At the plantation, Ernestine is praying over James down in the slave cabin. She wants to be an “instrument of peace” and a better woman. She’s still caught up in her guilt over Pearlie Mae, and of course, mourning Sam’s recent death. She is a woman undone and mama is tired. Life has finally beat her down.
Rosalee is at Hawkes’ house pushing her food around on her plate while a worried Elizabeth waits at the door. John shows up in a panic and says that word has spread that the remaining Macon 7 have made it across the river and because of the bounty, every Marshall, slave catcher and their mother is looking for them. It will be super hard to get the trio to the abolitionist town now, and they have a day before the marshals and slave catchers show up in their part of town. Rosalee says they can’t make it in the wagon, but Elizabeth and John should take Boo to safety, ‘cause, you know, Babies first. John mentions the marshall's office is full of captured people. Noah says scatter the streets with money, aka runaway black people, as as a distraction.
Back at Macon, Tom is trying to pacify Ernestine with some BS about how he wanted to be better than his father. At least he can hold his liquor better. And oh, Tom Macon ain’t even his real name. He says he feels bad about Sam. He can’t eat or sleep. Yes, Tom, because Sam is dead, you;re talking to his mother and it’s all about you. He begs Ernestine to forgive him Um. You just killed this lady’s first born. She ain’t here for your sorrow, Tom.
Ernestine says Sam’s lynching is her fault, karma for what she did to Pearlie Mae. She tells Massa Tom that she killed Pearlie Mae and she prays for her own salvation. Lady, I don’t even hold that against you. You did what you had to, to protect your daughter and hell, her daughter.
Tom doesn’t even react about Pearlie Mae. He shoves his hand up Ernestine’s skirt— yes, the lady whose son he just killed— and says that he wants her to go to DC with him, and they can be “free”.
Define free, Tom. You gonna give Ernestine her manumission papers? And what about her kid, James, your kid, the one that you didn’t kill… yet? Is he gonna be free? You gonna take that bounty of Rosalee, or nah? And what about your wife and three kids? Will you be free of them? Tom makes me mad. He ain’t sh—.
Back at the Hawkes, Boo is on the floor playing, and Elizabeth is watching her. Noah pops in to tell Elizabeth he admires her. She’s like, no, you’re a G. You ran 600 miles, mayne. Noah says he had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Elizabeth says if she knew what this choice to help folks get free would have cost her in the beginning, she’s not sure she would have been on board. Noah says he doesn’t believe her. He sees the way she looks at Boo. Elizabeth says she just wants to get Boo to freedom.
Rosalee is in a field with John, her uncle, digging and trying to understand how John is so different than this brother, Massa Tom. Like, his brother owns slaves, and he’s freeing them? How’d that happen? John says Tom’s always been ambitious at all costs. He asks Rosalee if she has siblings. She tells him about Sam and James. He tells her what happened to Sam.
I’m still not over Sam's death. That was some sh—-y, sh—. Poor, damned Sam.
Rosalee is devastated and is crying in a tub when Noah walks in with towels. What’s the symbolism with baths in the show? I need to think on that.
Noah tries to be a gentleman about it all, dropping off the laundry and bouncing, but Rosalee says, “don’t go”. He knows what to do. He walks over to the tub and starts washing her back. And after 10 episodes, they finally have the sexy times that we all saw coming from the first time they saw each other.
Ugh. it’s so emotional. I know it was that good-good. Hold up. Does Rosalee know what to do with all that? She strikes me as "untouched". I guess she gonna learn today. Throw a pump or two for the women watching, Rosalee. Noah is fine. *files nails*
Oh, and what song is playing while they’re having foreplay? I need that in my life.
Rosalee and Noah are laid up post-sex. Rosalee says she wishes she was back on the plantation with her mom and brother. She’s thinking about the (bad) things that they've done to get free. They’re both having survivor’s remorse. Noah thinks about how Cato said Noah just picked people he could use to help him get free. Noah gives a passionate speech about freedom and how they deserve it, and even though they fought hard, it ain’t enough. Rosalee says, “ain’t none of us free till we all free.” They are so wonderfully righteous.
