Naomi – Pilot review S1 E1

With a majority of the Arrowverse fading and longtime shows concluded, The CW needed a new hero to take the baton from Supergirl and Black Lightning. Enter Naomi, a series that ushers in a new era of DC TV shows with an eye toward greater diversity and a front row seat to the origins of a superhero.

The interesting thing about Naomi is she’s a relatively new DC superhero. Created by writers Brian Michael Bendis and David F. Walker and artist Jamal Campbell in 2019, she’s a relatively blank slate. Bendis added Naomi to his runs on Young Justice before graduating her to the Justice League.  Unfortunately, despite the high-profile gigs, Naomi remains an underdeveloped character that’s constantly lost in the shuffle on the various teams.

That’s what makes the CW series so intriguing. It marks the first time a new-ish comic book character cuts the line to get a live-action property that will in essence serve as the definitive take on the character that’s still in the embryonic stage on the pages. It doesn’t hurt that the CW series is co-executive produced by Ava DuVernay.

DuVernay has been eager to expand into the comic book realm with a since aborted New Gods project with DC Comics writer Tom King and a Vertigo-imprint adaptation of the popular DMZ series for HBO Max.

The first episode doesn’t exactly break new ground on the superhero origin, but it does feature enough promising elements to patiently watch it play out.

Easily the series’ best reason to watch is star Kaci Walfall, who immediately displays a likable presence as an adopted teenager starting to question her place in the world. There’s none of the usual teenager dysfunction, which is welcome and refreshing to watch a teen show where the main character is actually well adjusted.

Naomi’s friend, Lourdes (Camila Moreno), has a crush on her while Naomi’s ex, Nathan (Daniel Puig), is still smarting over her ending things. The script suggests Naomi is open to the possibility of being with a boy or girl even though her sexuality hasn’t been a focus at all in the comics.

This feels more like a CW mandate to have some sort of love interest/love triangle as a core component of at least the first season. Naomi’s main interest seems to be her good friend, Anthony (Will Meyers). It’s weird how opposed to having black couples the CW superhero shows seem to be.

Another challenge for the series is Naomi is portrayed so incredibly virtuous that DuVernay and co-executive producer Jill Blankenship couldn’t come up with a reason she dumped Nathan. Naomi still insists he’s a good person and Nathan seems fine being shifted to the friend zone.

Naomi gets along great with her adopted parents (Mouzam Makkar and Barry Watson), has strong friendships and runs the third most popular Superman fan site.

Apparently, Superman is somehow just a comic book character in her world. This is an odd decision as the comics Naomi sees Superman as an inspiration as he is probably the most famous adopted person on the planet.

Everyone in town writes Superman off as a fictional character until an incident where Superman flies into the town battling a super villain. Despite witnessing the battle and see the destructive aftermath, the residents chalk it up as an amazing stunt.

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This is the great complication of DC’s TV and movie world — the needless desire to make every property exist in its own realm instead of just being part of a cohesive and larger world. It seems to set up a weird structure that could have just as easily been avoided by going the comic route of having Naomi live in a small, desolate town that Superman would never need to visit.

Naomi would have been at the incident, but she passed out en route forcing her to report after the fact rather than provide a firsthand account. Her investigation puts her on the path with some of the town’s weird residents including Dee (Alexander Wraith), the tattoo shop owner and used car shop owner Zumbado (Cranston Johnson).

When pressed, Dee says he hired a man to rig a jetpack as a publicity stunt, but he clearly knows more than he’s letting on. Zumbado also seems to know something is up with Naomi and challenges her to question what she thought she knew. He wants a disc Naomi found and casually ignores this mysterious power she’s channeling.

This is the episode’s most intriguing element as it places Zumbado as either a potential stern ally or the antagonist Naomi will have to defeat as the series plays out. It was nice that his role was so vague as of this point.

Naomi rallying all her friends to help her find the disc at Zumbado’s place felt a little Scooby Doo-ish. And it’s way too early to start working the friends in as her sidekicks.

Although failing to locate the disc, Naomi decides to check in with Dee again for hopefully some straight answers. Dee explains the buzzing might have to do with people like us and reveals massive wings. Following Dee’s encouragement, Naomi finally realizes the question she needs to be asking all along is “Who am I?”

That’s good enough for a solid opening of Naomi’s adventures. The pilot felt like a superhero origin by way of Veronica Mars, but there’s plenty of time for the show to firmly establish its path just like its titular hero.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Photo Credit: The CW

Check out Naomi: Season One paperback now at Amazon.

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