Summary
Starr runs into Chris, who calms her down and brings her to his car. She begins punching the dashboard and screaming as Chris holds her. Suddenly she gets a text that Seven has been beaten up by King. Chris and Starr drive to King's house, where they find Seven and pick him up to take him away.
They run into Iesha, the mom, in the hallway, who tells them to get out of her house, including Kenya and Lyric, her young son. As they go to leave, King arrives home and Iesha tells them to go out the back door. Before they escape, Starr thanks her.
The kids head to a hospital to get Seven looked at, but they run into a large "Justice for Khalil" protest on the way. Starr jumps out of the car and asks two women what happened, and they tell her the grand jury did not indict. Chris, Seven, Kenya, and Lyric go to find Starr. Starr tells Seven that he needs to go to a hospital, but Seven insists that he's fine. When Chris asks Starr what he can do to help her, she tells him to take Kenya and Lyric and keep them safe. He doesn't want to leave her there, but she insists.
Seven and Starr join the protest, and see a protester bludgeon the window of a cop car. Armed policeman blockade the street as protesters approach. A black protester scolds a black cop for being on the wrong side. April speaks into a megaphone, leading the protesters and saying, "We have nothing to lose but our chains!"
Starr approaches the front of the protest and April hands her a t-shirt with Khalil's face on it, which she puts on over her school shirt. As April hands her the megaphone, Starr thinks, "It's as heavy as a gun. If 115 had traded his weapon for this one, Khalil would still be alive."
Starr speaks into the megaphone, "I'm the one who saw what happened to Khalil." Everyone quiets down as she speaks, saying, "This ain't about how Khalil died. It's about Khalil lived. Khalil lived, and his life mattered." Everyone cheers as the cops tells the crowd to disperse on the count of 3.
The cops attack, shooting tear gas canisters at the protesters and pushing them back. Starr throws a canister back at the cops, screaming, and April looks proud. Chaos breaks out as protesters light cars on fire and the cops begin arresting protesters. Starr and Seven get in the back of a truck, their eyes irritated by the tear gas used to disperse the protesters.
They go to Maverick's grocery store to get milk, which they pour on Seven and Starr's faces. The men who drove them tell Starr that Maverick is looking for them, and that they will send Maverick to the store. The men leave, and Seven and Starr are alone. Seven's wound from King still hurts.
We see King and another gang member watching the grocery store from across the street. Starr listens to some messages from Lisa, who is enraged that Starr will not pick up her phone. Seven suggests they should move to Mexico, when suddenly, King's guy throws a firebomb into the grocery store. A few shop owners from nearby notice the fire and see that Starr and Seven are inside. They go to open the back door, but it's locked.
Suddenly Maverick arrives and opens the back door. Starr and Seven fall out of the store, as Lisa, Sekani and Carlos all arrive. King runs towards Maverick and they confront each other. Sekani pulls out a gun and points it as King just as a cop arrives. They tell Sekani to put down the gun as armed cops get out of the car. Carlos urges them not to shoot the boy.
In voiceover, Starr invokes THUG LIFE, the Tupac reference: "the hate you give little infants fucks everybody." She then says, "It's not the hate you give, it's the hate we give." Starr puts up her hands and stands between Sekani and the cops. Sekani puts the gun on the ground. Maverick hugs Starr.
Soon after, we see Maverick planning to rebuild the store, and King getting arrested for starting the fire. Starr tells us in narration that "The family's all good again," and they plant trees in the front yard of their house in Garden Heights. The scene shifts to Seven's graduation from high school, then to Starr in the lunch room with Maya and Chris. Hailey sits at another table.
Starr visits Rosalie's house, and goes into Khalil's room. In his drawer, he finds his wizard's wand from when they used to play Harry Potter. She puts his wand in a shoebox with her own and Natasha's. "I can't change where I came from and what I've been through, so why be ashamed of what makes me, me?" She holds up her wand and makes a plan to "light up the darkness" in the future.
Analysis
The ethical landscape of the film is exceedingly complicated. People who seem untrustworthy one moment are proven to be protective the next, and the people who seemed like friends turn into enemies. Hailey, Starr's school friend, parrots the white majority stance on police brutality when she suggests that the officer was just trying to protect himself, and her betrayal angers and upsets Starr enormously. Then, Iesha, King's wife, seems like a villain when she sends her children out of the house and insults Starr, but quickly becomes an ally when she alerts them to the danger posed by King's arrival, allowing the kids to escape.
The film is set against a backdrop of impassioned protests about police brutality. This element makes the film incredibly relevant to the time when it was released, 2018. While police brutality has long been a tense issue for race relations in the United States, in recent years it has gotten more attention. Starr must not only navigate living in a rough neighborhood while also going to a fancy prep school, but also a broader nationwide resistance to a system that does not support black lives.
By setting a very specific narrative about Starr's life against a recognizable political backdrop, the film shows the disparities between the structural issues that spark protest, and the more localized issues that arise from these structures. The issue of Khalil's death is not as simple as people seeing that something is wrong and protesting it to get people to see the injustice. We see the ways the community of Garden Heights is contending not only with the immense structural racism built into the system—the cop who killed Khalil does not even get indicted—but also with the violent and unjust systems, such as the King Lords gang, that have arisen as a result of the structural racism affecting the community.
In a climactic moment of truth, Starr takes a megaphone from April and speaks her truth at the protest. She reveals that she is the witness that saw Khalil get murdered, and tells the group that they must celebrate the ways that Khalil's life mattered. She focuses on the positive elements of the case, but does so with ferocity, raising her voice and speaking out even when the police tell her not to. Starr steps into her identity as someone who can speak out on behalf of justice, stronger than she ever imagined she could be.
In spite of the high drama and horrible tragedies that occur in the film, the Carter family rebuilds, and even stays in Garden Heights. The trauma of their experiences makes them stronger and braver, more assured in their sense that they can trust and help their community to grow. The film leaves the viewer with an image of a brighter and more magical future, as Starr holds up her old want from her Harry Potter days and vows to use her own personal "super powers" for good, in honor of her friends who have passed away, and as a way of inhabiting a cohesive and integrated identity.
