‘The Underground Railroad’ Episode 7 Recap: Amazing Grace

Well, that was a relief.

Clocking in at just over 16 minutes, not counting the closing credits—that’s slightly longer than an installment of, like, Teen Titans Go! or Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!—The Underground Railroad Episode 7 rockets right by, taking us from tragedy to triumph in record time. Titled “Chapter 7: Fanny Briggs” after its main character, whom we’ve already met under another name, it’s a rare moment of elation in this relentlessly, appropriately grim series.

The big news from a plot perspective, and from a not-getting-your-heart-ripped-out-of-your-chest-as-a-viewer perspective, is that Grace, Cora’s companion in that crawlspace in genocidal North Carolina, survived that house fire! We catch back up with the goings on in that horrible town as the fire started by the vengeful Irish maid Fiona begins spreading to neighboring houses, until an all-out conflagration is at hand. As the awful townsfolk rush to form an abortive and pointless bucket brigade to extinguish the flames, and as a handful of men pull Fiona aside to kick and beat her, Grace escapes from the crawlspace and sneaks out of the back of the home where she was hidden.

Her first stop is the entrance to the Underground Railroad, where she finds the dead body of Martin, the man who both trapped her and kept her hidden and safe. She extends a hand tenderly to his head, as if accepting the kindness he did her and forgiving the wrongs. It may be more than he deserves, but hey, her name is Grace after all.

Or is it! After picking her way through the debris (much like the slave-hunting sidekick Homer did) and encountering a swarm of chittering fireflies, she finds the rear car of an Underground Railroad train, richly appointed. “We’ve been waiting on you,” the female conductor tells the kid before taking down her testimony, as is the regulation on the Railroad. After first offering her name as Grace, she then says she has another name, “a name my mama gave me…Fanny Briggs.” It’s a rebirth from the ashes.

And it doesn’t come without some recrimination for the circumstances that trapped her in that crawlspace all that time. When Fanny tells the conductor that Martin ran the Railroad in North Carolina, the woman responds “Yeah, we closed that station.”

“Yeah,” Fanny replies with cutting candor. “Y’all did.”

But what’s past is past. Fanny now wants to travel “wherever it is Cora went to”—it’s not a name that the conductor recognizes, whereas she seemed to have been anticipating Grace/Fanny’s arrival, and Fanny offers no further details. The conductor doesn’t mind, saying she can let her know whenever she’s ready. She also tells Fanny not to worry about leaving the station’s registry book behind. “It’s just ink and paper,” she says, before pointing to her heart: “Our stories always gonna be right here.”

As she walks off, leaving Fanny to write in the train’s testimony book, she offers a parting assessment: “I like the cut of your jib, Fanny Briggs.” So say we all.

“Fanny Briggs,” it should be said, is not without its horrors. In one long shot that it seems director Barry Jenkins pulled out of a nightmare about dark forests and the terrors that lurk within them, we slowly track in on Ethel, Martin’s wife, hanged from a tree by her wrists and left for dead. She appears to be murmuring prayers and affirmations to God—”I see the joy” is one phrase I was able to make out of her muttering, thanks to the closed captions—for all the good that will do her.

But this is just the show keeping things honest. It’s never really possible to shake the gruesomeness of the inhumane system that has made the Railroad a necessity. But it is possible to escape from the evil, and Fanny seems to be living proof of that possibility. Bon voyage, kid.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Watch The Underground Railroad Episode 7 on Amazon Prime Video