Death by Lightning
tv·TV-MA·Nov 6, 2025·
Death by Lightning earns its low 2/10 woke score by delivering straight historical drama on Gilded Age politics and the Garfield assassination with zero modern identity overlays or social-justice messaging.
"Death by Lightning" is a four-episode historical drama centered on the real 1880-1881 events of James Garfield's Republican nomination, election, and assassination by Charles Guiteau, with its core narrative exploring Gilded Age politics, the spoils system, and machine politics through traditional storytelling.
The series maintains period-accurate casting and portrayals of documented figures like Frederick Douglass and Roscoe Conkling without any identity-politics framing, modern social-justice overlays, or thematic emphasis on systemic oppression. Creator focus stays strictly on the era's political events rather than activism, resulting in an overall woke score of 2/10 despite isolated online criticism of background casting that did not alter the drama's approach.
Methodology: Each score synthesizes audience discourse, critic and aggregator reception, and press coverage — weighed against the work itself, not any single source.
See how this title scores across all 5 woke subcategories with detailed explanations.
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We've run a full content analysis on Death by Lightning and scored it 2/10 on the woke scale. Read our detailed breakdown above to see exactly what we found.
Our analysis checks for themes like identity politics, race-swapping, gender ideology, environmental activism, anti-religious messaging, and other progressive agenda elements. The score breakdown above shows which specific categories were flagged and how heavily they factor into Death by Lightning's overall score.
Wokeometer focuses on ideological content rather than traditional ratings (violence, language, etc.). Death by Lightning is rated TV-MA. For a full picture, combine our woke analysis with the age ratingto decide if it's right for your family.
We evaluate media across multiple ideological categories on a 0–10 scale. Scores of 0–3 mean story-first, 4–6 have moderate elements, and 7–10 flag heavily agenda-driven content. Learn more about our methodology →
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