Series / Underground (WGN)

aka: Underground

Underground is an antebellum Period Drama that aired on WGN America, created by Misha Green and Joe Pokaski. Set in the antebellum American South, the show centers on a group of enslaved people, the Macon Seven, planning a daring 600-mile escape from a Georgia plantation to Canada and freedom and intertwined with the story of John and Elizabeth Hawkes, a white abolitionist couple motivated to run a station on the Underground Railroad.

The first season follows the path of the Macon Seven as they plan and then execute their escape plans—then attempt to evade the people charged with bringing them back, dead or alive. The second follows Rosalee as she runs back down the underground railroad to locate her missing family and reunite with Noah.

The series premiered on March 9, 2016 and starred Jurnee Smollett as Rosalee, Aldis Hodge as Noah, and Jessica De Gouw as Elizabeth Hawkes.

It was canceled after the second season which left multiple cliffhangers open from both seasons. The series can be watched on streaming, including Hulu and OWN (The Oprah Winfrey Network).

Not to be mistaken for the 1995 Serbian film of the same name.

---

Tropes:

• Aborted Arc: Thanks to the series's cancellation, multiple threads were left dangling without resolve, among them Cato's taking over of Patty Cannon's gang, the capture of Rosalee (and her being forced to leave her brother James and newborn son behind) and Georgia's group house, Ernestine trying to get back to her children, the destruction of the Macon plantation, Elizabeth's assisting with Nat Turner's rebellion prior to the Civil War, and many more. There was also never any follow up with Boo's life in freedom in Canada.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Suzanna and Pearly Mae share a father, but he didn't care much for either of them. He was certainly abusive to Pearly Mae considering he used her like a pack mule and was her enslaver.
  • Tom Macon is Rosalee's father yet he casually allows an overseer to whip her and his guests to sexually harass her. He also sends his son James to the fields once he's old enough to stop playing with T.R. and know his place.
• Accidental Murder: At the end of "The Lord's Day" Rosalee accidentally kills the overseer, Bill, when he tries to rape her; this prompts her and Noah to run from the plantation earlier than planned and without the others. Subverted as it's revealed that he actually managed to survive, which Rosalee discovers when she returns. Noah makes it a purposeful kill.
• Action Girl:
  • Rosalee gradually develops into this, after growing out of her naivete. She even faces down slavecatcher August Pullman. By the beginning of Season 2, she's become an infamous outlaw who regularly fights slavecatchers to free other escapees including her lover Noah and her younger brother.
  • Patty Cannon, a female slave-catcher who manages to capture Noah, is of the dark variety.
  • Harriet Tubman is fearless and always armed.
  • The "sewing circle" Mr. Still sends Elizabeth to, headed by Georgia, is actually a team of armed female abolitionists.
  • Elizabeth herself develops into one over the course of the series, especially after her husband John is killed next to her.
• Acquired Situational Narcissism: Clara becomes highly arrogant and conceited after managing to seduce her master and becomes the de facto mistress of the plantation.
• Alpha Bitch: Suzanna Macon, the mistress of the Macon plantation. She's petty, jealous, mean-spirited, and lords over others whenever given the chance—especially Ernestine, because she knows that her husband Tom is more attracted to her than to his wife. After Tom dies—hung by Ernestine—she not only sells Ernestine away from the Macon plantation, but keeps her son James, saying she'll turn him into her pet and make him love her like her children loved Ernestine.
• Anachronic Order: Harriet Tubman gives a speech about her life story and the morality of slavery, freedom, and abolition in 2.06, but in 2.09 we see her praying as she's preparing to give the speech.
• Anachronistic Soundtrack: The soundtrack focused on modern day music from various genres including rock, rap, pop, and R&B. This included artists such as Ibeyi, Beyoncé, and John Legend (one of the executive producers).
• Anti-Villain: August Pullman, to an extent. He's the slave catcher sent to find the Macon runaways, but he gets a lot of humanizing moments, especially with his son Ben.
• Artistic License – History: Episode Ten introduces Patty Cannon, a historical slave catcher. The series starts in 1857; however, Patty Cannon died awaiting trial for murders in 1829. Also Cannon's death is altered so that she's killed by Cato instead, who finds another white woman to take her place while he takes over as a slavecatcher.
