The debut season of Hulu's Woke took us through quite a journey, and we're aching to know if the streaming service is drawing up a second instalment. The show follows the story of San Francisco-based cartoonist Keef Knight (Lamorne Morris), who is forced to confront the ineluctable reality of being Black in America after a distressing encounter with the police. In season one, we see Keef — who's based on real-life artist Keith Knight [1] — grapple with his career and identity, suddenly realising that the world isn't so lucid and his nonconfrontational approach to life is completely off beam.
After Keef is mistaken for a suspect and aggressively apprehended by law enforcement — which leads to him communicating with inanimate objects — he enters a downward spiral and loses control of several aspects of his life. Right when he's about to secure a major syndication deal for his popular comic strip, Toast and Butter, he has a public meltdown that burns important business bridges, causing him to lose the rights to his own work. His creativity is also stunted as his attempt to execute a socially conscious project backfires, and his romantic life becomes more complicated. Not to mention, he's suffering from PTSD following the police confrontation.
By the end of the season, Keef has a better handle on life and draws a popular cartoon based on his wrongful arrest. In the final episode, the local police department reaches out to set up a meeting between Keef and the officer who tackled and handcuffed him. When Keef and the officer come face to face at a bar — with media outlets waiting outside — it's clear that the get-together is a ploy to make the officer look good. However, the cracks begin to show when Keef refuses to back down in a verbal (and beer-flicking) spar, which lands him in jail.
When he's released, Keef is greeted by his friends, Clovis (T. Murph), Gunther (Blake Anderson), and Ayana (Sasheer Zamata) [3]. He expresses his frustrations, saying he wanted to make a bigger impact, before stepping outside where a horde of reporters and photographers bombard him with questions. When asked if he plans to start actively fighting against social injustice and start a new movement, Keef's trusted animated Sharpie pops out of his pocket and declares, "So it begins."
Clearly, Woke's inaugural episodes are a setup for something more. Let's just hope Hulu doesn't leave us hanging. Break out the sketchpad, y'all, we need to see where this story goes!