I was so excited for this premiere! I was counting down the days for months for Stargirl to come back! And when the time finally came to sit down and watch it, I saw that first glorious scene panning over Blue Valley with Neil Diamond's "America" in the background, I saw Starman helping fix the house and the Whitmore-Dugan's coming home from their Yellowstone vacation, and I thought to myself... Oh yeah, we're in good hands here. I let my guard down. I let myself just enjoy everything that was happening on screen. Because it's Stargirl. It's Geoff Johns making this show. And if there's one thing Stargirl is great at, it's characterization (most of the time. The Shade is inconsistently written at best, Jenny had very mixed reception and don't think I forgot that Geoff Johns let the writers CW Beth last season. Yeah, CW is a verb now). I'll say for the first... Fifteen minutes of the episode, I was *in*! And then there was a commercial. And another. And another. I counted no less than SIX COMMERCIAL BREAKS in my watch, and once the end of the episode hit I realized something... After that first fifteen minute mark... Nothing frickin' happened! And what did I do? I put my guard back up, because this season ALREADY has the same problems as season 2!
I honestly didn't expect some of the stuff the writers did and the details they paid attention to! For example, the Yellowstone vacation was first mentioned in the season 2 premiere "Summer School: Chapter One", which means the Whitmore-Dugan's finally ended up going on that family vacation after all! Good for them! Barbara mentions that Sylvester fixed the kitchen that Jenny and Courtney destroyed in "Summer School: Chapter One". Maria from the diner is trying to make the Shade's tea that he mentioned in "Summer School: Chapter Two". I *love* little details like that because it would be *so* easy to just disregard stuff like that in-between takes, so when the people making the movie or show remember little details like that, I think it should be celebrated because it means the people making the movie or show care about their jobs!
In terms of the characters, Stargirl still seems to be going strong! In fact, it seems like they fixed a lot of the character consistency issues from season 2 by removing what didn't work. The Shade's had his screentime noticeably reduced, Jenny's gone, Jakeem... Still doesn't have anything going on, but they wouldn't recast the Thunderbolt if they didn't have plans to do *something* with him this season, right? But the standout of the episode was absolutely Sylvester Pemberton!
I am *shocked* at just how many parallels they drew between Sylvester and Courtney. Obviously I knew that he was going to be sticking around for the whole season, but I figured he'd be in more of a background role to just show Courtney a few things and maybe teach her how to do some move that would help her in the season finale after Starman dies. And for the record, yes, I do still think Starman's gonna die. This is still the CW we're talking about here, people. No straight white man is safe unless the show explicitly spells out that they have Plot Armor, like Barry Allen for example. But no, they actually drew parallels between Sylvester and Courtney's life. Yeah he came to take the Staff back (by the way I *adore* that they both call it "Cosmo" since that's the name Courtney gave it last season), but once he saw that it had chosen a new wielder, he respectfully backed off, but he still feels like a part of him is missing. He doesn't have anyone or anything left for him except the Starman persona, and Courtney's actually able to sympathize with that since that was her entire arc in seasons 1 and 2! Courtney's core character wound is getting overly attached to the Stargirl persona for one reason or another, be it because her dad was a deadbeat, or because she's scared that her friends are all gonna leave her now that the mission's over, so when Courtney understands Sylvester and makes a compromise to share the Cosmic Staff, I actually really liked that! It's so easy to just ditch your character arc from the previous season once your character seems to have overcome it, but Stargirl goes the extra mile to *use* what the character learned from that arc to help other characters grow. Aka: Stargirl does something very, very basic that used to be commonplace but isn't anymore, because CW.
Then there was all the stuff with the Gambler. Now I don't buy for a second that he regrets joining up with the ISA, but I do believe he wants to change for his daughter, and not just because I'm 90% sure his daughter might be Courtney's age and join the JSA later on this season. Just a hunch, I haven't heard any casting details about Hazard potentially showing up. No, in just one scene they actually made me believe that Gambler wanted to be a better person. How? Well, they finally connected him with the pattern of the other members of the ISA (except the Shade, but after this episode he's now the only one that doesn't fit the pattern). For those of you that don't know, the ISA are all objectively horrible people, but in one-way or another they all try to be good parents. Except Dragon King who literally sees his daughter as a failed experiment, but he's the exception that proves the rule. Icicle encourages his son Cameron to live his life despite his (Icicle's) wife's death. The Fiddler's the principal of the high school that teaches her son to stand up for himself... In her own way. The Wizard encourages his son to pursue closeup magic despite everyone around him thinking that it's lame. The Crocks love their daughter so much that they will literally break out of and then *back into* prison just to watch her football tryouts. And now, the Gambler fits the pattern of the others. I also appreciated that they tied his development into Courtney's core character wound about him being a father that wasn't there for his daughter, but now wants to be. Ladies and gentlemen, we have *literal supervillains* that are better parents than Sam Kurtis and I love it!
So it seems like the episode was a roaring success on the character front, so what's the big deal?... The pacing. Again. Call me a broken record, but while I very much appreciate all the characterization, that's not the only thing you need to make a great show! You also need to have a great plot, which means that something needs to happen in your episodes! In my opinion, *this* was the biggest problem with season 2, and believe it or not, that seems to be the *one* thing that they didn't fix! Maybe this is just a one-episode thing since in all fairness there are almost too many characters for the season to juggle so they needed to do a lot of setup, but let's try to not make stuff like this a habit. Let's try to get the plot moving along this time so that it doesn't feel like this season is moving along slower than traffic at 5pm on a Friday.