• Attempted Rape: In "The Lord's Day" (1.03) the drunk, angry overseer forcibly drags Rosalee into his house with the intent to have his way with her. A fight ensues, and she subsequently stabs him with a broken bottle in self-defense and kills him. Or So she thinks, but she runs away rather than see he survived.
• Baby Factory: There are multiple mentions of breeding farms where enslaved women are forced to produce future generation of enslaved people the women having up to a dozen children that are sold off immediately after birth. Henry came from one of these farms.
• Badass in Distress: Season 2 ends with Rosalee getting captured by Cato and being forced to leave her newborn child and brother behind.
• Batman Gambit: William Still switches clothes with the fugitive he's harboring and tricks the slave catchers into attacking him and John Hawkes. Since Still is a free man and has his papers, Hawkes can have the slave catchers charged with assault and taken away.
• Beneath the Mask: All the black people, to varying extents, have to hide their true feelings from white people as Noah points out; they can't show how they feel, what they think, or who they are to their masters or even other white people they can't be sure of trusting.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • Noah is a surrogate older brother to Henry, who was born on a breeding farm and doesn't know who his biological family is. This is why Henry's death is particularly hard on him.
  • Sam and Rosalee are very protective of their kid brother James, and do what they can to shield him from the cruelties of slavery. Once they're gone, he no longer has their protection.
• Big Damn Heroes: At the end of "Troubled Waters" Rosalee connects with several Native Americans and rescues the others from slave catchers.
• Boom, Headshot!: John is assassinated at the end of season two's "Contraband"; shot in the head with his wife Elizabeth right next to him.
• Bottle Episode: Episode 2.06, "Minty", has Harriet Tubman give a speech to a crowd of Philadelphia abolitionists. Outside of a few questions from the crowd, the entire episode is her and only her speaking, with none of the other main characters present or involved and none of the modern-day sound track played. At the end she's talking to the crowd, but the camera is framing her face as if she's talking to the viewers through the screen for the last lines:
  Tubman: Beat back those that are trying to kill everything that's good and right in the world and call it "making it great again." We can't just be citizens in a time of war. That would be surrender. That'd be giving up our future, and our souls. Ain't nobody gets to sit this one out, you hear me?
• Bounty Hunter: The slave catchers, who hunt down and retrieve runaways for the reward money. August is a recurring character, while in the second season a whole gang led by Patty Cannon are the main antagonists.
• Break the Cutie:
  • Rosalee (who starts off as a naive house servant) after getting whipped in her brother's place and getting sexually harassed by Mr. Macon's guests.
  • James, after being put to work in the fields.
• Broken Tears: The season 2 episode "Ache" reveals that Ernestine had another child before Sam that was sold off. In a later flashback, a young Sam watches her tend to his father's wounds after a lashing and asks if she'll do the same for him when he's older. Ernestine breaks down in tears.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: John Hawkes says to his wife after Episode 4, "the worst day of that man's life was just another Tuesday in the office for me" (as a lawyer, he oversaw an estate sale where the family of the man he enslaved was sold off). Subverted in a sense because this isn't a villain being indifferent to his victims' suffering but a cause of shame, guilt and motivation to do good for him.
• Category Traitor: Cato is loathed by the other enslaved people for becoming an overseer—he even has a whip like the white men. After he helps the others of seven escape, he's believed to have changed but roves himself willing to betray anybody else for his own benefit towards freedom. He turns his back on other enslaved people completely by the end of season two, willing to recapture black people and sell them into slavery to maintain his own freedom with a white woman under his control posing as the late Patty Cannon to do so.
• Children Are Innocent:
  • August Pullman struggles with trying to preserve his son Ben's innocence while living in a harsh world and not let him know he's a slave catcher. He even sends him off to play so he won't see a horse getting put down, and it's not until later that Ben learns what happened to his mother.
