‘Black Lightning’ Spoilers: When Will Jefferson Learn About Anissa’s Powers?

At the end of “Black Lightning” series premiere, viewers found out that Anissa (Nafessa Williams) is a meta-human just like her father. But how soon will Jefferson (Cress Williams) discover that his eldest child also has powers similar to him?

“You’ve got to watch,” executive producer Mara Brock Akil told TVLine when asked about it during a recent interview. “But it does happen this season.”

As to how Jefferson would react when he finds out that Anissa as well as his youngest daughter Jennifer (China Anne McClain) are developing meta-human abilities, Cress said that his character would have conflicting feelings about it.

“It’s kind of a messy mixture of pride, that these are his genes and his offspring are having these abilities,” Cress told Entertainment Weekly. “But there’s also this healthy dose of fear because he’s been where he’s been and it’s taken a toll. It has torn up his family to a certain degree. He’s seen people lose their lives by having these abilities. There’s that fear of not wanting his daughters to travel down the same road as him, but also, over the course of the series before those things come to light, the whole family goes on a journey that informs how each of us are affected when those abilities come to light.”

In the meantime, according to Nafessa, viewers will see Anissa in the next episodes “struggle with her powers and not being able to tell anybody” about it. In next week’s Season 1, episode 2, Anissa finds herself trying to properly explain the shattered sink to her girlfriend Chenoa (Shein Mompremier). “She’s unsure as to what is even happening, she doesn’t even know how to articulate it with anyone,” Nafessa said of her character.

Since Anissa currently has no idea that she comes from a lineage of meta-humans, executive producer Sam Akil revealed that Anissa won’t quickly realize that she has powers.

“She just thinks it’s the result of going through something traumatic,” Akil told The Hollywood Reporter of how Anissa will try to make sense of the shocking incident at the end of the pilot. “She thinks, ‘I’m just having panic attacks but now it’s messing with my head. Is this real? Is it not real?’ I wanted people to have that journey with her because that’s how we all would feel. If you walked out of here now and you had a panic attack and hit the table and it broke, you’d be like, ‘What the hell just happened?’ You wouldn’t be like, ‘Oh, I got these powers!’”

“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.