survive a world that we see early on denied him his true self.

“ I lied to him and myself for years. I cut out all of the soft parts of myself, just to be a man, because men have sons.”

When you’re in survival mode, you tend to be misunderstood. As a survivor, your motives and behavior are questionable in the eyes of those who observe you because you’re not really letting anyone in. But in the eyes of the survivor, it all comes down to doing what needs to be done to protect one’s self and then those around us ‘benefit’ next. The downside to this is that the survivor ultimately makes decisions thinking it’s what’s best without considering the feelings of those close to them. We see a lot of this behavior exhibited by both Montrose and Tic throughout the series. So there’s a lot of mistrust, lash outs, and disagreements.

The last thing Montrose needed was to be cut loose by the only family he’d known. While I understand setting boundaries with the people who have caused you discomfort and harm, or just cutting them out completely, it was a sigh of relief for me to see Tic and Montrose have a moment of vulnerability. Perhaps a small seed sown.

Montrose should most definitely be held accountable for his actions and the harm he has caused those around him, but I’m learning it’s only when we can talk accountability for our own trauma can we begin the journey of healing. And that’s really the hardest part. We’re not to blame for what was done to us, but we are responsible for healing our wounds and that entails accepting all the horrible things done to us and doing the inner work so we don’t stay in the same harmful cycles.

Even at this point in his life, it’s not too late to start again. I just wanted to hug Montrose and let him know that he doesn’t have to continue living in survival mode, and that there’s freedom on the other side of letting go of who he convinced himself to be to uphold society’s adverse standards of masculinity. His character reminds me that we’re all human and we have the potential to be better than we were before if we choose to truly face ourselves.

Wishful thinking would have me believe that if there is a Season 2, it would be nice to see Montrose on his journey back to himself, especially after losing Tic and the anticipated arrival of Baby George who could greatly benefit from the healing that needs to take place in the Freeman family.

I imagine we’d see more similar moments of Montrose like in Episode 5, “Strange Case”, where for a brief moment he lets go and allows himself to get caught up in the present moment as he slowly spins around, arms outstretched. To then be scooped up into the air by glammed up drag queens, as a Divine figure while it’s raining glitter.

A liberating moment for sure.

I can’t help but root for Montrose to hear the call back home.