WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Kung Fu Season 1, Episode 5, “Sanctuary,” which aired Wednesday on The CW.
While Nicky Shen begins to discover the full extent of the mysteries behind the mystical weapons linked to her mentor’s murderer, the search takes a moment to reflect current events as hate crimes and police brutality come to San Francisco’s Chinatown in the latest episode of Kung Fu. And as the Shen family reacts to these timely issues coming literally to their door, they find themselves at a personal crossroads.
As Nicky and Henry enjoy their blossoming romance between martial arts sparring sessions, the couple continues their research behind the Mystical Weapons Zhilan is trying to recover. Learning legends of the weapons and how they helped China repel Mongolian invaders centuries ago, Nicky recalls seeing an apparition linked to Pei-Ling’s sword while she was training at her monastery. Channeling Pei-Ling’s lessons on ancient mysticism, Nicky is able to make the black obsidian on the scabbard glow green, much to Henry’s visible astonishment, and realizes this is how they can track down the remaining weapons.
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As Jin and Mei-Li buy groceries for the family restaurant, they observe that hate crimes targeting Asian Americans are on the rise. Nicky and Henry run into their own troubling incident in Chinatown, with an unarmed Black teenager named Andre shot by the police after being mistaken for a robber, dying the next day from his wounds. In the wake of protests against police brutality across the neighborhood, Mei-Li is horrified when the restaurant’s storefront is vandalized. While Nicky and Jin initially give activists passing by bottled water, the protests turn chaotic when riot police are deployed, employing tear gas to disperse the crowd.
As the Shen family opens up the restaurant to allow activists a place to shelter from the police’s unrelenting response, internal pressures between the family begin to form. Althea has concerns of her own, torn over telling Dennis about her past trauma enduring workplace sexual abuse from her former boss, with Nicky urging her to tell her fiancé as her sister’s stress over keeping the secret becomes noticeable. Ryan’s boyfriend Joe is then identified as a person of interest by the police for allegedly inciting the crowd, but Nicky’s ex-boyfriend and assistant district attorney Evan gives her the heads up the police intend to search the restaurant for him.
While Joe prepares to willingly surrender to the police, Nicky leads her family — including Mei-Li — in standing up and being volunteered to be arrested instead. However, as the police prepare to call for reinforcements to bring everyone in, Althea shows video evidence disproving police reports that Joe incited the crowd. Realizing their case won’t hold up in court, the police depart empty-handed. Mei-Li confesses that her hardened response to the protests was that the shooting and vandalism of the restaurant triggered traumatic memories of the family being harassed by racists when the Shen children were young. Later, Mei-Li visits the streetside memorial to Andre alone, sharing a quiet moment with Andre’s mother.
In the aftermath, Ryan and Joe privately decide to take their romantic relationship to the next level, with Joe especially impressed by how much Ryan and his family stood up for him. And as Nicky and Henry continue their research of the weapons, one of Henry’s contacts alerts them that he has located an obsidian dagger that glows just like the recovered scabbard. The Shen family has weathered current events and grown closer as a family, but Nicky has to turn her attention back to weapons capable of laying waste to entire armies.
Executive produced by Christina M. Kim, Martin Gero, Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter, Ryan Berens and Warner Bros. TV, Kung Fu stars Olivia Liang, Tzi Ma, Kheng Hua Tan, Tony Chung, Jon Prasida, Shannon Dang, Eddie Liu and Vanessa Kai. The new episodes air Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
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