"This Extraordinary Being"
Airdate: November 24, 2019
Languishing in a prison cell following her lethal overdose of Nostalgia, Angela begins to live her grandfather's memories...
In 1938, Will Reeves becomes a police officer in New York, which his future wife June is apprehensive about. His arrest of an anti-Semitic white man is taken over by white police officers; he later sees the same man walking free, and the officers who took over the arrest turn out to be KKK members who nearly lynch him as a threat. After this incident, Will puts on the hood and stops a mugging, eventually becoming the vigilante "Hooded Justice". However, in order for the public to accept him, he must cover up his dark skin with makeup.
Will eventually uncovers a KKK conspiracy codenamed "Cyclops". In order to take this down he accepts Captain Metropolis's offer to join the Minutemen and engages in sexual relations with him, but becomes disillusioned upon learning Captain Metropolis is largely apathetic about black unrest. Will later learns that "Cyclops" brainwashes African-Americans into turning violent and torches a KKK warehouse where they create the hypnosis films. Upon returning home he yells at his son for dressing up like Hooded Justice. June declares that she and their son are going back to Tulsa.
Back in 2019, Will hypnotizes Judd into hanging himself. Angela awakens in Lady Trieu's home.
Tropes:
- Armor-Piercing Question: About Judd's KKK outfit which belonged to his grandfather, which he kept since it's his legacy.Will: If you're so proud of it, why do you hide it?
Judd: You don't know me, old man. - Bait the Dog: When Will brings in Fred to for arson, three officers make Fred apologize for calling Will by a racial slur. They then congratulate Will and take Fred away to book him. When Will later sees Fred walking free, he finds out there’s no record of Fred’s arrest. The same three officers later accost Will on his way home, kidnap him and nearly hang him as a threat. And they refer to him by a stronger slur to boot!
- Bigot with a Badge: Will Reeves’s main antagonists once he becomes a police officer are white officers who are secretly members of Cyclops, a KKK-affiliated group. Judd Crawford is later revealed to be this as well.
- Bigot with a Crush: Nelson Gardner is immediately attracted to Will, but shares the same low view of Blacks as other white people of the time.
- Casting Gag: American Hero Story has Cheyenne Jackson play the actor who plays Hooded Justice. The show is produced by Ryan Murphy in-universe; in real life, Jackson is a frequent collaborator of Murphy's and has appeared in American Horror Story.
- Comatose Canary: Both Laurie and Cal are able to temporarily break into Angela’s dream after she’s given a shot of adrenaline, but she chooses to stay in her dream state.
- Historical Domain Character:
- Samuel Battle, New York's first black police officer, is the one to pin the badge on Will at his graduation.
- Fred T. is an unsubtle pastiche of Donald Trump's father, Fred. Real Fred owned the first supermarket in Queens around the time this episode takes place and the one in the show is on the same street corner as the real one. His company is called "F.T. & Sons" and while in real life, Fred did business with his mother Elizabeth under a company called "E. Trump & Son". Real Fred was arrested in 1927 at a KKK rally for failure to disperse after a clash with police and show Fred is involved with the corresponding organization in this universe, Cyclops.
- Karmic Death: Will ends up strangling the leader of the white police officers that lynched him.
- Mass Hypnosis: Cyclops uses this to compel Black people in a Harlem theatre to kill each other.
- Monochrome Past: Much of the episode set in the past is shot in black and white.
- Mook Chivalry: When Hooded Justice discovers the secret Cyclops hideout, each Klansmen attacks him individually but never as a group.
- Mythology Gag: The title and two scenes (Hooded Justice stopping a robbery and an incident at a supermarket) are lifted from Nite-Owl's descriptions of Hooded Justice in Under the Hood.
- Origins Episode: For Hooded Justice, a minor character from the comics.
- Out of Focus: The Comedian and Nite Owl are literally out of focus in the background at the press conference introducing Hooded Justice as a member of the Minutemen.
- Police Are Useless: The police’s unwillingness to contain a member of Cyclops (given that many of the cops are themselves Klansmen) is what inspires Will to don the Hooded Justice persona to fight them.
- Race Lift: Justified In-Universe. The public believed Hooded Justice (actually the black Will Reeves) was a white man, so American Hero Story portrays him as such.
- The Reveal:
- Will Reeves is Hooded Justice.
- Will did in fact kill Judd by hypnotizing him and telling him to hang himself.
- Shrouded in Myth: Episode 2 shows the version of Hooded Justice’s first official mission as described in the press and in Under the Hood, in which Hooded Justice does a Super Window Jump into a supermarket and stops it from being robbed. This episode shows that HJ actually breaks into the store when he discovers it’s a Cyclops hideout and then is thrown through the window by the Klansmen there.
- Splash of Color: Angela briefly regaining lucidity is visually emphasized by Laurie's face first gaining splotches of color.
- Time Skip: Most of the Whole Episode Flashback takes place in the 1930’s and 40’s, but the last flashback fast forwards to the present day to show how Will hypnotized Judd into killing himself.
- Un-personJune: (to Will) As far as you're concern, we [her and their son] don't exist.
- Villain Killer: Will kills Fred T. and the white police officers who were secretly Cyclops members. He also kills Judd Crawford.
- White Like Me: June tells Will to color the areas around his eyes white, so others would not know he is Black.
- Whole Episode Flashback: A unique case in that it's someone else's flashback, seen through the eyes of the protagonist.
