Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm here to talk about the first season of Stargirl. There will be spoilers because there's so much I want to talk about that I can't without spoilers. So, if you haven't watched this show please do so before reading this review. Let's get into it.
Season 1 of Stargirl is probably the best first season of a non-Superman DC Comics based show since the first season of Arrow aired ten years ago. Oh sure we've had good first seasons with The Flash and Superman & Lois, and even Supergirl, but with the first season of Stargirl being an adaptation of Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., the comic book series that debuted Courtney Whitmore, rather than just a general adaptation of the Stargirl mythos. Though I'm sure there's alot of material from James Robinson's and Johns's runs on JSA that made it into the season too. Mainly because the Justice Society of America plays a big role in the season.
As I said in my review of the first four episodes of the series, Courtney, Yolanda, and Pat are my favourite characters and they remained so throughout the season. However, there isn't actually a character who is unlikeable. And that includes the villains. Sure, they're evil scumbags whose goals included the mass murder of millions of people, but the individual members of the Injustice Society of America were a thousand times more interesting than the Joker, Lex Luthor, and the Reverse Flash. I mean they're on the level of Deathstroke in season 2 of Arrow with a bit of Malcolm Merlyn from season 1 of Arrow thrown in there for good measure.
One of the reasons that Yolanda, a.k.a. Wildcat, remains one of my favourite characters of the show is that in the season finale she prevented Rick, a.k.a. Hourman, from killing Solomon Grundy, but she had no problems killing Brainwave for what he'd done to his son, who was also her ex-boyfriend, Henry, just three episodes earlier. Henry had died while he and the new JSA were escaping from the ISA's hideout so that the JSA could get away. She doesn't want her teammates to have to face that kind of decision even though she's willing to face it herself if it becomes necessary. Similar to how Oliver killed the bad guys on Arrow, but didn't want Roy or Thea or Laurel to have to make that same decision. And that intrigues me every time.
As for Courtney herself, I love how optimistic and happy she is as a character. So often with these lead superhero characters, you have these broody and angsty characters and that just weighs down on the audience eventually. But having a character who is bright, cheerful, and optimistic, but can have moments of doubt livens up the show. That's why Anson Mount's version of Captain Pike is so fun to watch on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
While some characters didn't have as much to do as others did, until closer to the end of the season, I don't feel like any character was ignored. Everyone had something to do in every episode they appeared in. Nobody was wasted in an episode they were in. And none of their plots were unnecessary. Which, again, in alot of these superhero shows, even the more recent Marvel Disney+ ones, you end up with characters that end up not doing anything and are just kind of there. That wasn't the case here. Every character had a purpose.
Outside of Courtney and the JSA, I think my favourite storyline in this whole season was Henry King Jr's. He's the son of Brainwave and he started to develop the same kind of mind powers that his father had after Courtney and Pat had inadvertently placed Brainwave into a coma. But, he started off as the stereo-typical jock character, including his connection to Yolanda's storyline of her dealing with the aftermath of her sending nude pictures of herself to Henry. Which, he didn't actually send to anybody. Cindy did, as she'd taken Henry's phone and sent the pictures to everyone. At first I thought it was for the petty reason that Cindy and Yolanda were rivals for the role of student council president, as that's what it seemed like from the flashback at the beginning of episode 4, "Wildcat" (my favourite episode). However, we learn later on in the season, only three or four episodes later, that Cindy did it because she and Henry were put together by the Dragon King and Brainwave so that Cindy could monitor Henry in case his powers developed. And her being the daughter of the Dragon King, Cindy decided to get Henry away from Yolanda by ruining her life, which is the typical, petty, high school thing to do. So that was fascinating.
While Jordan, a.k.a. Icicle, was an interesting main villain, I think Cindy is probably the most fascinating villain of the entire organization of the ISA. Which I wasn't sure how she'd be handled, just because I know her story from the comics, and going in with that knowledge, I was afraid it wouldn't work quite as well on TV as it did in the comic, but I think it worked even better on the show than it did in the comic. Basically the Dragon King, a.k.a. known war criminal Dr. Shiro Ito, who was also Cindy's father, experimented on Cindy when she was a child to turn her into a living weapon. And judging by the two fights she and Courtney had in the middle of the season, it worked, because Cindy was a tough opponent for Courtney to beat. However, she's also impulsive and lost control of her powers when she was younger and ended up killing her mother, which caused Ito to rethink his plans concerning Cindy. But seeing that progression was fascinating given that the comic didn't really get much time to explore the character of Cindy as Courtney spent a couple of issues with Young Justice, away from Blue Valley following her initial fight with Cindy. But, that's a conversation for another time.
What impressed me the most about this show is how character driven rather than story driven it was. All of the characters, heroes and villains, are so interconnected with one another that one character's storyline ends up having some kind of effect on another character. Like the whole Cindy/Henry/Yolanda triangle, or Courtney and Icicle or Pat and Rick, who is a pretty cool Hourman. Or even Beth's parents and Brainwave. And because of that web of interconnected character storylines it keeps the show interesting in a way that past superhero shows on The CW can't. If you look at shows like Smallville, Arrow, and The Flash even with the 23 to 26 episode seasons, you could have characters with storylines that never intersect with anything else going on with the rest of the cast. So like on Smallville Lana could have a storyline that has absolutely nothing to do with what Clark has going on that season or doesn't at least connect to what's going on in Clark's storyline. Even in the seasons where they're dating. Now, the show did a little bit better in the latter part of the show where more superheroes were involved and where Lana isn't there but Lois is. But still, compared to Stargirl, Smallville had an extremely large cast of characters and it was impossible to work all of them in. Especially in the later seasons.
I could go on and on about the characters because that's what makes this show work so well. I've always said that superhero shows and movies don't work if you focus on their powers or you write the story in a way that doesn't leave room for the characters to grow and develop. Especially for the shows because if all goes well you'll be with those characters for ten years or more. Just like in the comics. And if you don't like them, or can't connect with them on a human level there's no point to telling that character's story.
Earlier I said that episode 4, "Wildcat" is my favourite episode. And that's true, but my other favourite episode was episode 10, "Brainwave Jr." Despite their animosity towards Henry, both Rick and Yolanda were able to set that aside to help him and Courtney try to rescue Henry's dad, who didn't have any memories from the previous ten years from the time Henry's mom was killed up to when Courtney and Pat fried his brain in episode 2. Unfortunately things didn't work out the way they planned and the team was forced to watch Henry die protecting them. I'll be honest with you, I cried a little bit when Henry died. Not only was he part of Yolanda and Courtney's storylines, but he had his own strong storyline that developed throughout those first ten episodes.
There is so much more I could talk about with this season because that's how dense it is with amazing storylines, characters, and concepts. But I think I've talked about Stargirl enough for this season. I highly recommend watching it if you can because it is such a good show. I also have two more seasons to watch too. Though season 3 will have to wait until probably a year from now because the Blu-ray won't be out until probably probably the second or third quarter of the year, which is sometime between April and September, and I won't get it until Christmas or my birthday. But maybe if it comes out sooner rather than later, I'll grab it ASAP. Then again, it's available on iTunes, so I might grab it digitally so I can watch it and then get the Blu-ray at a later date. We'll see though. For now I've got season 2 to watch.
That my friends is going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with my review of Stargirl season 2 as well as a review of Stargirl by Geoff Johns, which collects the entire original Stargirl run Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. which Johns created and DC published from 1999 until 2000. And my review of Willow season 1 will be out on Wednesday as the season finale drops on Disney+ on Wednesday morning. So until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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