DC’s Stargirl is the superhero show for our time

DC’s Stargirl is the superhero show we need right now!

It’s not even hyperbole to call DC’s Stargirl the best superhero show on The CW right now.

In fact, just nine episodes in, it might not even be hyperbole to call it the best superhero TV show that has ever aired on The CW. We’d apologize to the fans of the Arrowverse, but we really, really don’t feel there’s anything to apologize for.

Stargirl is just vastly superior.

Visually, to begin with, the show looks like a movie, one with really deep pockets, at that. The colors vibrate, the fight scenes are perfectly choreographed, and nothing, absolutely nothing about the show feels cheap.

Then, there’s the main relationship on the show.

So many of the problems with The CW batch of DC superhero shows have come from bad setup of the main relationship a show is supposed to be based on. Arrow sabotaged Lauriver before it even started. The Flash kept WestAllen away from each other for way too long, not to mention doesn’t give them that much love now, and Supergirl has never actually figured out what they want to do with Kara’s love life, to name a few.

But let’s focus on Supergirl for a moment, because Supergirl actually had the right idea. The main relationship in a show doesn’t have to be a romantic one. Supergirl can – and at times has – been about the love between the Danvers sisters. Everything else could have been secondary.

Everything else should have been secondary.

Stargirl does what Supergirl only intermittently managed, and focuses on a platonic, familial relationship as its core – that of Courtney and her stepdad, Pat. It does so, however, without neglecting the rest of Courtney’s family (stepbrother Mike and mom Barbara) and without making Courtney into a pariah with no friends.

Because Courtney has friends. No, she has more than that, she has a team, a new JSA ready to conquer – or at least, to learn how to conquer – the world.

This is another way the show succeeds. Pat and Courtney’s relationship is the glue that holds the show together, the way they grow from awkward to working together, to trusting each other, and then yes, to each other’s family, but Courtney has relationships with other people, she’s got friends, and those friends don’t exactly look and feel the same way as the friends in other shows feel.

Not just because there’s no romantic tension between the members of the JSA, no time spent in who’s going to get together with who, and how that will break up the team, but because the JSA itself looks more like, well, like any superhero team should look in 2020: diverse.

There’s a Latina! There’s a Black woman. And the one white guy isn’t automatically the leader; he’s just a sullen, moody teenager trying his best to figure it out, like the rest of them.

Being a superhero is a hard business, y’all. And Stargirl, especially because it focuses on teenagers, has to straddle the fine line between the fact that they are teenagers, and teenagers will make rash, impulsive, dumb decisions more often than not, and the reality that they are also, you know, the Justice Society of America.

Not to mention it also has to give us compelling villains, despite the fact that some of those villains are kids, as well.

That the show succeeds the way it does is a testament not just to incredibly charismatic actors and writing that seems to be really cognizant of what the heart of this show is, but to the care that has gone into every little part of Stargirl. This is Geoff Johns baby, after all. It’s a show based on a character he created to honor his late sister, Courtney, and you can tell by watching it that this doesn’t just have heart, it’s all heart.

It’s also fun, though. And heartwarming, funny at times, and incredibly touching at others. And, as someone who was, once upon a time, a teenage girl, I think it’s a better reflection of what high school actually is than most other teenage dramas on TV.

Even when you add the gadgets and the super-villains.

Hey, it’s 2020. We all need to believe in something, whether that be superheroes or something else. And you could do far worse than believing in Stargirl, that’s for sure.