Superman is a reporter. Batman is an industrialist. The Incredible Hulk is a physicist. Even superheroes have jobs to do, obligations to fulfill, errands to run. In Supacell, five South Londoners unexpectedly discover that they have superpowers. But they still have real-world problems, and life doesn’t just stop because you can travel through time with a snap of your fingers.

This was always important to series creator Rapman, he tells Tudum. “I want to tell a story about powers, but with normal people [who have] relationship problems, problems with their children, problems with their siblings, problems at work, problems on the streets.”

Across the series’ six episodes, these five newly minted superheroes adjust to the powers, applying them to their everyday lives — while also doing battle with a mysterious agency that seeks to capture, control, and maybe kill them. As the series races toward its explosive finale, the characters also grapple with the fact that, despite their superpowers, they can’t always change the world. The real power lies elsewhere.

Who are the five? 

All five characters are Black Londoners living their lives. Working stiff Michael (Tosin Cole) is looking forward to his wedding to Dionne (Adelayo Adedayo). Andre (Eric Kofi-Abrefa) is working to provide for his son and find a job despite his criminal record. Rodney (Calvin Demba) longs for a better family relationship. Sabrina (Nadine Mills) deals with a cheating boyfriend and looks after her sister Sharleen (Rayxia Ojo). Tazer (Josh Tedeku) is the leader of the Tower Boys gang, but he also looks after the elderly grandmother who raised him. He’s grown up hardened by the belief that his mother abandoned him, though we later learn that she, too, had superpowers, and likewise caught the attention of the shadowy agency.

It was important to Rapman that the action be grounded and relatable. (The show makes use of a real London housing estate, Thamesmead.) “I never understood, after watching so much superhero stuff, why do you get powers and then you get a costume like spandex and a cape and a mask?” he tells Tudum. “I’m like, ‘Yo, ain’t you got bills to pay? And you still got to go to work?’ ”

Where do their powers come from?

It’s eventually revealed that the “supacell” which grants the five their powers is a mutation of sickle cell disorder, a hereditary condition particularly common in Black people, that affects the shape of red blood cells. 

“Every time I watch a superhero show, I’m very obsessed with where the powers came from,” Rapman says. In conceiving Supacell, he wanted to start the superhero drama from a recognizable place: an inherited condition. Rapman hopes this superpowered twist on sickle cell disorder would “make the people with it feel empowered, make them feel seen, just give them a voice.”

What are their superpowers?

Tazer has the power of invisibility, Andre has super strength, Rodney has super speed and healing powers, Sabrina has telekinetic abilities, and Michael can travel through time and space.

Rapman recalls filming the Episode 2 scene in which Tazer first shows off his powers as a pivotal moment in the series. “I said, ‘Guys. Guys, guys, guys. Your friend has just shown you he’s supernatural or something. You don’t know what it is, but this is not human. What would your reaction be?’ … You want it to be realistic because just as important as the power, is that the reaction to the power is as grounded as normal. That’s how you start thinking, ‘This is what a real superhero show is like.’ ”

Michael’s powers are crucial in another tone-setting scene. At the end of Episode 1, the powers he can’t yet control suddenly bring him to the future; Michael sees eerie, cloaked figures emerging from a portal — and meets his future self, who halts time and warns him that his fiancée Dionne will die in a few short months.

Future Michael gives present-day Michael some hope, telling him it’s still possible to save Dionne, and insisting that “the ones in the hoods did this to her.” It’s here that future Michael urges his younger self to track down Tazer, Andre, Sabrina, and Rodney. So Michael goes about assembling a superteam of his friends and neighbors — watched all the while by Ray (Eddie Marsan) and his agency, and hunted by the hooded figures.

Who are the hooded figures?

While aesthetically imposing, the enigmatic hooded figures are actually no different than other supacell-powered folks — only they’ve been hired by the mysterious agency to hunt other supacells, one revelation of many in the stunner-filled Season 1 finale.

Rapman intended for the hooded individuals to appear otherworldly, right up until it’s revealed that they’re everyday people who’ve been hired to do a job. As he tells Tudum, “It’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ve got all this power, but I still need money.’ … When you see the hunters come out and pull off their hoodies, you’re thinking, what is that? Is it an alien? But when you see their faces, you realize they’re the same as [other supacell holders], they just chose the money. Even with their extraordinary power, they’re still being weaponized. They’re just guns for hire. That’s just their work uniforms. Afterward they go out and party, go home to their families, or whatever.”

While we learn about the hooded hunters, their employers are largely a mystery.

Who is the agency hunting and holding supacells captive?

In the simplest terms, Rapman sums up the agency this way: “If I can just move my hand and bring out fire, the fact is I’m a weapon, right? So, in their mind, they have to police this. They have to teach you how to control your powers. This organization doesn’t think they’re doing bad.”

