Skip to content
Answering Your Questions About Reactor: Right here.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Everything in one handy email.
When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

Of all the new offerings coming from HBO Max, it’s hard not to be enthralled by the concept of Lovecraft Country. From executive producers Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams, and showrunner Misha Green, this series has dropped a trailer that might already give you nightmares.

Based on the eponymous book by Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country combines the work of H.P. Lovecraft and the Jim Crow era South to bring us a different look at the horrors of that time period. HBO has offered a more specific breakdown of the show’s characters as well:

Buy the Book

Lovecraft Country

Lovecraft Country

  • Atticus (Jonathan Majors) is a Korean war vet who always has a pulp novel in his back pocket, and wears his heart on his sleeve despite the daily injustice of living in Jim Crow America. His father, Montrose (Michael Kenneth Williams), however is hard headed and secretive, and always believed you can’t live in a fantasy world — making him less-than-thrilled about his son’s love for pulp novels.
  • It’s Atticus’ uncle (Courtney B. Vance) who’s always been more like a father to him. Warm, funny, and well read, he was the first to introduce Atticus to the wonderful and strange world of pulp novels. As the publisher of the “Safe Negro Travel Guide” he’s been on enough adventures to understand there’s no place like home.
  • Letitia “Leti” Lewis (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) hustled her way across the country as an artist protesting for civil rights and now finds herself back home to plant some roots. Her half-sister Ruby (Mosaku) is also a hustler, but her hustles haven’t paid off. Her family ties are tested when she’s presented with an offer she can’t refuse. Hippolyta Freeman (Aunjanue Ellis) is a star-gazer who’s been a housewife most of her life, but has dreams of getting into some adventures of her own. Her itch for adventure will eventually, literally and figuratively, take her to the stars and beyond.
  • Eustice Hunt (Jamie Harris), is a sundown county sheriff with a NAACP complaint file a mile long, and a marine tattoo on the back of his neck so the enemy has something to aim at, gets more than he bargained for when he crosses paths with Atticus; Ji-Ah (Jamie Chung) is a seemingly naive nursing student who is thrust into active service when war breaks out, and a rash of soldier disappearances suggests she is more than what she seems.
  • Christina Braithwhite (Abbey Lee) is the only daughter of the leader of a secret order calling themselves the “Sons of Adam.” She’s gone to great lengths to earn her father’s respect, but to no avail. She’s going to pave her own path to power, and use Atticus and his family to do it. Willam (Smith) is Christina’s henchman, lover, bodyguard, spy, or whatever else she may need him to be. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, he’s the “perfect specimen” for the Aryan race.

Lovecraft Country is set to premiere this August on HBO Max.

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Emmet Asher-Perrin

Author

Emmet Asher-Perrin is the News & Entertainment Editor of Reactor. Their words can also be perused in tomes like Queers Dig Time Lords, Lost Transmissions: The Secret History of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Uneven Futures: Strategies for Community Survival from Speculative Fiction. They cannot ride a bike or bend their wrists. You can find them on Bluesky and other social media platforms where they are mostly quiet because they'd rather to you talk face-to-face.
Learn More About Emmet
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
4 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments