Mike thinks he’s found his way into the JSA with everyone else but things go from weird to worse very quickly.

One of the things I really like about Stargirl is that it never forgets anyone. Mike could easily just be the comedic little brother character who just saunters into shot every so often with a one liner but instead the show has chosen to make a three-dimensional character out of him. Yes, he’s still a slacker and a bit of a doof, but he also has a genuinely good heart, and wants to feel a proper part of his family now that his Dad, step mom and step sister are all involved in super-powered crime fighting.

Unfortunately, he has no powers, but a random borrowing of a pen from his step sister’s room leads to just the sort of wild shenanigans you might expect when a basically decent but slightly irresponsible teen gets otherworldly abilities and the chance to use them. The actual use of the powers is fairly straightforward – tackling bullies and so on. But when the others discover what he’s done, Mike actually gets a genuine chance to help the gang while Pat gets a wake-up call about exactly how well his son has been coping of late. Spoiler alert – not well.

Meanwhile, the gang have the Shade to contend with – a man of such undoubted evil and bad motive that they must immediately take him down. Except, is he? A confrontation with the villain doesn’t quite lead where the team might expect it to – certainly the man is sinister in the extreme and seems to have designs on getting hold of an incredibly powerful artefact, but it’s not clear exactly what his agenda might be. Or even if he has one, at least one which concerns either Blue Valley or the JSA.

Elsewhere, we get some solid character development for the other members of the team. Rick is still quietly feeding (we assume) Solomon Grundy in the woods, but he also has time for a team-mate clearly in distress. The way he spots this, and the way in which he chooses to approach it and give advice, show a real level of maturity and growth to the character. Again, someone who could easily have been one-note gets a lot of depth instead. As to Yolanda, she’s still very much suffering from the guilt she feels at having killed a man, however evil he might have been. When she reaches out for a bit of advice, it’s a surprise who it is, and also what they end up revealing.

The nice thing about season 1 of the show was that it really managed to keep the viewer guessing as to exactly how nefarious the designs of the villains might be, and took the time to present them as rounded individuals, not exactly sympathetic but certainly (mostly) understandable. Here, it seems we are in for more of the same.

Verdict: Surprising, mysterious and genuinely moving in places. Great stuff. 9/10

Greg D. Smith