  • Subverted on the Macon plantation. The Macon children are pampered and sheltered, but the enslaved children—especially those who work in the fields—are considered fair game for abuse and exploitation. Elizabeth agrees to help harbor runaways after seeing a little black boy working the fan overhead keeping her cool, thus being treated like a piece of furniture.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Zigzagged. Suzanna eventually reveals that she knew about Tom and Ernestine's affair the whole time and didn't care one bit, as she considered it getting free labor via Ernestine's pregnancies. However, she was jealous that her children loved Ernestine more than her, so after Tom dies she sells Ernestine away—and says she'll keep James for her own, turning him into a pet and making him love her instead.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Patty Cannon and her gang inflict this on spoiler:Cato after capturing him and threaten to do the same to his lover Devi if he doesn't do as they say and help them capture other black people to sell back into enslavement.
• Coordinated Clothes: Used darkly. All the female house slaves on the Macon plantation are dressed in alike burgundy cotton dresses with their hair up so they all blend into one another and don't stand out (especially when serving their masters, the Macon family). When Rosalee is recaptured, she's forced back into the style of dress she was made to wear as a slave in front of Susanna, with Susanna mocking her by saying her pregnancy is a benefit as it means a new slave for the plantation.
• The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much: Ernestine hangs Tom Macon, but his death is ruled a suicide.
• Dead Guy on Display: Poor Sam, after getting lynched. To make it even worse, his master made a speech while standing on a balcony over his body and had fireworks set off in celebration. Wow.
• Distracted by the Sexy:
  • Noah steals a gun from an enslaver who lives nearby while she's... er, busy with Cato.
  • Invoked by Elizabeth, who does a sensual dance in front of guests at the governor's ball so her husband can sneak into his office.
• The Dog Bites Back: Cato kills Patty Cannon in "Soldier", after the brutal way she and her gang treated him.
• Domestic Abuse:
  • John comes very close to hitting Elizabeth after she confesses to sleeping with Kyle Risdin to protect Boo. Boo, afraid for Elizabeth's safety, tries to shoot him, but thankfully she misses.
  • Hicks, Ernestine's lover at the Roe plantation, is quick to smack her to the floor when she talks back to him. He also cheats on her with Clara, then forces Clara to have an abortion.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Harriet Tubman claims to get visions during her fainting spells.
• Drugs Are Bad: Ernestine inhales fumes from a red liquid through cloth to get through her days working on the fields of the Roe plantation after she's sold.
• Dwindling Party: Several of the Macon Seven are killed off over the course of the first season; the only ones who make it out alive are Rosalee, Noah, and Boo.
• Every Scar Has a Story: The burn scars on Cato's face are actually self-inflicted to hide the brandings he got for trying to escape enslavement multiple times.
• Fish out of Water: Ernestine has a difficult time adjusting to South Carolina and the Roe plantation after being sold, not helped that she has lost all her children.
• Flashback: In "Cradle", Boo has a number of them about her father and his death.
• Frame-Up: The Hawkes and the runaways they're helping pin the whole operation on Marshall Kyle Risdin and John kills him before he has a chance to defend himself.
• The Fundamentalist: The reverend, whose support Tom Macon needs for his upcoming election. He suggests having all the enslaved people baptized at once.
• Going Native: Tom Macon isn't actually a southerner. He's from the north, but embraces southern ideals.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Clara asks Ernestine for something that'll make her miscarry, but later decides that she wants the baby. Hicks forces her to drink the potion anyway. Clara wants to kill Ernestine and Hicks for causing the loss of her child.
• Green-Eyed Monster: In "The White Whale" it's revealed exactly why Suzanna hated Ernestine so much: her children preferred Enestine to her. After Tom's death, Suzanna puts Ernestine up for sale and says she'll "return the favor" by raising James as her own and making him love her more.
• Guile Hero: Noah is very intelligent and relies mostly on his wits to survive and try to escape.
• Hanging Around: Sam is hanged by his master Tom Macon—as punishment for trying to escape the plantation, to to send a message to the other enslaved people; he then puts his body put on display under the balcony as Tom makes a bid for politics to prove he's not soft on punishing slaves. His mother Ernestine, angry that her only child with her black lover was killed, later secretly hangs Tom in the cellar as revenge.
• Heir-In-Law: Tom Macon is a Northerner who married a Southern Belle and inherited her father's plantation.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Pearly Mae stays behind during the escape from the Macon plantation to buy time for her husband and child to escape.
  • Henry blows up a hut to give the others a chance to escape, getting caught in the inferno as result and dying.
• Heroic Seductress:
  • Ernestine seduces and sleeps with her master Tom in order to protect her children. She isn't into it like she used to be, but she does make him promise that her son James won't be put to work in the fields. James gets sent there anyways.
  • Elizabeth performs a burlesque dance at the governor's ball to distract the crowd while John steals some valuable intel for the Underground Railroad. Later in the season, she reluctantly sleeps with the town marshall (who happens to be her ex-fiance who's still infatuated with her) to keep him from taking away Boo, the runaway enslaved child she's harboring. In the season two finale (and unexpected series finale) she's shown involved with a guard at Harpers Ferry Armory to get information on when the weapons will come, for the raid by John Brown's men.
• Heroism Motive Speech: Noah gives one to the white people at the marshall's office while he's holding Elizabeth "hostage" and freeing all the captive enslaved people.
  Well, I want all sorts of things. I want to live in a world where I ain't got to run through a hundred miles of shadow just to have a last name. I want to work a day and get a fair day's wage. And when I'm done I want a place to rest my head. Have something I can call my own. I want to be counted! It's our hands that built this country! It's our blood that's running through the hearts of it. We keep it beating! Seem to me that make me more American that any of you.
• Historical Domain Character:
  • William Still was a real abolitionist and much of the series is based on his writings about the Underground Railroad and the lives of fugitive enslaved people.
  • Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and orator, appears a couple times as well, played by executive producer John Legend.
  • In the second season, Harriet Tubman, the famed abolitionist and conductor on the Underground Railroad, has an increasing role.
  • Also in Season 2, notorious slave hunter and Serial Killer Patty Cannon becomes the main antagonist slave catcher.
• Hollywood Atheist: Pearly Mae says she doesn't believe in God after seeing so much horror as an enslaved person. This is however portrayed with sympathy.
• House Fire: Rosalee burns down the Macon Mansion in "White Christmas".
• Hyper-Awareness: Elizabeth is able to deduce that slave catchers are stalking Mr. Still's office by studying the movement of their reflections from his window.
• Hypocrite: Suzanna complains about Northerners not doing any real work while she's waited on hand and foot by enslaved people. Elizabeth calls her out on this by asking if she made the cake herself.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Ernestine tries to convince herself of this after murdering Pearly Mae to protect Rosalee.
• Imperiled in Pregnancy: Rosalee, due to continuing her slave-rescuing work while heavily pregnant, is endangered more than once. The father, Noah, is furious when he finds this out.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: August is able to disarm people by throwing knives into their hands.
• Innocence Lost:
  • In "War Chest" poor, wide-eyed Ben Pullman stumbles upon the sight of his father killing a man.
  • This is the central theme of "Cradle". The various children on the show are forced to confront the harsh realities of the world.
• In-Series Nickname:
  • The runaways — Noah, Rosalee, Henry, Zeke, Moses, Boo, and Cato — are called the Macon Seven.
  • Cato disparagingly refers to Rosalee as "House Girl".
  • Harriet Tubman is called "Moses" for leading her people to freedom, like the Biblical Moses. Also Truth in Television.
• Internal Reveal:
  • In "The White Whale" John breaks the news of Sam's death to his sister Rosalee.
  • In "28" Noah learns that Rosalee is pregnant.
• Interrupted Suicide: Ernestine tries to drown herself in "Ache" but is rescued by the other enslaved people.
• Irony: Just seconds after Cato says he wouldn't touch Bareback Shaw with a ten-foot pole, he's forced to have sex with her.
• Jerkass:
  • Suzanna Macon threatens to have Rosalee's brother sold off just because she knew it would hurt their mother. Then she taunts her sister-in-law for not being able to have children.
  • Cato taunts Noah for believing he can escape to freedom and threatens to expose his escape attempt to their master. He points out that when there's an escape, it's the enslaved people who get left behind who suffer most — which is why he doesn't want to be one of them.
• Karmic Death: Ernestine hangs Tom in the wine cellar for lynching her son Sam.
• Lack of Empathy: The Macons toward the people they enslaved. Even when they're not being outright malicious, the emotional distance they put between themselves and the enslaved people is chilling.
• Lady Macbeth: Clara becomes this to Matthew Roe after becoming his mistress.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: Elizabeth badly wants to have a baby, but has trouble conceiving. Her pregnant sister-in-law Suzanna Macon likes to rub that fact in her face. Rosalee later gets unintentionally pregnant due to having sex once with Noah.
