‘Washington Black’ on Hulu: Where Hope Meets the Sky

We meet George Washington Black as a young boy (Eddie Karanja from The Sandman) on the sugar cane plantation in Barbados where he was born. He’s saved from life in the fields under a cruel master by that man’s brother, Christopher “Titch” Wilde (played by Lucifer’s Tom Ellis). Titch sees great potential in bright, young “Wash” and wants him as an assistant in his scientific explorations.

Titch wants to build a flying machine, and he uses his rudimentary prototype to help Wash escape the plantation after the death of one of his brothers (Chris Patrick-Simpson) puts Wash’s life in danger.

Spoilers

Titch promises the boy safety, education, and a sense of freedom. But their aircraft crashes into the ocean during a storm, and the two wind up on a pirate ship with a mutiny underway. The pirates help them find their way to North America, where the traveling duo meet freedom fighter Nat Turner (Bosch’s Jamie Hector) as they travel the Underground Railroad north.

But they’re going all the way north. Titch is searching for his father. Presumed dead, he last sent letters from a camp in the Arctic, and that’s where Titch and Wash are headed. As James Wilde, Charles Dance (Game of Thrones), is back in Terrible Father mode. The father/son reunion is not at all what Titch hoped for. His father has a whole other life in the Arctic. He created a little family, and it’s implied that he’s taken a gay lover. James ridicules his son, telling him in no uncertain terms that he’ll never be a scientist like him. This is devastating to Titch, who runs off into a snowstorm. In the truest sense of the phrase “hurt people hurt people,” he abandons Wash like an unwanted puppy. Wash stays at the camp, a witness to James Wilde’s death, and is then prompted to go to Nova Scotia by Wilde’s partner.

All of that action and history is told as flashbacks. In the present, Wash is an adult, living a quiet life in Nova Scotia under the name Jack Crawford (Ernest Kingsley Junior). He’s a dock worker and is working on his flying machine, which he hopes to present to the Royal Science League (RSL) in England. His friend/landlord, Medwin Harris (Sterling K. Brown), and Angie, who runs the local restaurant (Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Dune: Part One) look out for him and keep him fed.

When a slave hunter (Billy Boyd, Pippen from LoTR) comes to town looking for someone named Washington Black, wanted in relation to the death at the cane plantation on Barbados, Medwin and Angie help Jack/Wash escape. I don’t like to see my favorite Hobbit play such a rotten old potato as this slave hunter. But Boyd does an excellent job of being harsh and menacing. There’s a fight and a pursuit that leaves the slave hunter dead and Wash nearly drowned.

He’s saved by Medwin and Tanna Goff (Iola Evans), a white-passing woman new to Nova Scotia who is in love with Wash even though she’s being married off to a white man to maintain her social standing.

Tanna’s father (Sherlock’s Rupert Graves) is a member of the RSL and reluctantly enlists Wash’s help to come up with something to impress The League when he returns to England. Wash captures and an octopus in a dreamy SCUBA diving sequence and then invents the aquarium to keep the creature alive for study. (IRL the aquarium was invented by a French woman. But whatever, it’s fine, it’s fine.)

Once in England, Tanna’s father takes credit for Wash’s invention. Disappointed and betrayed by another father figure, Wash is angry and more determined than ever to build his long-dreamt-of flying machine. He learns that Titch is still alive, living in the desert outside of Morocco. He and Tanna travel to Africa intending to find Titch and then continue to the country where Wash’s mother was born, and where she lived until she was forced into slavery.

After a disappointing reunion with Titch that mirrors the earlier Arctic reunion in some ways, it is a triumphant return to Wash’s roots in his magnificent flying machine. Hulu gives us a “and they lived happily ever after” montage at the end of the eight-part series.

Washington Black is the story of a boy born to an enslaved Agoji Warrior in 1818. It’s a story about escaping slavery, but more so, it’s the globe-trotting adventure tale of a man following his dreams of freedom and flight. It’s fantastical in the same vein as Around The World In 80 Days but fully grounded in the historical realities and terrors of the system of American slavery.

Ernest Kingsley Junior does a fantastic job of capturing the complicated emotions of having been betrayed by white men at every turn, yet still depending on them for validation out of necessity. All of his hopes of flight are tied to the white, scientific establishment, where he is mostly ignored or unwanted. But it is the faith of his own community that gives him the strength and ability to realize his dream in the end. The spirit of his mother and the memory of his friends’ belief in him are what ultimately make his flying machine successful.

I’m not familiar with Esi Edugyan’s novel that this limited series is based on. But Washington Black strikes just the right tone between historical fiction and ripping tale of adventure featuring strong performances by well-known actors and some relative unknowns. Ernest Kingsley Junior does not have an extensive resume, but he proves himself more than capable of carrying the weight of the history and literary expectations of this show. He gives Washington Black a good life that’s worth watching.

All episodes of Washington Black are available to stream on Hulu.