American Gods (STARZ)

[Discuss Thrower]

Originally Posted by vailpass

Yeah they lost me there. All I know is that the white man is very bad and I wish I had a sweet motorcycle with sidehack that followed me wherever I wanted.
They need to get back to the interesting characters/storyline before they lose it.

I think giving the showrunners the benefit of the doubt is the whole point of the Will James bit is demonstrating the power mortals have in giving power to the "gods".

Basically, if we accept the premise that the Old Gods required blood sacrifice in order to exist and thrive and the new gods are being sacrificed to in the form of our time and attention (Media as Lucy Ricardo's spiel) that there's a basic underlying power that the people have in the aggregate.

Belief creates reality.

With that framework, it does make sense that Will James has become some sort of demigod that thrives upon the violent ends and acts of black Americans because, recall what Ibis was saying, he leveled the blame toward them and not the white people lynching him because his people didn't try to save him.

Then consider what the Will James flaming head told Shadow: he exists to give relief to black folk since death is the way to peace. His existence symbolizes death by cop due to lawbreaking and (I think by implication) death due to short sighted gang related bullshit because it rises from self-fulfilling prophecies of defeat. Black people are always gonna be ****ed (Anansi's lecture on the slaver ship) by white people so it doesn't really matter that they wind up dead from getting drugs from traphouses in broad daylight (Ruby's brother's death).

Will James thus exists to haunt Shadow and get ritualized (in a way) by the cops that use corpses as target practice (Ruby's brother has the same wounds as Will James even though the latter died from swallowing the drugs he purchased from the traphouse) which perpetuates the cycle of violence which, in turn, satisfies Ibis and Jacquel's existence as morticians.

Anansi points this out but notice he's not really doing anything about it since he's a trickster god that lives to mock people.

How Bilquis factors into this I have no idea.

And, as I'm pained to say, this all could actually be the showrunners folding in the Hinzelmann plot from the book as has been speculated by at least one reddit commentor.