• The Lost Lenore: Ernestine's late husband, the father of her son Sam.
• Love Hurts: During the time skip between season 1 and 2, Cato starts a relationship with a woman named Devi while vacationing in Paris, even proposing to her, but must break things off when he returns to America.
• Love Interest: Rosalee to Noah.
• Make an Example of Them: After catching flack for allowing the Macon Seven to escape, Tom Macon has Sam lynched for his own escape attempt, leaving his body out as a warning to all the remaining enslaved people.
• Mama Bear:
  • Pearly Mae faces down a slave-catcher with a gun to allow her daughter and husband to escape. Later, she contemplates selling the other runaways out if she and her family can be guaranteed freedom.
  • Ernestine will do anything to protect her children, even murder Pearly Mae, one of her friends.
  • Elizabeth in regards to Boo, a runaway enslaved child she took in.
• The Mentor: Harriet Tubman for Rosalee and Ernestine for Clara in season 2.
• Mercy Kill: Seraphina drowns her newborn son thinking he'd be better off dead than enslaved.
• The Mistress:
  • Ernestine is Tom's enslaved mistress. He fathered her two younger children, Rosalee and James.
  • Clara is in a similar position.
• Motifs: "Cradle" has a lot of images of candy, underscoring the theme of lost childhood.
• Mushroom Samba: In "Black and Blue" Rosalee burns a dress that has devil's snare in it, and the fuses cause her and August to hallucinate. She accidentally stabs Ben while not in her right mind.
• Musicalis Interruptus: At the end of "Contraband", the song "In America" by John Legend abruptly stops when an unknown man assassinates John Hawkes and resumes after the shot is fired.
• Mum Looks Like a Sister: Due to their actors' close ages, Ernestine appears more like Rosalee and Sam's older sister than their mother.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Rosalee after accidentally stabbing Ben Pullman.
  • "The White Whale" reveals that Tom is haunted by his lynching Sam.
  • Ernestine keeps seeing visions of Pearly Mae, whom she murdered to protect her daughter. The vision of her is a soundboard for Ernestine's own suicidal and self-hating thoughts.
• My Secret Pregnancy: Rosalee keeps her pregnancy hidden under loose clothing from everyone, including the father Noah, so she can continue as the outlaw the Black Rose and liberating enslaved people.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: John and Elizabeth Hawkes are a well-intentioned but naive white couple who want to help enslaved people on the Underground Railroad. After seeing an enslaved woman die upon arrival to Philly and getting into a scuffle with some slave catchers, they realize that harboring runaways is going to be far more dangerous than they anticipated.
• Not Quite Dead:
  • Rosalee flees the plantation thinking she killed Bill, the overseer who tried to rape her. The following episode, Cato finds Bill lying a pool of his own blood with a broken bottle in his neck. Amazingly, he's still able to say who did that to him and manages to recover.
  • After being left for dead by Noah, Cato is eventually revealed to be alive in the next episode.
• Oh, Crap!: Rosalee and the Hawkes plan to help Noah escape when he's extradited to Georgia, but the judge rules for his execution instead. Rosalee nearly screams with horror.
• One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: Rosalee gets pregnant after having sex a single time with spoiler:Noah on learning about her brother Sam's death. It's somewhat subverted however as they become a couple afterward, and he even proposes to her.
• Outliving One's Offspring:
  • Ernestine's eldest son Sam is lynched for trying to run away. Her horrified scream when she discovers his body hanging from the balcony of the big house is gut-wrenching and she has to be physically dragged away from the scene.
  • Though he's not dead, August Pullman is horrified when he finds his son Ben lying on the ground with a knife in his abdomen.
• Papa Wolf: August wants revenge on Rosalee for stabbing his son.
• Pet the Dog:
  • The Macons' daughter, Mary, is nicer to the enslaved people than either of her parents.
  • Deconstructed. Sometimes enslavers do nice things for the people they enslave, but that doesn't come close to making up for enslaving and exploiting them. Pearly Mae's father, for example, bought Moses so she could marry him, but she doesn't think fondly of him considering everything else.
  • Ben Pullman recognizes Rosalee's humanity and tries to help her escape. This...doesn't end well for him.
