‘Swarm’ Recap, Episode 1 and 2: ‘Stung’ and ‘Honey’

“Who’s your favorite artist?” is the question Swarm poses in its first moment. If you’re Dre (Dominique Fishback) and Marissa (Chloe Bailey), it’s the Ni’Jah, Swarm’s version of Beyoncé. They both love the pop star so much that one kills herself after going through a personal tragedy that mirrors Ni’Jah’s Festival: a masterful musical project accompanied by visuals that announces that the world’s most famous woman has been cheated on.

This is one of a long string of real-life events that co-creators Donald Glover and Janine Nabers’s Swarm will depict through Dre’s story. When Lemonade dropped in 2016, a now-debunked news article circulated about a woman named Marissa Jackson, who supposedly committed suicide after listening to the project. But Swarm isn’t just a retelling of real-life events: It’s a dark comedy fused with a thriller. Another inspiration was a tweet Glover saw about serial killers. Nabers recalls it as reading: “Why does every Black woman on TV have to be a therapist, or a funny best friend, or someone looking for love, or a teacher? We can be crazy; we can be serial killers, too.”

With these two overarching ideas, Swarm kicks off in 2016 in Houston. From her throaty voice to the visuals she releases, it’s not a secret who Ni’Jah is based on — and Dre and Marissa are two sisters who share a love for her. As teenagers, they ran a Twitter fan account called The Swarm. Now young adults living together, they’re hustling for rent and navigating the grown-up world. Except Dre hasn’t shaken her childish obsession with…