Summary
A fine finale finally reveals who killed Little Man while also suggesting potential futures for each of Covey’s grown-up children.
The ending of Black Cake Season 1 had a pretty simple mandate: To reveal who killed Covey’s first husband, Little Man. Well, mission accomplished. As a side note, though, Episode 8 also suggests potential futures for all three of Covey’s grown-up children, who finally know the full story of their mother’s life, which provides a satisfying note on which to conclude a story that has certainly had its ups and downs but been rather solid overall.
You’ll recall that in Episode 7, Covey strongly implied that there was one person left alive who could reveal the truth of what happened before she fled Jamaica, and that person turns out to be Bunny.
Black Cake Season 1 Episode 8 Recap
Of course, we’ve seen very little of Bunny throughout the season aside from occasional flashbacks. We’ve seen nothing of her as an adult, so it’s a surprise to the viewer as much as it is to Benny, Byron, and Mabel that Benny grew up to be a world-renowned swimmer, the first Black woman to ever swim the English Channel and the Strait of Magellan.
The siblings are prompted to research this after finding a picture of young Bunny alongside Covey and Gibbs while tucking into the remaining black cake. Adult Bunny is played by CCH Pounder, who has been around forever but to me is very hard to divorce from the voice of Amanda Waller in the DC animations. Nevertheless, after she’s tracked down, Bunny is agog to learn that Covey didn’t die in that train crash, news of which found its way back to Jamaica.
She’s actually kind of ticked off about the fact Covey never contacted her in the years since, but she comes around eventually, deciding to host a Nine-Night ceremony – a funerary tradition practiced in the Caribbean from which the finale takes its title – to help Covey’s children mourn and celebrate her passing.
Who killed Little Man?
Through flashbacks, it is revealed that Bunny killed Little Man, though admittedly with an assist from Pearl, who was planning to murder him anyway.
The cause of death was poisoning by manchineel fruit, which Pearl intended to send to Little Man as a nightcap when he and Covey checked into the honeymoon suite after their nuptials. The idea was Little Man would chin it and collapse, giving Covey a chance to flee to London using arrangements that Pearl had already made for her.
Bunny, though, took matters into her own hands and laced a glass of champagne with the poison, which she subsequently swapped with Little Man’s on the reception table. Covey never knew for certain who was responsible for the death, but it wasn’t exactly a wide suspect pool.
How does Black Cake Season 1 end?
Black Cake ends by suggesting potential futures for each of Covey’s children, almost all of whom have stories that are very much ongoing. However, far from lobbying for a second season, this strikes one as deliberate ambiguity, designed to make us ponder the fates of these characters who we have come to know over the last eight weeks.
Mabel, for instance, still hasn’t told her son that she was adopted. He knows nothing about her – and thus his – heritage, and she’s still grappling with the loss of her husband and the revelations in Covey’s tape to her about her rapist biological father.
Likewise, Byron learns from Lynette that she is pregnant with his child but is uncertain about whether to keep the kid. It’s also very strongly implied that Byron is forming a legal case against his employer for various instances of racial discrimination.
Finally, Benny, freed from the trauma of being made a pariah for her sexuality and then the subsequent abuses committed by Steve, begins to create openly again, performing a song for her social media followers.
What did you think of Black Cake Season 1 Episode 8 and the ending? Let us know in the comments.
