Black Lightning season 3 is happening, but when will it release and what can fans expect from the story? The action of Black Lighting season 2 has largely centered around the fate of the Green Light Babies - children who’ve developed superpowers after being exposed to a street-drug called Green Light. All but one of these children and a team of metahuman assassins wound up under the control of crime-boss Tobias Whale.
Tobias had plans to go into the metahuman trafficking business and set up a live-streamed demo reel on the dark web as one of his pyrokinetic super-soldiers began burning down Freeland. Tobias was forced to flee his hideout, however, when his former enforcer Lala showed up with revenge on his mind. And he just barely avoided an equally enraged Jennifer Pierce, who collapsed on the street outside his hideout in danger of losing control of her energy powers, as the penultimate Black Lightning season 2 episode came to a close.
While it seems highly unlikely that Jennifer will blow herself and Freeland up in the season 2 finale, the possibility that she might lose control in some form or fashion after defying her superhero father’s rules about killing or going into a fight alone has still established an intense aura as the climax builds. This energy will almost certainly carry into Black Lightning season 3. Here’s everything we know about Black Lightning season 3, including its potential story and release date.
Black Lightning Season 3 Release Date
Black Lightning season 3 is officially happening, as The CW renewed Black Lightning for season 3 in late January. While an official Black Lightning season 3 release date has yet to be announced, it will presumably release in fall 2019. It’s uncertain, however, what time-slot Black Lightning season 3 will air in. Black Lightning originally premiered after The Flash and remained in the 9 pm time-slot on Tuesdays until December 2018, when the show went on hiatus. When Black Lightning returned, it aired in the 9 pm time-slot on Mondays, which is due to be taken over by Arrow starting on April 1. Given that, and the fact that Arrow is ending this year, it’s certainly possible that Black Lightning take over Arrow’s time-slot in the second half of the 2019-2020 season.
Black Lightning Season 3 Story Details
The biggest change to come about as a result of the season 2 finale is that Tobias Whale is no longer at liberty on the streets of Freeland. Black Lightning was finally able to bring his arch-enemy to justice, at which point Whale was taken into custody and transported to The Pit - a secret prison for metahuman criminals. Though his powers have been neutralized, nobody knows where he is and his empire has apparently collapsed, only a fool would count Tobias Whale out for the count and it seems a safe bet he’ll eventually escape and seek out revenge at some point in season 3.
The Green Light Baby situation has been largely resolved, with most of the surviving metahuman children having been released from the cryogenic pods that were being used to hold them until their condition could be stabilized. Thankfully, it seems that Lynn’s treatments worked and none of the children lost control of their powers and died after being released. Though some of the children are still missing, most of them were reportedly safely gathered up and sent back to their families.
Talking of families, one thing viewers can expect to see in Black Lightning season 3 is Jefferson Pierce fighting crime with both of his daughters. With Jennifer now having her own super-suit, a better grasp on her powers and having adopted the codename Lightning, there’s no reason for her not to join her father and Anissa Pierce in the field. If nothing else, Black Lightning’s advertising has certainly featured a lot more pictures of Jennifer in her new costume.
Certainly Agent Odell, the ASA man overseeing the Green Light Baby project, intends for the Pierce Family to continue working together. The final scene of the finale involved Odell revealing that he knew The Pierce family’s secret identities and that he was swearing them in to help fight against an inevitable first-strike by the government of Markovia - a rogue nation that has the largest collection of metahuman soldiers in the world. Thanks to the Green Light experiments, Freeland now has the largest population of metahumans in the free world and that is a threat the Markovians cannot afford to ignore. This suggests that Black Lightning season 3 could see the heroes of Freeland defending their hometown from the threat of metahuman terrorists rather than metahuman gangsters.
