Exclusive: ‘Black Cake’ teaser clip shows Benny grappling with her mother’s secret

Spoiler alert! This article has major plot details from from Hulu's "Black Cake."

Episode Four of Hulu's "Black Cake" ended on the show's biggest cliffhanger so far, and fans will soon learn how Byron and Benny will react to their mom's latest shocking revelation.

During the first three episodes of the series — based on the best-selling book of the same name by Charmaine Wilkerson (a Read With Jenna book club pick) — siblings Byron (Ashley Thomas) and Benny (Adrienne Warren) slowly pieced together their mother's backstory. They assumed they uncovered her biggest secrets. But as Episode Four concluded, their mom unexpectedly revealed on an audio tape that Byron and Benny had another sibling somewhere in the world.

In Episode Five, Byron and Benny grapple with the news — and TODAY.com has an exclusive clip from the fallout.

Byron comforts his sister in the preview as Benny starts spiraling, wondering if their older sibling was the reason she had a complicated relationship with their mother. When he tries to assure Benny that their mother truly loved her, she pushes back.

"It doesn't matter if she loved me," Benny replies. "I always thought that I was just living in your shadow, but it wasn't about that. She was comparing me to her."

She adds, "She was comparing me to a fantasy of her, which is even worse."

Fans will have to tune into Episode Five, out Nov. 14, to see if Benny can forgive her mother and welcome her older sister with open arms.

'Black Cake' plot: What's this show about?

Benny and Byron's secret sibling is one of many twists in the drama series, which tells the story of one family's hidden past.

The show is a family drama wrapped up in a murder mystery that stretches back decades, starting in the late 1960s when a runaway bride named Covey (Mia Isaac) vanished into the surf off the coast of Jamaica. She's feared dead or assumed to be a fugitive on the run for her new husband's murder.

Fifty years later, a widow named Eleanor Bennett (Chipo Chung) dies and leaves her two adult children, Benny and Byron, a flash drive with previously untold stories of her journey from the Caribbean to America.

Finally ready to confront the past, Eleanor recounts her journey in a series of audio clips that she recorded as her health declined.

'Black Cake' trailer

TODAY.com exclusively revealed the first trailer for “Black Cake” back in October.

The story flashes between the past and present, with Eleanor’s two children discovering how their mom escaped her troubled upbringing and built a new life for herself.

Eleanor also leaves behind one of her classic black cakes — a rum-soaked Caribbean dessert usually served at special occasions.

“I want you to sit down and share the cake together when the time is right,” Eleanor wrote in a note in the book. “You’ll know when.”

How to watch 'Black Cake'

The show — from Marissa Jo Cerar, Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films, and Aaron Kaplans’ Kapital Entertainment —  premiered the first three episodes on Hulu Nov. 1. New episodes arrive every week.

"Black Cake" also stars Lashay Anderson, Faith Alabi, Glynn Turman, Ahmed Elhaj, Simon Wan, and Sonita Henry.

Is 'Black Cake' based on a true story?

For her debut novel, Wilkerson said the idea of a story tied to black cake came to her when she was writing short stories outside her nonfiction work.

She told Eater in December 2022 that it occurred to her the dessert could connect different threads and characters.

"That’s when I realized: 'That’s it. This is a novel, it’s multigenerational, and I can see a great deal of symbolism tied to this cake,'” Wilkerson told Eater.

She said she was inspired by her later mother, who was born and raised in Jamaica and "always had a few cakes going." The cakes can take months to make.

"Without a doubt, I would not have imagined this story if I hadn’t been born to a woman who made a legendary black cake," Wilkerson told Eater. "My aunt and other people who knew my mother, who also made this cake, always said, 'Oh, your mother’s is the best.' My mother also made wedding cakes: It’s that particular role of the black cake that is more prominent in the novel 'Black Cake'; it’s more associated with the idea of wedding pageantry."

What is in actual black cake?

Also known as plum pudding or Jamaican rum cake, traditional black cake is made with sweet red wine, rum-soaked raisins, cherries, prunes or other dried fruit.

Browning of the sugar contributes to the dark color of the cake and flavor, along with spices, vanilla and molasses.

CORRECTION (Nov. 14, 9:00 a.m.): An earlier version of this story misspelled actor Ahmed Elhaj's name. The story has been corrected.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com