‘DC’s Stargirl’: Inside The Bold, Hopeful New Superhero Series

If there’s one word that defines DC’s Stargirl, a new superhero series debuting today on the DC Universe streaming service and broadcast Tuesday nights on The CW, it’s “legacy.” Based on the comics character created by Geoff Johns and Lee Moder, Courtney Whitmore — played on TV by Brec Bassinger — is a type of hero that has come to define DC Comics, but has rarely appeared on TV: the legacy hero, one who picks up the mantle of a character that has come before, and makes it their own.

But it isn’t just about the history of Stargirl, who takes after the Star-Spangled Kid in the comics, and Starman (played by Joel McHale) on TV. It’s also about a legacy that’s woven its way through the entire, modern history of comic book based television; and a journey that started right at the beginning of showrunner Geoff Johns’s career.

“Geoff was very open and honest from the beginning about the inspiration behind Courtney,” Bassinger told Decider over the phone. “I mean, if you Google Stargirl, it’s one of the first things that comes up, so I knew going into it.”

For those of you reading this who haven’t Googled the story yet, one of Johns’s first jobs was working for Superman director Richard Donner, eventually working his way up to assistant. In 1996, Johns’s 18 year old sister, Courtney, was on board TWA flight 800 when it exploded and crashed. Donner immediately bought Johns a ticket home to be with his family, telling him there would be a job waiting whenever he wanted to come back. And Johns did, bringing his family to the set of the Julia Roberts/Mel Gibson starring Conspiracy Theory.

“It was the first time I remember them smiling and having fun since my sister’s death,” Johns stated in a note sent to press accompanying DC’s Stargirl screeners.

A year after visiting the set, Johns sold his first comic book to DC. Titled “Stars & S.T.R.I.P.E.,” the all-ages, family friendly book teamed up a girl named Courtney Whitmore and her step-dad Pat Dugan (played by Luke Wilson on TV). Together, the two took on super-villains in the small town of Blue Valley; her with a cosmic belt that shoots stars, him in a janky robot suit. Courtney, of course, was based on Johns’s sister.

Though “Stars & S.T.R.I.P.E.” wasn’t a big hit — even Johns calls his writing a little “green” in the forward to the first collected edition of the series — Courtney did catch on as a character, and it spurred Johns onto bigger writing assignments. His next job was co-writing another prominent legacy team, the Justice Society of America, who play into DC’s Stargirl as well. In the books, the JSA are the elder statesmen of the DC Universe, a team that was disbanded after World War II only to come back together years later, older and wiser. On TV, the JSA plays a major part, though mostly through the passing of mantles — in a parallel to what happens with Courtney.

“That’s part of what DC’s always been about, is evolution and generations and legacy,” Johns told Decider. “I love the contrast of generations, rather than being locked into one time.”

As Johns continued to move up the comic book ranks, legacy loomed large over the material he tackled: whether it was an acclaimed run on “The Flash” that found younger speedster Wally West trying to live up to his mentor Barry Allen; or bringing back classic character Hal Jordan in the best-selling “Green Lantern: Rebirth.” It’s a well that Johns would return to throughout his comic book writing career, digging into the core of classic characters, bringing them back to basics and then propelling them into the modern age.

It’s also something that served him well on the television side of DC’s projects. After writing a 2005 episode of Smallville, Johns was asked back in 2009 to write a follow-up episode introducing the future dwelling hero team — themselves inspired by the legacy of Superman — titled “Legion.” And it was here that Johns built another legacy for DC, one that has played out throughout the company’s TV offerings: working with director Glen Winter.

Though Winter had been working as a Director of Photography on the Superman origin show since 2002, it wasn’t until 2006 (the year after Johns’s first episode) that Winter tried directing. Since then, he became an old hand at it, leading into directing “Legion” in Season 8.

“I flew up to Vancouver where we shot it, and met him for the first time,” Johns recalled. “He invited me over to dinner, and we really got along. Had just a great time on that.”