Over at the slaughterhouse Rosalee escaped from, Stabler says Ben needs surgery and he’s gonna kill Rosalee for stabbing his 12 year old. Jeremiah Jones is like “nah, son. That can’t happen.” They didn’t get all of the Macon 7 and um, Patty Cannon is about her money. Jones says the Patty Cannon gang are “re-negotiating” the arrangement. They’re gonna take Rosalee now.
Um. Where is Cato? They didn’t get Cato?.
Sorry. Back to the story. Stabler goes Stabler and fucks up Jeremiah Jones, then kills him and everybody. Oh, well.
Meanwhile, Liz shows up at the Marshall’s office pretending to look for Kyle, who is still tied up in her basement. He’s been down there for days. Are they feeding him? Noah walks in puts a gun to her head and threatens to shoot unless everybody drops their guns. He gives a speech about how he wants freedom, and a suname of his own, and a job and a wage as the end of the day. He say, black folk built the country, and they keep it beating, and as a black man that makes him more American than anybody white. Say it with your chest, Brother!
The head marshal in charge is like, “um.. i can’t help you.” Noah’s like, yeah you can. Free all the black people in the jail. Marshall thinks Noah must be nuts. He reaches for his gun. Noah kills him. Elisabeth looks like, “OMG! What is going on?” Um, lady. You thought a black man was going to take a white lady and a bunch of white men hostage and then free the black people and no gun was gonna pop? Let’s not be naive here.
Noah frees the black people and puts the white folk, including Elizabeth in jail. The imagery is hilarious.
Stabler shows up at John’s house saying that he needs him to wire his brother because he needs money for Ben’s surgery ASAP. Um. Does he know John is a part of the Underground railroad? Does he know Rosalee is there?
Nope. He just remembers Massa Tom told him to go to his brother if he ever needed anything while he was in the area. John invites him in to wait while he makes a promissory note.
Kyle realizes someone else is in the house and starts banging his head against the wall to make noise. Rosalee knocks him the f— out in one punch to get him to stop, but not soon enough. Stabler heard the noise and is looking curiously around the room when Kyle returns with the promissory note. Sh—.
Stabler is dropping that Rosalee is kin to John, and she’s the one that hurt Ben when Elizabeth busts in talking about “it worked”. Um. Was that supposed to make him more likely to turn Rosalee over? Telling an abolitionist, “hey, the girl you’re hiding is your niece”, would make me be more protective of her, not less. Anyway, when Elizabeth sees Stabler, John says he’s the guy that Tom sent to look for his runaways. Without missing a beat, Elizabeth is like, what’re you doing here? You need to get the marshall’s office?! A Black guy just set everybody free! Good job, Liz.
Noah is running, probably trying to get back to The Hawkes’ house to leave for the abolitionist town with his boo and Boo when he sees a white man trying to take a black teenager around Henry’s age back to slavery. Noah attacks the white guy and is still choking him when he’s hit in the back of the head and knocked out.
At the Hawkes’ house, Stabler is s gone and John is trying to convince Rosalee that she and Boo gotta go. NOW. They can’t wait for Noah. Rosalee is trying to argue when Stabler pops in the entry leading to the underground room. This dude. John tells the women to run, and lets off a shot. The floor collapses, knocking everyone out. Huh? How unsteady is this floor?
Anyway, Stabler comes to first. He goes to catch up to Rosalee, leaving an unconscious Kyle and John behind.
Ernestine goes down to the workshop to check on James who is now taking Sam’s place. She finds Massa Tom with him. James says he misses Sam and hopes he comes to visit soon. Ernestine told him Sam went to the city to make furniture for the white folks. Ernestine looks on as Massa Tom plays great dad to James despite having just killed his bother. James asks Massa Tom is he can go to the city someday. Massa Tom says he can. Ernestine is tortured looking to all this. F—k Tom.
