The DC Universe streaming service has, for the most part, done well with original programming. Sure, Swamp Thing ended before it could get off the ground and Titans is something of a hot mess, but Doom Patrol and the animated Harley Quinn were both fun enough for Warner Brothers to poach both for HBO Max as well as DC Universe. And then there was Stargirl, a show featuring a character I can’t say I was ever a huge fan of the character. Oh, I don’t dislike her or anything, but I wouldn’t go out of my way for her either.
But what started as a series for a niche streaming service was picked up by the CW, and that first season just ended, so, how was it?
Stargirl follows the adventures of young Courtney Whitmore (Brec Bassinger). Courtney is a talented high school gymnast from the West Coast whose family, meaning her mother Barbara (Amy Smart), stepfather Pat (Luke Wilson), and stepbrother Mike (Trae Romano), moves to Blue Valley, Nebraska in the middle of nowhere. However, though Courtney isn’t too pleased to be out there, her attitude changes when she finds the cosmic staff of the late hero Starman (Joel McHale). For reasons unknown, the staff seems to wake up for Courtney, something it didn’t do for anyone else.
It turns out Pat was once a sidekick of sorts to Starman, under the name “Stripsey”, and he was a witness to the death of most of the legendary Justice Society of America at the hands of the Injustice Society of America. Pat knows a lot about this stuff, but what he doesn’t know is the ISA is doing something in Blue Valley since they didn’t go away. They just went underground. Fortunately for Courtney, Pat’s a good mentor when he can be talked into it, and his classic car changes into a giant robotic suit, a somewhat appropriately goofy-looking thing that has a revving engine when it moves.
It helps that Bassinger plays Courtney as a sweet, winning character. She just decides to be a hero, no matter how much Pat tries to discourage it, and that’s that. Heck, she takes it a step further, recruiting other kids at her new high school to join her revived JSA, and just as it must be TV where the friendly, attractive new blonde student is also an outcast for some reason, so too does she manage to win over other outcasts by joining forces with motormouthed nerd Beth Chapel (Anjelike Washington), brooding deliquent Rick Tyler (Cameron Gellman), and social pariah Yolanda Montez (Yvette Monreal) to fill in for the other new JSA members, using the original members equipment and costumes that, since it’s TV, conform to fit the wearer.
Quite frankly, the whole season dealt with Courtney learning first to be a hero, then a team player, and finally a team leader as she and her new friends took on a threat that eliminated a lot of experienced heroes a decade earlier. The ISA were a formidable group though it did seem as if their team leader, the Icicle (Neil Jackson), went from a powerful Machiavellian figure that seemed almost unstoppable to someone who went down in what seemed like a rather easy manner as the season drew to a close.
Stargirl, ultimately, is an above average high school superhero drama. It will probably fit in just fine over on the CW, and it may even allow the new network to work in some Arrowverse crossovers in the future. Courtney wouldn’t look a bit out of place helping out the Flash or Supergirl from those shows, and tonally, it’s a better fit for this series than the more mature-minded DC Universe…whatever is going on over there considering the way shows have been shuffled around the last few weeks. If the DC Universe service goes the way of the dinosaur, at least Stargirl will have a chance to continue to win over audiences on a network that wasn’t set aside just for diehard DC Comics fans.
Grade: B
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