From those inauspicious beginnings began a relationship that’s lasted over a decade. The following year, Johns and Winter were paired again on the two-part episode of Smallville that introduced none other than the Justice Society of America — and Stargirl (played by Britt Irvin). Around the same time, Johns was promoted to Chief Creative Officer of DC, and tasked with expanding the brand to other platforms; meaning TV, movies, games and more. It’s hard not to see this promotion, and working with Winter, as part of the success story of DC’s TV arm. In 2012, Winter worked as Director of Photography on Arrow, the show generally credited for kicking off the modern superhero TV craze in the same way Iron Man helped invigorate the movies for Marvel. Winter also worked as DP on sequel series The Flash, and directed multiple episodes of both, before becoming the de facto DC pilot guy. Over the past decade he’s set the tone with premiere episodes of Supergirl, Doom Patrol, and now Stargirl.

“Glen and I have worked together so much it was easier, with the shorthand,” Johns said.

Still, it took another career change, with Johns stepping back from producing TV and movies for DC and Warner Bros. and back to writing for him to return to his roots.

“I wanted to create something that was going to take everything that I’ve learned, and everything I’ve done, and put it into getting Stargirl and the JSA up-and-running and into a TV show,” Johns said. “The thing that we don’t see on DC programmed shows, and something that I think Stargirl and the JSA embody amazingly well, is a family-centered show about generations, about legacies… I took a lot of the tools from film and TV and comics, and used it all to manifest this into a show.”

Perhaps surprisingly, the first part of the cast for DC Universe’s Stargirl — The CW co-broadcasting deal would come later on — wasn’t casting the title character herself… It was perennial sidekick Pat Dugan.

“I had always written the part and seen Pat Dugan as Luke Wilson,” Johns said. “Since I saw Bottle Rocket way back when, I’ve been a huge fan of Luke’s. I wrote Pat Dugan with him in mind … And I didn’t know him. But I always envisioned him as the character, so I wrote the script with his voice in my head … I sent the script to him. We met, had a great lunch, he had all these fun ideas of him and Mike, his son. It was hilarious. We laughed a lot. And he signed on.”

It’s possible getting Wilson on board might have been a bigger job than Johns expected. Though Wilson has been working in Hollywood for decades since the aforementioned Bottle Rocket in 1994, a movie co-written with his brother Owen Wilson and directed by Wes Anderson, he’s rarely touched action franchises, let alone superhero films… With one exception: 2006’s My Super Ex-Girlfriend, which cast Wilson as the ex-boyfriend of Uma Thurman’s jilted superhero, G-Girl.

“That always just kind of seemed like more of a comedy, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, to me,” Wilson told Decider. “It just never seemed like that was that huge of a part of the story, it was more like kind of a relationship going wrong.”

That said, Wilson did note that he’s “played a lawyer, I’ve played a police officer, I’ve done westerns where I’ve kind of gotten to do all these movies I loved as a kid … so the idea of actually getting to be in a real superhero DC Universe project seemed really cool to me.”

It was at that dinner where Wilson was convinced to come on board DC’s Stargirl. Though he recalls only reading MAD Magazine as a kid, instead of superhero comics, the two bonded over coming up in Hollywood at the same time: Johns through a lucky cold call to Richard Donner’s office; Wilson doing the same with comedy mainstay James L. Brooks. But ultimately, it was the message Johns wanted to impart with the show that sealed the deal.

“It always stuck out to me that Geoff said, ‘I do wanna make a show with great action, but also that has a really good feeling and a good message,'” Wilson recalled. “I don’t know if it’s just being old or getting just a little more mature, but that really did appeal to me, making something that a kid could watch and really enjoy … I’ve shown some of it to Owen’s two boys and then my brother Andrew’s little girl and it’s the first time, to see them get quiet and really closely watch something and then asking me questions about the robot and what was it like to fly them… Those guys never show any interest in any aspect of my life!”

Courtney, however, proved to be a bit of a bigger challenge to cast. Rich Delia, who previously worked on Shazam! with Johns, as well as Swamp Thing for DC Universe, went through “hundreds” of actresses trying to find that spark they were looking for. And then Brec Bassinger walked in the room. “As soon as Brec came in and read, she was it,” Johns said. Bassinger, however, remembers things differently.

