From the tense cane fields of Barbados to the windswept docks of Halifax, Washington Black (series) is more than a historical adaptation—it’s a narrative excavation of human possibility, an odyssey that transforms trauma into invention and longing into flight. The Hulu/D+ streamed miniseries premiered on July 23, 2025, with all eight episodes released at once. Adapted by showrunner Selwyn Seyfu Hinds from Esi Edugyan’s 2018 novel, the series reimagines the bildungsroman of George Washington “Wash” Black, elevating imagination as survival and agency as radical resistance.
We first meet Wash, age eleven (played by Eddie Karanja), shackled in servitude on a Barbados plantation. But the world he inhabits is shockingly beautiful even in its cruelty—and it launches him toward a destiny he barely dares to imagine. After a devastating tragedy, Titch Wilde (Tom Ellis), a white scientist and abolitionist, whisks Wash away in a hot‑air balloon, setting them on a globe‑skimming journey across ocean and ice.
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From the outset, we’re not just watching history—we’re inhabiting Wash’s wonder, pain, and curiosity. That emotional registration is crucial: it’s what turns spectacle into substance. That child’s genius, his precision with drawing jellyfish and schematics, is the wound and the answer. He is fighting for his narrative from the moment he escapes. Visually lush and tonally adventurous, the series takes cues from Jules Verne’s steampunk fantasies and Toni Morrison’s Beloved in equal measure, mixing invention with haunting legacy. Critics have praised its ambition and performances, and Rotten Tomatoes boasts a rare 100% score (from eight critics).
Yet some reviewers call out uneven dialogue, melodramatic romance, or pacing that softens the source's subtlety. More importantly, the adaptation pivots the story from trauma to empowerment, expanding Medwin Harris (Sterling K. Brown)—originally a minor figure in the novel—into Wash’s protector, guide, and emotional anchor in Nova Scotia. Iola Evans as Tanna Goff brings Tanna’s mixed-race identity into sharp relief, padding the plot with questions of belonging and visibility.
Where the novel ends ambiguously with Wash walking into a desert storm in Morocco, the series pushes forward. Wash finally confronts Titch, builds his flying vessel, and returns to Dahomey—his ancestral homeland—to find closure and reconnection with Big Kit, his mother, in a dream sequence layered with mythic resonance. That act of reconnection is revolutionary—not just a reunion, but a reclamation. What does any of this dig deep into? It’s about joy as resistance. The show is unafraid to depict the delight of invention, love, friendship, and belonging as sanctifying acts in a world built to deny them. Sterling K. Brown sums it up best: dreamers need protection… and Wash demands more than survival. He represents thriving as a protest.
That emotional scaffolding—the bond between Wash and Tanna, Wash and Medwin, Wash and his creative calling—is what lifts the show above convention. He is not just escaping history—he’s authoring his narrative from the inside out. The series crafts his evolution: from boy dreaming beneath the draw of Titch’s lectures, to man engineering flight, love, and agency, rewriting the very terms of belonging. So dig into Washington Black not for escapism or spectacle alone, but for the way it rebuilds freedom as invention; trauma as the soil in which dreams root. Watch Wash draw, fly, fight, love, and dream beyond the lines life tried to draw around him. It’s storytelling that doesn’t just recount history—but reinvents the way we imagine it.