Noah wakes up to a red-head white lady smoking a clove. It’s Patty Cannon. I used to smoke cloves in college. That habit didn’t last long. They made my chest hurt. Helluva high tho, especially if I took a coffee straight to the head. Only did that before one class. I signed up for an entire semester reading Milton’s Paradise Lost. It’s good. Not a whole damn semester good.Oh, and FYI: Cannon is actual historical figure. Although not alive at the time period of the show.
Cannon says she’ll let Noah go if he gives her the name of the white man he must be working with, because like, no black person can come up with this ‘show up at the marshall’s office, free the slaves’ business on their own. He drops Kyle’s name.
Back at the house, Jon comes to after the floor collapse. Kyle is there, still tied up. He tells John that he’s a man of the law, so he knows John isn’t going to kill him. Um.. you had sex with his wife. Bruh. You’re as good as gone. But before he kills Kyle, John tells him that he, Elizabeth and Noah have spent the last 24 setting him up. At the Marshall’s office, Elizabeth dropped some forged papers in his desk. And all the enslaved people that Noah freed? Some of them will be caught and they will ask for a lawyer named Kyle when that happens. It’s also legally cool to kill anyone aiding and abetting an escaped enslaved person, according to the Fugitive Slave Act. So... gotta go, gotta go. Word to Robin Harris. RIP.
Rest in F—kery, Kyle.
Elizabeth, Rosalee and Boo are headed to the abolitionist town by horse and carriage. Elizabeth is beating that poor horse like its a rented mule. Stabler is hot on their figurative heels. Rosalee to stop the carriage and she hops off to distract Stabler as it's her he really wants. At this rate, he will catch up and Boo won’t make it to freedom. The children are our future.
Rosalee runs into the forest, and Stabler follows after her. Suddenly she stops running and turns around to face him. She apologizes for stabbing Ben, who Stabler says will never walk again. Rosalee says that isn’t her fault. Ben never should have been out on the hunt. Stabler knows that’s true.
Rosalee says she isn’t running anymore. Stabler pulls a gun on her, then Elizabeth pops outta nowhere and pulls a gun on him. Stabler takes his gun off Rosalee, but throws a knife at Elizabeth to move her gun. Rosalee grabs his gun from him in the melee. Stabler still doesn’t back down. He lunges at Rosalee, who shoots him in the stomach, then leaves him to die in the woods. “You hunt us down like we animals,” she tells him. “And you gonna die out here like one.”
I like to think the only reason she didn’t kill him because of what she did to Ben on accident. But she should have killed him. Stabler is like the super Terminator in Terminator 2. He just keeps coming and coming and coming.
Elizabeth and Rosalee saunter off into the woods. Girl power on ROARRRRRR!!!!!!
Tom goes to Ernestine to say they’re leaving in the morning for their 5 day trek to DC. He’s all excited, talking about buying clothes in Virginia cause Washington is very fashionable and there are even restaurants they can eat at together. Hold up. That’s all it takes to be senator? You make a speech, some wealthy white landowners say, “cool” and then off to the Senate you go? Did we miss some steps?
Ernestine is unimpressed. Tom thinks she’s concerned about James and he says they will send for him when they get settled. Um… you gonna leave your son in the care of your evil ass wife? The lady who was all gleeful about him getting in the field?
Ernestine starts talking about she was disappointed Rosalee ran after she worked so hard to keep her safe. “But safety isn’t real, is it?” Ernestine asks. Tom says it’s not, just as the Reverend’s tongueless enslaved butler throws a noose around his neck. Ernestine turns the wheel to lift Tom up and hang him. Tom begs for mercy. He looks shocked that she’s doing this.
Um… I’m surprised. I really thought she was just going to poison him the way she did Pearlie Mae. I didn’t think he would survive the drink she poured. But like, you put the woman in a hole. You just killed her son. You didn’t expect any kind of get back? Ernestine says that she was naive to think that there was anything she could do to protect her kids.
As Tom struggles for his life, aka suffers the same way Sam did, Ernestine toasts him. “We both going to hell”, she says. “You, just a bit sooner.” She waits until Tom is dead, then unties his hands and places a knocked over chair underneath him to make it look like a suicide.