“I was at an interesting point in my career where I had just come close to this Amazon show and I had seen my future, I saw what it would look like and it fell through,” Bassinger said. “So I was in a negative headspace when I got the Stargirl audition and I wouldn’t let myself get excited, because I had done that in the past and it hadn’t worked out.”

Though it might seem to fans of the DC characters that Bassinger came out of nowhere, if you’re a fan of Nickelodeon she’s part of a legacy of her own. Her career kicked off in 2013 with a two episode stint on The Goldbergs, before nabbing a recurring role on the slime-time network’s The Haunted Hathaways. From there, she got the lead role on Bella and the Bulldogs, as well as one of the leads in Nick’s Liar, Liar Vampire. From there, she moved back to recurring status on Nick’s School of Rock, followed by a few smaller roles including in the theatrical thriller sequel 47 Meters Below: Uncaged.

“I was wanting to transition to something more mature but I still look too young to play an adult really, I’m realistic,” Bassinger said. “I know I look 15, so in my head if I had put out the perfect thing, I honestly thought CW. I remember auditioning for the new Sabrina show that’s now on Netflix, it was originally supposed to go on CW and I wanted it so bad cause I’m like, ‘This would be such a good career transition, it’d be perfect.’ It didn’t work out.”

In a roundabout way, the actress — who turns 21 later this month — would get her wish, when the show ended up airing on both DC Universe and The CW. It also worked out for Johns, who found the “heart and relatability” he was looking for in Bassinger. “I was on my way to the airport when Geoff called me and told me I got it, he’s like, ‘I didn’t want you to worry on your vacation, I want you to just live free,'” Bassinger recalled. “When Geoff called me and told me that I was Stargirl, I just broke down into tears and finally let myself be excited.”

With Courtney and Pat cast, the rest of the ensemble fell into place. For Courtney’s classmates and young heroes-to-be, Johns and company cast up and coming actors Yvette Monreal as Yolanda Montez a.k.a. Wildcat, Anjelika Washington as Beth Chapel a.k.a. Doctor Mid-Nite, and Cameron Gellman as Rick Tyler a.k.a. Hourman. But for the adult cast, Johns had something else in mind.

“Even the roles that weren’t going to be huge roles but were going to be important roles, like Rex Tyler, I wanted to have a legacy,” Johns said.

That meant casting Lou Ferrigno Jr., the son of TV’s Incredible Hulk, as the older Hourman; as well as Henry Thomas — best known for playing Elliot in E.T., as well as a recent breakout role on Netflix’s Haunting of Hill House, as the original Doctor Mid-Nite. And though she’s worked consistently for years, casting late ’90s early ’00s icon Amy Smart as Courtney’s mother, Barbara. “I mean, to get her, her and Luke reading together…” John said. “We did tests with them together. They were so good, they had so much fun. That was also as instant as [Brec].”

That legacy element doesn’t extend to one more member of the Dugan/Whitmore family, though: Trae Romano as Pat’s son Mikey. The Atlanta native instantly charmed the cast with his quick riffing, and though Wilson recalled that the father/son relationship was there on the page, “Trae was just such a funny, quick kid that invariably we would pitch ideas to Geoff.”

“He’s from Georgia but he has this like New York accent and it cracks me up,” Bassinger said. “Him and Luke together on set were just a trip, man.”

Once the whole cast was together, it was up to Johns to set the tone for the production. “I actually screened Back to the Future for the entire cast and crew before we even started shooting, so that they knew, tonally, this is where we want to live,” Johns said. “It’s a little bit nostalgic. A little bit of a throwback to those wonderful movies from the ’80s, like Back to the Future and E.T. and Goonies.”