Ray and his boss, Victoria (Sian Brooke), are impersonal, anonymous bureaucrats, whose job happens to be the suppression of normal citizens who threaten to upend the social order. “I believe them as villains, but they think they’re doing what’s good. They feel like if those [supacell] people get out untrained, they could kill millions. They see that [imprisonment] as a small sacrifice. I think you get really get to see how society thinks.”

That cold logic rears its head when Ray convinces Andre to work for him as an agent, promising a generous salary and bonuses for every supacell-enhanced person brought in alive. Andre’s first assignment? To bring in Sabrina, Rodney, Tazer, and Michael. Ray insists that he only wants to help. As for Andre, he just wants to take good care of his son, AJ (Ky-Mani Carty).

Is Tazer a ‘bad guy’?

Throughout the show, the sup’ed-up characters still face their day-to-day problems, extraordinary people dealing with ordinary obstacles and moral dilemmas painted in everyday shades of gray. 

Rapman points out the importance of not reducing characters to simply “good” or “bad.” Though Tazer can be short-fused and vicious, he’s not violent just for the sake of violence. He’s missing his mother and reeling from the betrayal of his mentor-turned-nemesis, Krazy (Ghetts). Even though Tazer has teetered toward redemption, he’s far from perfect. “He’s very violent out there, but you see how he looks after his grandma, how he treats his friends,” says Rapman. “You can see he’s got a good heart. [If] you cross him, he’s really dark. He doesn’t just turn good. It takes years to change old habits like that, and I wanted people to know that these characters are flawed.”

As Rapman explained to Netflix, this nuanced approach to Tazer was inspired by his youth: “For me who grew up in South London, for most years of my life, I only saw Tazer’s world. And certainly, as I got older, I realized there was so much more going on and that not everybody was in a gang war. So it was important that that was there. But it was important that Tazer wasn’t just labelled as a monster.” 

Who is Krazy?

Gang leader Krazy’s beef with Tazer escalates over the course of the season, and he also dates Sabrina’s sister, Sharleen, before she goes missing. But that’s not all. In the finale, during a confrontation with Tazer and Sabrina, Krazy reveals that he, too, has supacell abilities: He can mimic the powers of anyone he comes in physical contact with. He turns their powers on them in a climactic melee, in which Tazer, Sabrina, Rodney, and Michael clash with Krazy and a group of hooded hunters that includes the newly hired Andre. Michael’s fiancée, Dionne, is present as well — and though he uses his powers to overwhelm the supervillain, he’s unable to save the civilian Dionne from a horrible, prosaic fate: death by gunshot wound.

Is Dionne really dead?

“There’s no coming back from the dead in this show,” Rapman says. So there you have it. Michael’s powers are vast, but finite.

This wasn’t always the plan. Rapman loves killing off characters (“I tell my cast all the time: ‘OK, one more of those, man, you’re not making Season 3’ ”), but originally, the intention was simply that Michael’s superpowers would slowly alienate him from the best and most comforting things in his life. “Honestly, she wasn’t meant to die,” Rapman says. “The original ending was, [Michael] didn’t tell her that she was going to die. He didn’t tell her what he saw in the future. And he kept on not telling her, even though she kept on saying, ‘What is the problem? Why you acting so different? You’re coming home late, you’re leaving early. You’re just a different person.’ And he always figured that if I tell her, she can never live her life. So she said, ‘Listen, I can’t take this no more. I feel alone, and it’s either you tell me or I’m leaving.’ … So he started realizing the only way to save you is to let you go.”

Instead, we’re left with a changed, darker Michael, one embittered by experience and bent on revenge. A few days after Dionne’s death, Michael summons his four supacell-powered friends to a meeting where he announces plans to go to the future and find out who is behind the mysterious agency that’s hired hunters to come after them, kidnapped Sabrina’s sister, and murdered Tazer’s mother.

Before disappearing in a snap, Michael, with glowing eyes, makes one last vow: “I’m going to the future, getting all the information I can, and when I come back, they’re all gonna fucking pay.”

Is Krazy actually dead?

Supacell’s final scene takes us to the agency’s facility once again, where Ray walks past a number of supacell-gifted humans locked in rooms, including Sabrina’s visibly distraught sister, Sharleen. Ray visits Krazy, who is resting in a bed, clinging on to life after being rescued by the agency. Krazy apologizes for failing to wrangle Michael and company, but Ray’s boss, Victoria, is unwilling to give Krazy another shot. She nods at an armed guard who enters the room with a weapon in hand. While we don’t see what happens, the sound of gunfire and Krazy’s pleas for another chance falling silent indicate that he’s been killed.

In the final moments, Victoria tells Ray that letting him run the agency has resulted in failure. “Now we do things my way,” she announces as the season concludes.

Keep coming back to Tudum for more information about Supacell.