Also, on The Flash there would've been a pointless flashback every time that a character said "Eclipso" in this episode. Thankfully, the writers of this show don't treat their audience like idiots. Thank you.
So on the whole, this was a good return to the show in my opinion. Courtney's using what she's learned in her character development to help people, people are unwittingly tying things into her core character wound, she's still clearly the main character and thank god for that. The show's (almost) never not sucked at character stuff and they don't start here, but the pacing of the main plot is still not moving at the pace it should be! And considering that the season's main plot is supposed to be a *single* murder, I have a sinking feeling that we're in for a looooooooong season.
7 / 10.
I honestly didn't expect some of the stuff the writers did and the details they paid attention to! For example, the Yellowstone vacation was first mentioned in the season 2 premiere "Summer School: Chapter One", which means the Whitmore-Dugan's finally ended up going on that family vacation after all! Good for them! Barbara mentions that Sylvester fixed the kitchen that Jenny and Courtney destroyed in "Summer School: Chapter One". Maria from the diner is trying to make the Shade's tea that he mentioned in "Summer School: Chapter Two". I *love* little details like that because it would be *so* easy to just disregard stuff like that in-between takes, so when the people making the movie or show remember little details like that, I think it should be celebrated because it means the people making the movie or show care about their jobs!
In terms of the characters, Stargirl still seems to be going strong! In fact, it seems like they fixed a lot of the character consistency issues from season 2 by removing what didn't work. The Shade's had his screentime noticeably reduced, Jenny's gone, Jakeem... Still doesn't have anything going on, but they wouldn't recast the Thunderbolt if they didn't have plans to do *something* with him this season, right? But the standout of the episode was absolutely Sylvester Pemberton!
I am *shocked* at just how many parallels they drew between Sylvester and Courtney. Obviously I knew that he was going to be sticking around for the whole season, but I figured he'd be in more of a background role to just show Courtney a few things and maybe teach her how to do some move that would help her in the season finale after Starman dies. And for the record, yes, I do still think Starman's gonna die. This is still the CW we're talking about here, people. No straight white man is safe unless the show explicitly spells out that they have Plot Armor, like Barry Allen for example. But no, they actually drew parallels between Sylvester and Courtney's life. Yeah he came to take the Staff back (by the way I *adore* that they both call it "Cosmo" since that's the name Courtney gave it last season), but once he saw that it had chosen a new wielder, he respectfully backed off, but he still feels like a part of him is missing. He doesn't have anyone or anything left for him except the Starman persona, and Courtney's actually able to sympathize with that since that was her entire arc in seasons 1 and 2! Courtney's core character wound is getting overly attached to the Stargirl persona for one reason or another, be it because her dad was a deadbeat, or because she's scared that her friends are all gonna leave her now that the mission's over, so when Courtney understands Sylvester and makes a compromise to share the Cosmic Staff, I actually really liked that! It's so easy to just ditch your character arc from the previous season once your character seems to have overcome it, but Stargirl goes the extra mile to *use* what the character learned from that arc to help other characters grow. Aka: Stargirl does something very, very basic that used to be commonplace but isn't anymore, because CW.
Then there was all the stuff with the Gambler. Now I don't buy for a second that he regrets joining up with the ISA, but I do believe he wants to change for his daughter, and not just because I'm 90% sure his daughter might be Courtney's age and join the JSA later on this season. Just a hunch, I haven't heard any casting details about Hazard potentially showing up. No, in just one scene they actually made me believe that Gambler wanted to be a better person. How? Well, they finally connected him with the pattern of the other members of the ISA (except the Shade, but after this episode he's now the only one that doesn't fit the pattern). For those of you that don't know, the ISA are all objectively horrible people, but in one-way or another they all try to be good parents. Except Dragon King who literally sees his daughter as a failed experiment, but he's the exception that proves the rule. Icicle encourages his son Cameron to live his life despite his (Icicle's) wife's death. The Fiddler's the principal of the high school that teaches her son to stand up for himself... In her own way. The Wizard encourages his son to pursue closeup magic despite everyone around him thinking that it's lame. The Crocks love their daughter so much that they will literally break out of and then *back into* prison just to watch her football tryouts. And now, the Gambler fits the pattern of the others. I also appreciated that they tied his development into Courtney's core character wound about him being a father that wasn't there for his daughter, but now wants to be. Ladies and gentlemen, we have *literal supervillains* that are better parents than Sam Kurtis and I love it!
So it seems like the episode was a roaring success on the character front, so what's the big deal?... The pacing. Again. Call me a broken record, but while I very much appreciate all the characterization, that's not the only thing you need to make a great show! You also need to have a great plot, which means that something needs to happen in your episodes! In my opinion, *this* was the biggest problem with season 2, and believe it or not, that seems to be the *one* thing that they didn't fix! Maybe this is just a one-episode thing since in all fairness there are almost too many characters for the season to juggle so they needed to do a lot of setup, but let's try to not make stuff like this a habit. Let's try to get the plot moving along this time so that it doesn't feel like this season is moving along slower than traffic at 5pm on a Friday.
Also, on The Flash there would've been a pointless flashback every time that a character said "Eclipso" in this episode. Thankfully, the writers of this show don't treat their audience like idiots. Thank you.
So on the whole, this was a good return to the show in my opinion. Courtney's using what she's learned in her character development to help people, people are unwittingly tying things into her core character wound, she's still clearly the main character and thank god for that. The show's (almost) never not sucked at character stuff and they don't start here, but the pacing of the main plot is still not moving at the pace it should be! And considering that the season's main plot is supposed to be a *single* murder, I have a sinking feeling that we're in for a looooooooong season.
7 / 10.