Those of you looking to connect the dots might note that Richard Donner was the director and producer of Goonies, showing how years later Johns is still channeling his mentor on projects. And that sense of the fantastic mixed with emotional stories about families is clearly what DC’s Stargirl is going for. It’s not the action heavy tone of Arrow, or the dark heroics of Batwoman. Stargirl, as created by Johns, is channeling those ’80s family flicks, transported to the small town of Blue Valley, Nebraska.

If there are two technical elements of the show that sell that tone, they’re Pat’s S.T.R.I.P.E. suit, and the Cosmic Staff. In the books, the Cosmic Staff is a powerful tool and weapon passed down from Starman to Starman, until it makes its way to Stargirl, supplementing her Cosmic Belt. On TV, channeling ’80s movies like Batteries Not Included, the Cosmic Staff is a character in its own right, with a personality of its own. According to Johns, that’s an idea that wasn’t planned, but in fact popped up during the writing process.

“As I was writing the script, the staff really started to come alive and it just wouldn’t stop leaving Courtney alone,” Johns said. “It developed into its own character, and I love the character. There’s a whole story we have behind it.”

It was up to Johns to come up with the idea to make the staff sentient, but it was Bassinger’s responsibility to deal with it on set. As she tells it, the crew built a practical staff, then realized it needed to light up — adding a light beam to the massive prop.

“Well, that made it like super bulky and big and you could not do any stunts with it and they’re like, ‘Okay so I guess we’re just gonna have to CGI and visual effects it,'” Bassinger said. “But I’m so glad they did because it looks absolutely beautiful.”

For the actress, having to learn how to fight with the staff as well as relate to it as a person was “overwhelming, but by the end it was almost like a comfort blanket.”

As for Pat’s suit? Like most of Stargirl, that came about organically during the process. Initially, the pitch for “Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E.” was for a girl superhero teaming up with a robot. When an editor at DC Comics noted they were already publishing a similar concept, Johns and artist Lee Moder took it back to the drawing board, and came up with Pat, the former sidekick of the Star-Spangled Kid, wearing a mechanical suit as an adult to keep Courtney safe.

For Wilson, a relative fresh face to the world of science fiction and superheroes, getting in S.T.R.I.P.E., a mostly malfunctioning robot suit, seemed like an overwhelming prospect. So naturally he looked for tips from Han Solo.

“I can remember talking with Geoff about it at the beginning I said, ‘you know it really does make you like realize, somebody like Harrison Ford playing Han Solo, what a great job he did like selling all that stuff,'” Wilson said, “like the turbo thrusters and all that other-worldly dialogue that seems a little crazy on the page … So we even went back and watched some like Hans Solo stuff to just think, okay, you really gotta just play it like a fighter pilot.

“But it’s just a Tuesday afternoon and you’re just sitting in this box and there’s a camera right in your face and they’re like, ‘Okay, Brainwave’s in front of you,’ and things like that where you think, ‘How the hell am I gonna do this?’ … My first impression was how good the people are that do it well, and that I just wanted to do a really good job myself.”

Eventually, Wilson got more comfortable with the dialogue and the experience of sitting in a “box” for most of the day, but was humbled by the learning experience. “it’s not a no brainer,” he said. “You have to think about it, and you want it to kind of look cool, for sure.”

For Bassinger, her super-suit was almost the opposite experience. “The first time walking onto set with [the suit on], and it was like 2 am,” Bassinger recalled, “and we were all so tired, we were probably on hour 11 of the day… [But] putting it on, it was one of the first times I truly felt like Stargirl. When I had it on I was like, ‘Oh, this is me. I booked it. I got it.'”

With the suits on and the superheroes in place, it was up to the cast to form those heroic — and familial — bonds, something that led to a surprising realization for Wilson. “I’d been kidding around with a friend of mine saying, ‘I went into this thing thinking, look, I’m kind of the elder statesmen, I’m gonna be teaching these kids how it’s done, it’ll be like when I got to work with Hackman and Nolte’,” Wilson recalled. Instead, Wilson ended up learning from Bassinger.

“She’s one of those people that didn’t just know her dialogue, she knew your dialogue and was really, really impressive,” Wilson continued. “She worked as hard or harder than anybody on that project and it certainly changed my mode of thinking from, ‘I’m gonna teach these kids how it’s done,’ to, ‘Oh shit, I’d better get organized here.'”

