The Freeman family takes a joyful photo with Old Mo, dressed up by Baz in a baseball cap and mustache.

Two masked robbers break into the Freeman home and shoot Baz; Old Mo shatters as it falls; Ebby witnesses everything.

Ed and Soh wait excitedly for Ebby's wedding to begin, but Henry Pepper and his family never arrive.

Kandia is kidnapped from her African village after raiders kill her husband and take her and her family captive.

Kandia dies of illness on the voyage from Barbados to America, and Moses loses the clay goat she made him.

Moses is put to work at the Oldham pottery in South Carolina and secretly inscribes his initials on every jar he makes.

Moses is given permission to marry Flora, and her younger brother Willis begins assisting at the pottery.

Flora dies from a snakebite in the fields, and a grieving Moses begins secretly writing inscriptions into the bottoms of his jars.

Master Oldham's nephew Jacob rapes Betsey and then forces her death when she continues to resist him.

Willis discovers Moses's hidden inscription on the bottom of a storage jar and disappears from the plantation two weeks later.

Willis acquires a fake badge, loads belongings into the jar, and stows away on a northbound ship at the port city docks.

Willis is spotted as a stowaway but Black crewmen intervene, hiding him aboard ship by putting him to work.

Willis reaches Massachusetts, establishes himself as a free man, and takes the legal name Edward Freeman.

Ebby tells Henry that she has always believed the robbers who killed Baz were specifically there to steal Old Mo.

Ed reveals he secretly retrieved and repaired the shattered Old Mo; the Freemans decide to open a museum gallery to share it.

An enslaved potter named Moses creates a stoneware jar in South Carolina and secretly inscribes it with a message born from grief after witnessing terrible injustice. When Flora's brother Willis discovers the inscription, he is inspired to escape, stowing away on a northbound ship with the jar and establishing a new free life as Edward Freeman in Massachusetts. Generations later, the jar—nicknamed Old Mo—is the Freemans' most prized heirloom, until a robbery claims the life of fifteen-year-old Baz and shatters both the jar and the family. Ebby Freeman spends the next nineteen years defined by that tragedy, and the wound is reopened when her fiancé Henry abandons her at the altar, sending her fleeing to France. After a painful confrontation with Henry in France, Ebby discloses that the robbers were specifically targeting Old Mo, a revelation that begins unlocking the family's long silence. When Ed reveals he secretly repaired the shattered jar, the Freemans reclaim their history and open a museum gallery to share it with the world.

The headline story of Old Mo, from plantation to museum.

After Henry fails to appear at his own wedding, Ebby cancels the ceremony and returns home in a stunned daze.

Ebby boards a plane to France, relieved to finally escape the public scrutiny that has defined her life.

Ebby slips and falls into a river after recognizing that the man accompanying a stranger to the guesthouse is Henry.

Grandma Bliss scolds Baz for informal speech and reminds both children that Black people are always scrutinized and must conduct themselves with excellence.

Ed tells Baz and Ebby the story of how Old Mo was central to his romance and eventual marriage with Soh.

Kandia, enslaved on a Barbados plantation, is given surplus clay to work with and uses it to make Moses a toy goat.

Ebby spends the night with Robert, a local man she meets at a village café, feeling momentarily free from her past.

Avery, unable to locate Henry for hours, approaches Ebby and asks for her help in searching for the missing man.

Henry is found by police after slipping on a hike, injuring his ankle, and losing his phone in the river.

Ebby and Avery visit the seaside together and discuss the legend of Melusine, a fairy-woman rejected for failing her lover's expectations.

Willis makes his first visit to the port city and sees enslaved workers wearing badges stamped with the word FREE.

Willis meets the sailor Frenchie, who shares stories of life at sea and says that a man can have fear and still live.

Police confirm the murdered woman was killed by her partner rather than Henry; Ebby and Avery laugh together in relief.

Ed confesses to Soh about receiving insurance money for the jar and shows her the small piece of wood with a burned X.

Museum visitors read Moses's inscription on the base of Old Mo and embrace the jar; his hidden words are at last revealed.

From Kandia shaping pottery on a Barbados plantation to Willis encountering his first visions of freedom at the port city, the secondary moments of Good Dirt fill in the rich texture of a family's long arc toward liberation and healing. In the present day, Ebby's flight to France is both an escape and a beginning—marked by a comic tumble into a river, an unexpected night with a local man named Robert, and a cautious friendship forming with the very woman who replaced her. While Henry's disappearance and a nearby murder create genuine panic, the mystery's resolution clears space for Ebby and Avery to laugh together for the first time. In the historical past, Willis's encounters with Frenchie and the sight of badges stamped with the word FREE plant the seeds of his eventual escape, making possible everything the Freemans will become. The pool closes with the public revelation of Moses's inscription at the museum, as visitors finally read the words that launched a family dynasty.

The secondary moments that shaped Ebby's journey and the Freeman legacy.

Ebby reflects that her identity has been stamped by an award-winning photograph of her traumatized ten-year-old self taken at the crime scene.

It is revealed that Ebby kept a pregnancy secret from Henry and later suffered through a miscarriage entirely alone.

Henry, sitting in at his father's bridge group, overhears a family friend remark that the Freeman jar was broken during the robbery.

Soh and Ed marry, and his parents present the couple with Old Mo as a wedding gift.

Ebby begins writing down the history of Moses and Betsey, sensing that documenting Old Mo's stories might help her heal.

Aquinnah's parents are cast out of their community and find their way to Massachusetts guided by a scrap of wood with a burned X.

Willis establishes Old Mo in the Freeman family kitchen as a secret drop point for notes passed between freedom seekers heading north.

Willis's sons leave to work on whaling ships, and Aquinnah finds their letters tucked inside Old Mo.

Willis gifts Old Mo to his grandson after his son's return, and the jar passes into the next generation as the family's most prized possession.

Ed, burdened by a secret he cannot share with Soh, abruptly leaves home to stay with his parents.

When Henry comes to the Freeman home to apologize, Soh slaps him across the face for abandoning Ebby at the altar.

Ebby confronts her father at his parents' home and finally discloses that she has always known the robbers were after Old Mo.

The robbers' perspective reveals they were hired by Tucker, an insurance-industry man, who died before ever facing justice for Baz's murder.

Ed gives a speech at the museum gallery opening, telling the public that his family's history is an inseparable part of American history.

Moses survives the Civil War, opens a pottery and brickmaking business with a partner, and takes on two young apprentices.

Beneath the main storyline lies a web of secrets, decisions, and revelations that drive the Freemans toward truth and reconciliation. Henry's inability to confront what he overheard about the jar is the quiet spark that leads him to abandon Ebby, while Ebby herself has carried a hidden pregnancy loss and a deeper guilt—believing she caused Baz's death by begging him to play one more game of hide-and-seek. The historical chapters reveal how Old Mo became a vessel for freedom-seekers' messages and how the Freeman family grew across generations, from Willis and Aquinnah to Eliza the physician. As Ed quietly separates from Soh and Ebby finally confesses what she has always known about the robbery, old silences are broken and wounds are named at last. A chapter from the robbers' perspective exposes Tucker, an insurance-industry man, as the one who hired them—a man who died before ever facing justice. The pool ends with Ed's triumphant public speech and Moses's quiet epilogue of survival, both affirming that the mind cannot be chained.