YOOOOOO!!!!!!! Ernestine is a G. Like I thought what she did to Pearlie Mae was wild. Lady, beautifully Black lady, you just lynched a white man, a senator, in like 1859.
Aha!
A-haha!
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
And I’m pretty sure she’s going to heaven. She just became the patron saint of "f—k it all" to Black folks.
Stabler wakes up in a jail cell. Sigh. Patty Cannon found him out in the woods. She’s pissed that he killed James and her other catchers. There aren’t a lot of rules for slave catchers, but not killing white people is one of them and high on the list. She cleaned Stabler up and brought him to jail for justice. Stabler is looking like fugggg…
Welp.
Noah is in the cell next door. Patty didn’t keep her promise. Ooh, God. what happens to him? He shot a white man, a Marshall, and then locked up them white people and he’s a runaway? Is Noah gonna make it back to Macon? Or be lynched first?
At the Hawkes’ house, the couple are burying Kyle’s body in the backyard. Womp.
Cato is in the woods somewhere. He’s alive?!!!! And still on the run??!! His leg is bad off, but he has a suitcase full of money and his hat. I don’t know how he’s gonna get free. But he’s gonna make it. With his ol’ surly, somehow lovable self.
Somewhere free, Rosalee is sitting in a garden being interviewed over a picnic by the abolitionist while Boo chases butterflies or some sh— that only free people got time to do. LOL. I love that kid. Rosalee tells him that she wants to make sure Boo remembers her mother, who stopped a slave catcher with her own body. And her father, Moses, who carried her to freedom as far as she could. And Zeke. Lawd.
I’m already in tears with this reminiscing, and she hasn’t mentioned Henry yet. Rosalie says Cato was “brave but broken. I wish he would have had a chance to start over.” If only you knew, boo. There’s hope for Cato yet.
Noah, of course, Rosalee remembers fondly for bringing the group together and giving up his freedom for her and Boo. “He saw a strength in me I didn’t know I had,” she says. She doesn’t mention anything about that one time they blew each other’s backs out. LOL.
We get a flash to Noah who is back in some sort of holding pen for runaways, like the one where he found the freedom song in the first episode. He spots something. A new freedom song? Dammit, he can’t read. But he figured it out last time, and he can do it again. We are all rooting for you, Noah.
Back to Rosalee. She says she can’t just be free and build a life. She has to go back. Yasssss, ma’am!!! For Noah?!! For James? For her mama?! For everybody? Lift as you climb, boo.
Somewhere un-free, Ernestine is riding in a carriage with Massa’s wife. They are both in black, mourning Tom’s death. Where are they going? Wife tells Ernestine that there’s been tension between them over the years, but it wasn’t personal. And yeah, she knew Ernestine was doing her husband, but everyone’s had dalliances. Wife says she used to have one with a stable boy when she was a teenager. Word? Also, she didn’t care about the kids Ernestine had with her husband. That was free labor.
B—h.
What bothered her was that her kids were so into Ernestine. “I’ve waited a long time to repay the kindness,” Wife says. She snatches open the window of the carriage to reveal they’re in front of an auction block. Ernestine is being sold to only God knows where and to only God knows who.
Oh, hell.
Wife says not to worry about James. She’s bringing him back in the house to raise as her own. And she will give him a better life than Ernestine ever could. Somehow, I don’t see that happening. And I bet good money that Ernestine runs next season.
The trailer rolls. But wait. Wait. Wait a damn minute. There’s more!
Rosalee is stowed away in the back of a wagon. What’s going on? Someone removes the top. It’s a woman with a shotgun… is that…? IS THAT? NOOOOOO!!!!
The woman asks Rosalie if she’s the woman who wants to steal slaves.
“You can’t steal something that ain’t property in the first place,” Rosalee says.
Freedom has made her so sassy. I love it!
The woman extends her hand, says her name is Harriet. Holy shi—!!!! If I had some $20 Tubmans already, I’d throw them at the TV screen right now.
That’s all for season 1, folks. Wowie. Wow. Wow. What a friggin ride. Underground exceeded all expectations. *slow clap* for everyone… even Cato.
What did you think of the finale?