More food for celestial thought: “If you’ve lived for eons, are there moments you forget of your existence? Are there parts of you that start to become dormant if you don’t pay attention to them?” Badaki wonders.

“She journeys into her DNA, she get to literally dance with the ancestors,” she continues. In the torture scene, therefore, what we’re witnessing is Bilquis going on an internal search.

I am the current manifestation of them, and I stand on the shoulders of giants that have been sent by many before me.” “I like to point to the fact that the ancestors are literally in our DNA,” Badaki says. In an interview with TVLine, Yetide Badaki says her Old God character “is rediscovering the Orishas” - after all, when you’ve been around since the dawn of man, you’re bound to forget a face or two. (Meanwhile, the guards watching Bilquis saw her shimmying to music only she could hear and assumed they’d broken her.) “I am she who has always been,” she declared, dancing and parrying with Oshun. “You are whoever you want to be.” The visit certainly bucked up Bilquis, who began moving her body in a joyful celebration of her identity.

“You are not who they say you are,” Oshun told her.

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