The CW Deserves Kudos For Successfully Adapting One Of The Greatest Superhero Teams Of All Time

The CW has brought many DC heroes to life over the years, and that includes one of the best superhero teams of all time, and it happened in an underrated TV show. James Gunn’s DCU is doing well for itself right now. The franchise just saw the theatrical release of its latest movie, Clayface, and is getting ready for Man of Tomorrow in 2027.

Beyond its movies, the DCU’s Chapter One has also featured both live-action and animated TV shows, ensuring that there is a nice variety of tones, characters, and stories and the shared universe gets off the ground. Years before the DCU started, DC’s Arrowverse TV shows formed one of the most successful and important shared universes to date. The Arrowverse worked when the DCEU failed.

Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and more shows helped build a strong universe. The franchise’s main attraction was its interconnectivity, with several high-profile crossover events over the years, and always having the possibility of heroes showing up in each other’s shows. The Arrowverse featured many superhero teams. That said, The CW did not live of only Arrowverse series when it came to DC.

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While characters from the show appeared through archival footage at the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths as a cameo, Stargirl is only part of the larger multiverse, not the main Arrowverse. Due to that, the show is one of DC’s most underrated. More fans should watch it, as not only is Stargirl one of the most exciting superhero series to date, but it is all about one of the comics’ biggest superhero teams.

Stargirl Shows How Important And Exciting DC’s Justice Society Of America Is

At the center of Stargirl‘s story is the Justice Society of America. This is an early team in DC lore that would eventually make way for the Justice League in the present day. That said, as far as Stargirl is concerned, the JSA is all that matters. The show follows Brec Bassinger’s Courtney Whitmore, who becomes the title hero after she connects with the Cosmic Staff, the powerful weapon that originally belonged to Joel McHale’s Starman. As Stargirl reveals, the evil Injustice Society of America attacked the JSA, and it was thought that most of the superhero team’s members were killed off in the attack.

This opens the door for Stargirl to be a show about a new generation of DC heroes rising to replace the ones that came before. As such, led by Courtney, a group of teenagers, some tied to the original JSA members, some not, become part of the new Justice Society of America, restarting the DC team’s roster. Eventually, several original players from the iconic team show up, both in flashbacks and in the present, and this leads to some interesting dynamics. Tying Stargirl to the Arrowverse is the fact that John Wesley Shipp reprises his Arrowverse role of The Flash, aka Jay Garrick, in the show.

While many non-comic book readers might only know about more popular teams like the Justice League and the Teen Titans, the Justice Society of America has rich lore in DC Comics and some of the franchise’s best heroes. Besides The Flash, the team is also famous for including players like the Green Lantern Alan Scott, Doctor Fate, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, and many more. Those who did not watch Stargirl might have gotten to see some of those characters in the DCEU, as Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam movie marked the JSA’s debut in that shared universe.

While Black Adam does a great job when it comes to presenting the Justice Society of America in action against a worthy opponent, The CW’s Stargirl series (originally a show on the DC Universe streamer) goes way deeper into what makes the characters tick, creating more complex heroes and building ties between the audience and the characters, which makes it all the more exciting and emotional when they are in dangerous situations. Stargirl deserves praise for the thoughtful way it adapted the JSA in live-action over three seasons.

Stargirl