When told about Wilson’s reaction, Bassinger giggled, noting that the elder actor’s, “sense of humor is self-deprecating, that’s just him, he’s as humble as they come.” Still, she agreed with his assessment of the amount of work. “I was working insane hours, I really got to know everyone on that set; but I feel like Luke and I together in a scene, there was this calmness on set… People were just able to relax. So, I love that he said that, but I think it was us two, together.”

With the good guys in place, it was time to bring on the bad guys. And the villains who go up against this new Justice Society are no joke, it’s right there in their name: The Injustice Society of America. The team, in various iterations, has always gone up against the JSA. But for TV, like with most of the show, Johns picked liberally from multiple comic book sources — specifically his “Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E.” run, with the tantalizing idea that the adults in Courtney’s new home town don’t just seem evil; they are evil.

Noting that they’re like, “Nazis in Argentina post-World War II,” Johns constructed a bad guy team including: Sportmaster, an often maligned baddie who uses sports equipment to dish out serious beatings; Tigress, a master of physical combat; Dragon King, a mysterious and deadly killer; Icicle, who uses cold powers; The Wizard, a magician; The Gambler, a, you know, gambler; and biggest of all, Solomon Grundy.

“I really wanted to use Solomon Grundy,” Johns said. “We’ve never seen a live action version that is 12 feet tall.”

Grundy is a mostly undead swamp creature with incredible power — think The Hulk, but also a zombie — and also, like most of the villains, has ties to the legacy of the JSA. In the comics, Grundy killed the original Star-Spangled Kid, making him an easy fit. While other characters like The Gambler came from, “both the writers’ room and then Luke and I joking around on set… We wanted to both be fun and have emotional reality and stakes to it.”

There was one final, crucial element of the show that had to fall in place, though: writer James Robinson. Known for his critically acclaimed best-selling run on DC’s “Starman,” as well as his rejuvenation of the JSA, which led directly into Johns’ second comics writing job, the mythology Robinson built was a crucial cornerstone of what Johns was trying to accomplish with DC’s Stargirl. However, other than a relatively recent run on Wonder Woman comics, Robinson has been relatively quiet in his career in recent years. And when it comes to Hollywood, has had a spotty record: he wrote and directed the 2002 cult favorite Comic Book Villains, and a year later the critically maligned film adaptation of Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

“I called him up after I sold the show and it was going, and I said —- he lived in Vegas — ‘I want you in the writers’ room’,” Johns said. “He’s a good friend of mine and … he’s been working on comics and he knows the DC Universe so well… It just felt like the right thing to do.”

That, in essence, is what has guided Johns and company throughout the 13 episodes of DC’s Stargirl‘s freshman season: following their hearts, and doing what’s right — channeling the heroes inside the show, on the outside. That’s also most likely why the series will feel like such a breath of fresh air in between the grim super-heroics of DC Universe’s shows, as well as The CW’s more grown-up heroes, where Stargirl will air a day later, in a slightly abbreviated form (Johns noted that though most of the episodes of the run hit the network requisite 42-32 minute length, some will run longer on DC Universe, including the pilot which has an additional 10 minutes of material).

And when DC’s Stargirl does air, it will join a legacy of superhero series that stretches back almost a decade, and a dream Johns has had for nearly his entire career.

“I would hope that it’s something people can have fun with,” Johns said. “Especially right now. I hope it’s something that people co-view with their parents or kids or friends. I hope that they find an appreciation for the Justice Society of America, for the last generation and the next generation … I want other people to see the greatness in these characters, too. If we see a daughter and her father dressed up like Stargirl and S.T.R.I.P.E at a convention, I’ll be thrilled. That’ll be my ultimate… For people to be inspired by these characters and find new characters to love. Because there’s a lot of characters out there, and these characters deserve to be loved, too.”

DC’s Stargirl airs Mondays on DC Universe, and Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW.

Where to watch DC's Stargirl