Assuming her spirit was actually there in Sebastian’s room, I have to wonder what the message is if Sylvia’s ghost would still choose to return to care for this little white boy even after the outpouring of grief at the funeral from her own daughter who felt neglected in favor of the white children in Sylvia’s care. Why wouldn’t she just move on and enjoy her afterlife or pay ghostly visits to her own family? I don’t know the rules of the afterworld, and I don’t know the particulars of how ghosts and supernatural entities function in “Atlanta,” but it’s not a good look, you know?

The reason why I’m inclined to believe that her spirit was there is that Sebastian insisted on his mother being in the room with him earlier in the episode, stating that Sylvia always used to stay with him, patting his back and singing to him until he fell asleep. By the end of the episode, he doesn’t ask for his mom to stay in the room, and then makes a point to say goodnight to Sylvia. Given the fact that ghosts and the supernatural are a recurring theme on the show, it’s not a stretch to assume that her ghost is actually present, and that bugs me for one major reason.

In the piece about the history of Black wet nurses and caregivers that I linked earlier in this review, the author mentions that the false stereotype of the “Bad Black Mother” who loves the white children in her care more than her own Black children was used as an excuse to justify the exploitation of their labor and bodies. This excerpt from the article sums it up quite well,

“The widespread stereotype of a ‘Bad Black Mother’ justified this practice. It propagated the idea of a mythical Mammy who loved the white children and took them under her care while she cold-heartedly disregarded her own.

The Mammy was also portrayed as a cruel mother who deserted her own children and family for the service of her owners to enjoy the comfort of house labor which was often not available for slaves.”

Because of the way the episode ends, it seems as though the show is at least partially reinforcing this narrative rather than critiquing it, which is troubling and yet another example of the show’s questionable depictions of Black women and Black motherhood that I’ve already mentioned several times over throughout my reviews. To be clear, I don’t expect any piece of art or media to only portray Black women (or anyone else) as paragons of moral righteousness and perfection; in fact, I find perfect characters boring and unrealistic. The issue lies in the fact that “Atlanta” seems particularly concerned with pushing negative, stereotypical, one-dimensional caricatures of Black women, and it makes the show hard to watch at times. In the case of Sylvia, she clearly cared for her family and had a life outside of being a caregiver, but she’s also dead before we get to see any of that. It’s all just frustrating because I want to enjoy the show, but it’s difficult to do that given the circumstances.