• Playing Sick: After his first escape attempt fails, Noah pretends to be more badly injured than he actually is. When Rosalee asks why, he reminds her that they're all pretending in one way or another around white people—especially their enslavers.
• Precocious Crush: Ben Pullman, who's about 12 or 13, blushes around a pretty young prostitute he and his father run into.
• Pregnant Badass: "Things Unsaid" reveals that Rosalee has been leading enslaved people along the Railroad, getting into gunfights, blowing up city streets, and being chased by slave catchers in the forest all while heavily pregnant. It's frequently made clear that she's in very real danger of losing the child if she doesn't slow down, but she's too stubborn about freeing the rest of her family to stop. Noah in particular is horrified and furious at the all the risks she's taking once he finds out.
• Punch-Clock Villain: The slave catcher August Pullman takes no pleasure in his job, but does it to provide for his son and pay for his wife's treatment.
• Rags to Riches: Cato becomes a wealthy man by season 2.
• Rasputinian Death: Zeke gets into a fight with several slave-catchers, getting shot many times before succumbing to his wounds. He manages to kill all of them before his death, however.

• Red Baron: By season 2, Rosalee is an infamous slave liberator known as "The Black Rose".
• Revenge: After John's murder, Elizabeth takes a gun to the courthouse where he was killed hoping to find the murderer so she can kill him. Georgia comes down the courthouse to talk her out of it.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • August Pullman's wife has already suffered this, and he was forced to put her in a mental institution.
  • Ernestine in season 2, not helped by the drugs she uses to get through her days. She's haunted by visions of deceased loved ones, and starts having a breakdown while singing for her new master's son and his guests.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: John tries to get Noah extradited to Georgia according to the Fugitive Slave Act, hoping to help him escape along the way, but the judge decides to ignore federal law and orders Noah's execution because one of his men died at Noah's hand.
• See You in Hell: spoiler: Ernestine's last words to Tom Macon before killing him.
  Ernestine: We're both going to hell; you just a bit sooner.
• Sex for Solace: Rosalee sleeps with Noah after learning of her brother Sam's death.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Rosalee and Cato steal some clothes and pretend to be free blacks to get some medicine for Noah. Cato is rather impressed by how nice Rosalee looks in a fine gown with her hair done nicely.
• Shrinking Violet: The delicate, naive, and demure Rosalee, a beautiful young house slave. At least in the beginning.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Tom and John are brothers, but while Tom is a slave-owner (after marrying the daughter of one), John is an abolitionist and helps runaways. Lampshaded by Rosalee in "The White Whale".
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: Cato is by far the most cynical character on the show, and snarks at anyone who holds idealistic beliefs. It's eventually revealed that he had tried to run away twice, but failed in each, which may explain his bitterness.
• Slave Brand: Enslaved people who are caught after escaping the Macon plantation get branded with a small r on their cheek. Cato got branded twice after as many attempts. He obscured them through burning his cheek. Rosalee got this brand after she's briefly recaptured.
• Slave Liberation:
  • One of the driving motivations during the first season. The Macon 7 are running away to freedom in the North. Only three make it and only one, the child Boo, remains free.
  • In the second season, Rosalee, one of the seven, has turned outlaw to rescue other enslaved people. The show also introduced to Harriet Tubman, one of the most famous escapees and outlaws who liberated enslaved people.
• Slut-Shaming: Clara gets pregnant and is forced to have an abortion by Hicks, the baby's father. The leaders of the community force her to sit in front of everyone while they scream at her to name the father, claiming that it's for her own good, and losing the baby was punishment for them sinning (they think she miscarried).
• Spoiled Brat: Mary Macon is a self-centered teenager living in the lap of luxury on a plantation in the south. She complains that her life as bad as a slave's because she has to learn to play piano instead of getting to check out boys. Her younger brother T.R. as well, given the fact that he feels no need to take responsibility for his actions or care about James's suffering.
• The Stinger: In the Season 1 finale where Rosalee meets Harriet Tubman.
• Take Me Instead: Rosalee takes a lashing in place of her younger brother James after he is blamed for spooking a white man's horse, saying it was her fault for giving him sugar. What makes it worse is that it's his white "friend" and the master's son T.R. who actually spooked the horse—but not once is he blamed or does he try to accept responsibility. Even worse, the accident happened because the overseer wasn't watching where he was driving. James is blamed simply for being there.
