Two days before the horrifying scene that opened the episode, Dana is catching up with her only remaining family, her aunt and uncle, for dinner.

Given the nature of the show’s mystery, that was likely a conscious point made by the showrunners, but it also makes it hard to connect with her character. And even if she did, as a single Black woman alone in her home, they wouldn’t believe her anyway.įor viewers, Dana is a blank slate, and her history is ill-defined. There’s no way Dana can explain what happened to her. Adding to Dana’s troubles is a sudden knock on her door from the police. It starts off with marked intensity: we know immediately that Dana has experienced some kind of trauma, because that bathtub she eases into back in the present day turns red due to the violence that has occurred in the distant past. Zola filmmaker Janicza Bravo directed the pilot, and it immediately pulls the audience into Dana’s dilemma it’s also one of the strongest episodes of the first season. Discovering why and how this is happening to Dana is where the story’s grand mystery lies. Shortly after, Dana will discover she’s intricately linked with this plantation, although she cannot stop the phenomenon from happening. She hasn’t even settled into her home though when she starts experiencing a weird phenomenon where she’s transported to a nineteenth-century plantation. Showrunner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins ( Watchmen) has made subtle changes to Butler’s text in an attempt to update it for modern audiences notably, the TV series has changed the tone of Kindred from an intriguing historical mystery, instead heightening the horror aspects, among many other wrinkles.ĭana (Mallori Johnson) is a young Black woman who has recently made a significant life change: moving from New York to Los Angeles in the hopes of becoming a TV scriptwriter. The novel, still taught in schools, continues to resonate-which is why this is seemingly the perfect opportunity to adapt the text for the screen. Butler’s acclaimed 1979 novel, FX’s Kindred is a time-traveling series that uses a science-fiction angle to explore themes of racism, slavery, and continued prejudice in our world today.

Kindred octavia butler