‘Black Lightning’: A New Drug Will Soon Hit The Streets Of Freeland

A brand new threat is coming to Freeland.

In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, “Black Lightning” executive producer Sam Akil revealed that Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams) will soon contend with a new drug that may tear the city apart.

“We’re introducing a new drug into the community called Green Light in later episodes,” Akil revealed. “It will be the crux of the season in terms of how drugs enter a community, how a community is exploited, and Black Lightning sort of working himself up the food chain of discovering where it comes from and who put it there.”

“Where are they coming from? That’s our goal: We’re going to show where they come from,” Akil told The Hollywood Reporter of why they added drugs into the list of issues Black Lightning is going to deal with. “The series could easily be called Black Man’s Paranoia, aka Salim’s Paranoia, because I feel like a lot of these things are just dumped into these communities because it can be. Like the Opioid addiction, we know that pharmaceutical companies are just dumping that thing into these rural areas because these doctors are just writing scripts.”

In addition to drugs, the show will also tackle other real-world problems like sex trafficking. “The Black Lightning of the comics has always been socially relevant, and so we chose a real-world city because we want him to address real problems,” Akil told Digital Spy. “In Atlanta, sex trafficking is a huge problem, so we can’t ignore that. We want to address that, and so that’s why we chose a real-world city because we wanted people to recognize the villains and the problems that are surrounding the characters.”

In next week’s Season 1, episode 2, Jefferson has to decide whether or not to take up the mantle of Black Lightning once more. While Jefferson’s ex-wife Lynn (Christine Adams) doesn’t want him to go back to his former life as a vigilante, his old friend Gambi (James Remar) urges him to return to the streets as Black Lightning. Meanwhile, Anissa (Nafessa Williams) and Jennifer (China Anne McClain) try to deal with the aftermath of their kidnapping.

“Black Lightning” Season 1, episode 2, titled “Lawanda: The Book of Hope,” airs on Tuesday, Jan. 23 at 9 p.m. EST on The CW.