Lovecraft Country: Everything you need to know about Hippolyta Freeman

Here’s everything to know about Lovecraft Country’s Hippolyta Freeman.

Warning! This story contains spoilers for Lovecraft Country episode 7.

HBO’s Lovecraft Country is full of complex, unique characters with their own strengths, weaknesses, and special abilities. And because of that, it’s worth breaking down and analyzing all of the show’s main characters to understand more about them.

In our last character profile, we examined Atticus’ ex, Ji-Ah. She remained a mystery for a large part of the series, and the last episode finally gave us a glimpse into her mysterious life. But in this week’s episode, “I Am”, we saw Atticus’ aunt Hippolyta reach new heights and go new places. So it’s worth digging into her background in our latest profile!

Read on below to learn more about the character Aunjanue Ellis plays in Lovecraft Country, Hippolyta.

Hippolyta Freeman Lovecraft Country character profile

Hippolyta Freeman: introduction and overview

Hippolyta Freeman is a brilliant woman who enjoys the aptitude of mathematics and astronomy. She is a devoted mother and wife to her late husband where she helps with The Safe Negro Travel Guide. There is so much more to Hippolyta than just the ways in which she supports her late husband and daughter. Trying to adjust her life without her husband by her side, Hippolyta searches for the truth behind his death while discovering who she is.

Relationships

Hippolyta is the wife of George Freeman and has a daughter named Diana (Jada Harris). She is also the aunt of Atticus. In the first episode of the season, Hippolyta wanted to travel the country with George filling out the Safe Negro Travel Guide. Any time George traveled for the guide, Hippolyta and Dee would go over the checklist with him to make sure George had everything he needed.

Dee, a creative kid, made Hippolyta a part of her comic strip as a space faring superhero named Orinthia Blue. You can see Hippolyta loved being a mother and valued her relationship with George. She even enjoyed having Atticus around until George passed away, and she was left taking care of their daughter, the travel guide, and the gorgeous orrery for company.

Atticus and Hippolyta had a mutual relationship with each other when we first started this show, but eventually, Hippolyta seemed to grow a little hate towards him. She didn’t want Atticus at the house anymore because he may have reminded her of George too much. And when Atticus wanted to borrow the car for his trip to St. Louis, Hippolyta was hostile towards him because she knew he wasn’t truthful about what happened to George. Despite their rocky relationship, Atticus went to find and help Hippolyta at the observatory after she discovered the key in the orrery.

Motives

Hippolyta wanted her husband to see and support her for everything that she is, not just who she is to him. She felt like she had to shrink herself in order to conform to the world and her marriage. All George wanted to do was protect Hippolyta, but she feels that he was repressing her dreams, goals, and version of who she wants to be. Hippolyta wanted to take George’s place on the road to write the travel guide’s entries with, but he didn’t want her out there in the sundown towns.

Back in episode 4, we saw Hippolyta and Dee drive back to Ardham, hoping to find some answers behind George’s death. She discovers that Atticus, Leti, and Montrose lied to her about the truth of George’s passing after finding a piece of Dee’s comic strip at the Brainawhite’s house. But her curiosity takes on newfound urgency when she takes Hiram’s solar system after finding it at Leti’s housewarming party. When she starts trying to figure out how to open it, the orrery gives her a key and a set of coordinates. The coordinates end up sending her to Mayfield, Kansas. She embarks on a journey through space and time traveling with Josephine Baker, a fearless warrior taking down her daughter’s comic book strip as Orinthia Blue.

Strengths and weaknesses

During her time in the space wormhole, Hippolyta got the chance to dance on stage with Josephine Baker. Quickly, we saw Josphine take a quick likeness to her and they formed a little friendship. When Hippolyta and Josephine were relaxing after another successful performance, Hippolyta confided in her the freedom she feels having been a part of this path with her — not only the utter freedom she’s felt having been a part of Josephine’s troupe but her resentment for the life she left behind not more than moments before being dropped into this timeline.

Hippolyta expressed her outrage at the white society for making her feel small and helpless and allowing herself to believe that it was true. She also seems afraid to speak up about how she truly feels but then is sent to another time period. A period in time where she is forced to train in mortal combat to face off against an army of soldiers. While leading the troop of warriors, Hippolyta gives a rousing speech in which she says, “We are here because we did not believe them when we said our rage was not ladylike! Free to hate when we must, free to kill if we must!” But then as they are closed in on by an even larger group of colonizers, she removes her helmet and says “I am Hippolyta, George’s wife.”

What’s next?

As we saw in last week’s episode, Hippolyta shot one of the white officers while trying to protect Atticus. That’s when she was sucked into the wormhole, but by the end, she was ready to come home for Dee. We saw her go into a light but we don’t know where the tunnels lead to. The question remains: where did she go? Will she get arrested for killing the cops, and will Atticus tell her the truth about everything? Hippolyta has the orrery in which Christina needs, so how does she play into that as well?  Also, we saw Dee’s comic book was left at the crime scene, and now we have to figure out what’s going to happen to her?

For more Lovecraft Country character profiles, keep up with the Lovecraft Country category on FanSided.com.