It’s difficult not to root for The Porter‘s Junior, especially because most of his schemes laid the tracks for a happy ending of sorts in the BET+ drama’s finale.
He got rid of the conductor and Sticks, and then he put a down payment on a building so that Marlene could open a clinic for poor Black Canadians. That said, if the series is picked up for a sophomore season — and it sure positioned itself to be — Junior will have to deal with possible retaliation from Sticks. The train company owner, Mr. Edwards, could possibly start poking his nose in Junior’s illegal enterprise, as well.
Marlene, meanwhile, fretted over the clinic because it could stop her from leaving her work as a nurse to pursue her dreams of becoming a doctor. At least their son Teddy was doing better by episode’s end; his piano playing was so beautiful it brought his father Junior to tears.
Elsewhere in Montreal, Zeke proposed creating a union called “The Order of the Sleeping Car Porters” after Mr. Edwards fired 22 of them for trying to unify. Making matters worse, a vengeful Mr. Edwards had some of the men deported back to the Caribbean, and the white union leaders refused to join forces with the Black porters. Zeke’s past also came back to bite him when the brother of the white soldier he killed years before resurfaced, to seek revenge.
Zeke eventually confronted Lucy before she moved to New York upon realizing it was she who’d sold out him and the other Black porters to Mr. Edwards for trying to unionize. But Lucy refused to apologize and said that Black people were victimized all the time, and it was better that she did it instead of someone else. Whatever that means.
Lucy broke Franklin’s heart, too, when she ran off to pursue her musical dreams in the Big Apple, thanks to his father’s payoff, instead of performing at the salon he arranged and financially backed for her. Franklin was so angry he attacked and choked his frenemy for talking smack about Franklin’s disinheritance and, worse still, using a racial slur when disparaging Lucy.
Lastly, Gwen told Winchester she was pregnant, and he seemed thrilled until he confessed to Tuffy that he didn’t know how he would support his wife and their unborn baby without his porter job. Tuffy’s compassion moved Winchester so much that he kissed him on the mouth — and when he stopped to apologize, Tuffy kissed him back. Clearly, if there is a Season 2, Gwen and Win won’t be together much longer.
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