• Talking Down the Suicidal: Ernestine stops August from killing himself in "Soldier" using the story of her own attempted suicide.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Noah lets Cato in on the plan to escape the Macon plantation, but the two of them are always at each other's throats. Cato doesn't get along much better with Rosalee either, especially when they have to pretend to be a free married couple.
• Thicker Than Water: Subverted. Suzanna and Pearly Mae are half-sisters through Susanna's father, but they're practically strangers to each other.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Life on the run toughens Rosalee up quite a bit: she goes from fragile house slave to determined fugitive, and later becomes an outlaw known as the Black Rose.
  • Elizabeth learns marksmanship due to all the danger that comes with harboring enslaved people, and becomes even more independent after her husband is assassinated.
• Took the Wife's Name: Tom Macon was born Tom Hawkes. He took his wife's name instead of the other way around due to the Heir-In-Law situation, and to appear much more connected to the slave culture of the south he was joining.
• Trust Password: The members of the Railroad have special codes that are used to identify each other.
• Undercover as Lovers: Rosalee and Cato pretend to be a free married couple while conning a doctor to steal some medicine for Noah after his gunshot wound becomes infected. Neither of them are pleased to do it and are gritting their teeth throughout.
• Underground Railroad: Mr. William Still recruits John Hawkes and his wife Elizabeth to host a station on the Underground Railroad after hearing John make an anti-slavery speech outside a courthouse.
• Unusual Euphemism: The members of the Underground Railroad often refer to their hidden runaways as "cargo" to avoid tipping off slave catchers.
• We Have to Get the Bullet Out!:
  • After Noah is shot in "Cradle", Rosalee does an impromptu surgery and takes the bullet out of his shoulder by hand.
  • Occurs again in "Ache" after Rosalee takes a bullet out of her own shoulder after getting shot by Patty Cannon.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: John Brown and his followers are willing to commit acts of extreme violence to end slavery, which perturbs Elizabeth and Georgia. However, Elizabeth finds herself turning into one as well and the last scene of season two is her assisting with the raid on Harper's Ferry.
• We Used to Be Friends: James started out as a companion for Tom and Susanna Macon's young son, T.R., but the racial tensions between the realities of them being a slave and the slave master's son eventually severs their friendship.
• Wham Shot:
  • In "Things Unsaid", Cato is revealed to be the "master" who ordered Noah's capture.
  • At the end of "Things Unsaid", Rosalee is revealed to be heavily pregnant.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Boo makes it to Canada (without either of her parents), and Rosalee—after getting her there—decides she's going back to free other enslaved people. Boo is never seen again, as the second season focused on Rosalee's work on the Underground Railroad and multiple other plots and never got a chance to return.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Noah is furious when he learns that Rosalee went on multiple dangerous rescue missions while pregnant, thus endangering their child.
• Where da White Women At?:
  • "Bareback" Shaw, the mistress of a nearby plantation, hosts evening parties for all the enslaved people in the area, ostensibly out of the goodness of her heart. In reality, she looks among them for handsome young enslaved men and picks from them to force them to have sex with her (since they're enslaved, they can't turn her down.) In "War Chest" she chooses Cato to spend the night with (to his disgust, as he had planned for Noah to do so), and Noah uses the opportunity to steal a gun and ammunition from her while she's distracted.
  • Suzanna tells Ernestine that she once had a "dalliance" with an enslaved man when she was a teenager.
• Wicked Stepmother: Suzanna is harsh and cruel to her husband's mixed-race children, James and Rosalee. Played with in season 2, when—after selling Ernestine away—she spoils James in attempt to make him love her more than his mother.
• Would Hit a Girl: August has no qualms about using violence against the female runaways he encounters. He also wants to kill Rosalee for stabbing his son Ben. In "The White Whale" he throws a knife at Elizabeth, cutting her hand.
• Would Hurt a Child: A white man comes close to whipping James until his older sister Rosalee takes the punishment for him.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: In season 2, Rosalee and Noah return to the Macon plantation to rescue Ernestine and James unaware that Ernestine has been sold to another plantation and is no longer the head of the house slaves.

---