'The Good Lord Bird' Episode 6: Has Onion become the omen that Ethan Hawke's John Brown refuses to heed?
In the very first episode of the show, John Brown gives Onion a feather. The feather is from the large and presumed extinct Ivory-billed woodpecker that is so beautiful that people exclaim, "Good Lord" whenever they see it. Later, Frederick Brown spots the "Good Lord bird" when he is out walking with Onion and tells him the bird is a lucky omen and the feather is a lucky charm. Onion gives him the feather since it seems to hold so much meaning from him. The bird flies off as it sees men approach and minutes later, Frederick is shot dead by those men. The bird, in its own way, does warn them of danger but is ignored.
Similarly, Onion is also considered a "good luck charm" by John Brown. He doesn't see Onion as a complex person in his own right and even mistakes his gender. He only sees Onion as a mascot, a symbol -- something pure and beautiful, just like the "Good Lord bird" that needs to be protected and saved. And just like the feather proved to be unlucky for Frederick, Onion was unlucky for John Brown and his men in this episode. By forgetting to tell Brown the Rail man's phrase "Jesus is Walking", the black men that the Rail man had brought into town for the attack never disembark and the Rail man is killed because of a misunderstanding.
However, as a defeated Owen tells Onion, nothing about the fiasco that is the Harper's Ferry attack can truly be his fault. Too many things were wrong with his father's plan, from the shifting of the date, to how he had proceeded without ensuring that enough Black men would gather to support their cause.
But in the larger story, Onion has always been the omen John Harper never pays attention to. In Episode 4, for instance, Onion spots a man in the crowd of listeners, who looks dangerous and "smells like bear" -- the mark of a federal officer. But when he waves the feather in the crowd to get Brown's attention on the dais -- the pre-decided warning signal -- John Brown's eyes are closed. Later, this same man turns out to be a con man who winds up stealing all of the money Brown has collected. Brown again chooses to ignore Onion's warnings about giving this man their money. Later he misinterprets Onion's sarcasm about "not needing money" as a wake-up call to recruit men for the cause rather than guns and money.
Thus Onion is always signifies something to Brown -- a girl, a good luck charm, a mascot, and someone who induces epiphanies. But what he thinks Onion signifies never ever corresponds to what Onion is actually saying or Onion's actual point of view.
When Onion shows up to rectify his mistake of not sharing the "Jesus is Walkin'" phrase, Brown is overjoyed to see him. To him, Onion is the omen that everything is going to turn out right even when Onion is trying to tell him he has made a critical error. And as we see, Onion's mistake results in the Rail Man getting shot, which makes the Black men who had turned up to fight too scared to disembark. Onion comes back and confesses and still John Brown believes that the "bees will hive"; that enslaved Black people will miraculously join the fight, take the guns from the armory they have commandeered, and seed the start of a revolution. But at the end of the episode, we see how John Brown's inability to really see or hear Onion spells doom for him and his men.
'The Good Lord Bird' airs on Sundays on Showtime at 9 pm ET/PT.