HULU’S 'WASHINGTON BLACK' HAD EVERYTHING GOING FOR IT—SO WHY DOES IT FEEL SO HOLLOW?

When Hulu announced it would adapt Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black, I inhaled. Here was a novel that refused to be contained—sprawling across continents, genres, and timelines. It was a tale of bondage and flight, but also of science, art, mentorship, and memory. And the story’s hero, an 11-year-old enslaved boy named George Washington Black, had a voice so distinct, I felt tethered to his breath.

The novel, expansive in its scope, asks: What happens when a slave boy is plucked from a brutal Caribbean plantation and taken on a hot-air-balloon ride into the unknown? And the answer is spun into something so much stranger, so much more poetic, and far more urgent than your average slave novel. It’s a coming-of-age story that starts in chains and ends somewhere close to transcendence, giving Hulu—still on my hit list for its flopped Kindred adaptation—some big buckled brogues to fill.

MAY CONTAIN MINOR SPOILERS FOR BOTH WASHINGTON BLACK NOVEL AND SERIES

I Thought of My Existence Before Titch's Arrival.

George Washington Black—nicknamed “Wash” (played by Ernest Kingsley Jr.)—grew up on a sugar plantation in Barbados. It's there he develops an early interest in art and science. Tanna Goff (played by Iola Evans), meanwhile, was born on the Solomon Islands to a white marine biologist father (played by Rupert Graves) and a Native mother who dies young. After passing as white in London during her teenage years, Tanna decides to reveal her true racial identity—a choice that leaves her and her father in need of a more accepting home.

They find that fresh start in Halifax, known as the “last stop on the Underground Railroad.” The city is a melting pot, home to escaped American slaves, Trinidadian shopkeepers, white elites, and even a bounty-hunting slave catcher (played by The Lord of the Rings' Billy Boyd).

When we meet Wash, he’s living under the alias Jack Crawford at the boarding house of scrappy survivor Medwin Harris (played by Sterling K. Brown, who's also an executive producer). And while sparks fly between Wash and Tanna in the present, parallel flashbacks reveal how he came to live under an assumed name in Nova Scotia. And why Wash dreams of inventing a machine that can carry people across the skies.

What a Strange Journey We Embarked Upon.

The series, developed by Selwyn Seyfu Hinds (who worked on Jordan Peele's Twilight Zone reboot) and led by an obviously stellar cast, had all the ingredients for a groundbreaking adaptation. But somehow, in its eight-episode sweep from Barbados to the Arctic, something essential was lost.

Flashbacks reveal Wash’s youth (the young version of him played by Eddie Karanja), as he’s taken under the wing of eccentric English inventor Christopher “Titch” Wilde (played by Lucifer himself, Tom Ellis). Titch offers him a way out of the cane fields as an apprentice, sparking a journey filled with steampunk touches—flying machines, rowdy pirates, bespectacled scientists, and Arctic expeditions.

The series ripples across time and place. And while the sequences in Halifax and Barbados are fascinating and detailed, Wash and Titch’s adventures never hold the same allure. After leaving Faith Plantation, they encounter a pirate ship and a safe house in Norfolk, Virginia, but the plot threads struggle to stay together.

The looming terror of slavery and racism make it difficult for audiences to fully embrace the adventurous, scientific elements, yet the slave-catcher elements never feel ominous enough to serve as a real threat.

At times, Washington Black feels downright corny—borderline Disneyfied—with its light tone and clean, colorful aesthetic. And while this makes for a wholesome family watch, it lacks the tension of a truly engaging story. There are moments with characters like Barrington (played by Miles Yekinni), a noble Black pirate, who expands Wash’s worldview beyond the “good” white men who may not be what they seem and who reveal the contradictory nature of Titch, an abolitionist who hypocritically asks his slave-owning brother to lend him Wash for free labor yet insists he doesn't believe in slave ownership. But, unfortunately, these moments are fleeting.

How Easy It Is, to Waste a Life.

Any good series, in my opinion, relies on tension and stakes to drive its plot. But here, for some reason, the stakes just feel so low.

Its commendable that Washington Black isn't interested in white saviors or even Black pain—it only seems interested in the freedom, community, and kinship Black people were able to forge for themselves. And its moving to watch Wash and Barrington bond over shared ancestral traditions or to see Medwin and his partner Miss Angie (played by a perfectly cast Sharon Duncan-Brewster) build a loving safe haven for Underground Railroad escapees. But it's all just a bit too sanitized to be believable.

In our current cultural moment, there’s a hunger for stories that center Black resilience without reducing it to trauma. And Washington Black wants to be one of those stories. But representation without revelation is only half the battle. Where the novel trusted its readers to sit in discomfort, ambiguity, and wonder, the show smooths over any and all complexity. Tanna’s identity crisis, a compelling subplot about race and performance, becomes a subplot about romantic chemistry. Titch’s own moral compromises—central to Wash’s feelings of abandonment and betrayal—are skirted for pacing. And most crucially, Wash himself is too often a silent observer to his own myth.

Ultimately, the show possesses some intriguing elements and it offers viewers a distinctive view of chattel slavery and its effects beyond the confines of the antebellum South. However, the more adventurous aspects of the series and the burgeoning romance feel less grounded. In the end, Edugyan’s sprawling, historical and fantastical tale feels too vast to be condensed into eight episodes of television.

It Was I Who Had Failed in My Understanding.

Hulu has consistently taken chances on Black authors' works (instead of just plopping Black actors into white authors' works) and for that I'll always give them their props. But Washington Black—like Kindred, like The Other Black Girl—was always going to be a tough sell to mainstream audiences and even tougher to execute.

To give credit where credit's due, Washington Black is visually unique, with a grand, steampunk-inflected scope. It just falls short of grasping the weight of Edugyan’s original words.

3/5 ★: A beautiful, ambitious miss.