Summer School: Chapter One
Episode 1 of Stargirl Season 2 begins in Indiana decades before our story actually takes place. A girl called Rebecca swings on her chair outside as a boy called Bruce shows up. He is essentially the devil on her shoulder, encouraging the girl to head across the street to a party and steal a present. In doing so, this boy holds up a purple jewel, not unlike the one we saw Cindy grab at the end of season 1. Is this Eclipso? Fast forward to present day and Courtney is out with the gang on patrol. With no danger in sight, all the kids head home. Courtney is obsessed though, having stayed up all night checking the JSA files. Bleary eyed Pat heads down to the basement at 4am though, encouraging the girl to work toward her career and take a break from Stargirl antics. In order to get their mind off things, Pat suggests they go on a summer vacation to Yellowstone. At the same time, Yolanda experiences frightening visions of what happened with Brainwave in season 1. She’s clearly rattled and also believes taking a break is probably the best move. Courtney is wound up so tight that she ends up flipping a girl carrying a hockey stick at school. When Pat and Barbara are called in to school, they learn that Courtney has failed both English and History. Courtney will need to stick around and attend summer school. This unfortunately messes up her entire vacation plans. Meanwhile, Rick gets every question right on his test. His teacher is obviously not happy and forces him to retake another so she can watch. Well, Rick is having none of that and decides to leave. After her last day at school, Beth heads home and sets up a beautiful dinner for her family. Only, when they don’t show, thanks to them being stuck at the hospital for reasons unknown, Beth is left alone. To make matters worse, her goggles malfunction and Chuck claims he doesn’t know who Beth is. Back at Courtney’s, someone breaks in and forces Stargirl to use her powers to thwart the threat. As Pat and the gang show up, it turns out this is actually Green Lantern’s daughter! Meanwhile, Cindy heads down to the basement of the school carrying an Injustice folder. Within this, she starts going through a number of different candidates, clearly using them to fulfil the spots left behind by the dead ISA members. With the purple jewel of Eclipso in hand, she prepares to do some recruiting.
The Episode Review
Stargirl returns and wastes absolutely no time picking up where we left off last season, Many people exhibited concerns about the show jumping across to the CW network and to be honest, there are definitely glimmers here of the show descending down the same path so many other shows have on the network. However, given the solid foundation set the first time around, there’s also the possibility that the source material will be respected. We’ll have to wait and see which way this one swings. What is clear however, is that Courtney is absolutely obsessed with finding the ISA and she’s wound tighter than a screw. She’s intent on finding the ISA no matter what and that ultimately looks like it’s going to cost her in the future. With Courtney now forced to take up Summer school and the other kids all with their own subplot issues, there’s an interesting dynamic brewing here between the different kids. Although a little slow at times, the ending hints that we’ve got plenty of drama to come in the upcoming episodes.
