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TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews The Naomi Series Premiere!

January 12th, 2022 by Todd Black Comments

One could argue that in the long history of the Arrowverse, Naomi is the biggest risk they’ve taken. More than Supergirl (because most would say they prefer a Superman show) or Black Lightning (because he’s a character not all are familiar with) or even Legends of Tomorrow (because it was made to be a show about B and C-List DC Comics characters). The reason for this is that Naomi…is a VERY new comic character in DC Comics. Her first “season” of life was just 5 issues long, and now she’s in the Justice League…and thus her lore is still growing.

So the fact that the CW picked up a show about Naomi despite this is very interesting (they also tried to do this with Wonder Girl from DC’s Future State, but it didn’t work out), and it will be curious to see how they handle things. But in regards to the pilot…they did a good job.

Key among this is how they depicted Naomi McDuffie (the last name of which was put on her to honor the late great Dwayne McDuffie), played by Kaci Walfall. We see Naomi as we would any regular teenager who knows who she is, what she likes, and how to handle herself. She has friends, she has her quirks (via being the runner of the 3rd-best Superman fansite in the world), she has relationships (both male and female…) and she has a loving adopted family.

And while this may sound regular…sometimes that’s what makes the best hero characters! Oliver Queen was rich, Superman and Supergirl are from another world that try to be like humans, Barry was trying to save his father’s life, and on it goes. With Naomi (for now at least), she’s just a regular girl living her life.

That is, until an event comes to her small town. Specifically, “Superman” comes to town and causes a stir. But when he does, something happens to Naomi and that leads to her trying everything she can to try and get answers to her MANY questions.

This is another key part of what makes Naomi special from the other Arrowverse shows. The mystery isn’t just about what happened in her town, it’s about what happened to her, and as the viewer finds out at the end…who Naomi really is.

Trust me when I say (as I read Naomi Season 1), that answer is very complicated, so again, it’s going to be very interesting to see how they interpret the lore we do have (and the lore that is coming up in Season 2 and Justice League) into a CW show.

For right now, they’re doing a good enough job of teasing lots of things, spacing it out, and making people wonder what is going on. If they keep that approach, it could work out for them well.

Obviously, this wasn’t a flawless arrival. It had your stereotypical wooden acting at points as it was a pilot (especially from the character Dee), and your typical CW-drama with relationships (and heavy-handed dialogue about that as well), but given that it’s the pilot, you can hardly fault them for not being fully into their characters just yet. Stephen Amell was incredibly wooden in the Arrow pilot and he was legendary by the time Arrow was done. So I’m fine with waiting for things to gel.

The other thing here is that while Naomi (the character) is hard to define in terms of powers and such (as it’s still being defined in the lore), the show didn’t do a good job of making it clear what Naomi can do. Sure, that’s part of the mystery, but the leaves in the forest scene was odd in various ways.

Add to that, characters like Dee and Zumbado are very different from how they are in the comics (especially Zumbado), so that might throw the ones who have read the series and were expecting to see a bit more of that than what we got.

Still, even with that, Naomi had a very strong start. I’m curious to see what happens next, and how this very curious mystery unfurls.

4/5

Todd Black is reader of comics, a watch of TV (a LOT of TV), and a writer of many different mediums. He's written teleplays, fan-fictions, and currently writes a comic book called Guardians (guardians-comic.com). He dreams of working at Nintendo, writing a SHAZAM! TV series, and working on Guardians for a very long time!