Stargirl season 1, episode 7 review: Shiv Part One

“He’s never there when I need him to be.” Minor spoilers for Stargirl season 1, episode 7 follow.

After their first real fight together, Stargirl and the JSA have a lot to learn about what it means to be a hero amongst the tyranny of the DC Universe’s villains.

Meanwhile, Cindy Burman is quickly losing her grip on her surroundings, thus setting her on the path she was always meant to be on.

Courtney’s Archnemesis

There’s really no way to talk about this episode of Stargirl without mentioning what pretty much was telegraphed from the first moment Cindy is seen on the show, she’s a villain. A villain who will become Courtney’s archnemesis to be quite frank. This shouldn’t really be a surprising revelation to anyone who has been viewing Stargirl, and especially not to readers of Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., but this episode still manages to make it seem like a shocking revelation that this is the case.

What this episode does well is that it is willing to do an in-depth exploration into who Cindy is as a character. Not just the little bits we’ve seen of her so far, but actually see how she interacts with her parental figures and behind closed doors. And, unlike the members of the JSA, where it was easy to be empathetic with each of them, the show goes a completely different way with Cindy. One moment, she’s just as awful as she is at school, if not worse, but a couple of minutes, you empathize with her. Even though you empathize with her though, she is still never portrayed as someone you should root for. She’s more relatable in certain aspects, but it’s impossible to think of her as anything but a villain.

As this is only a “Part One” episode, it’s made very apparent that we’ll quickly see more of Cindy in her villainous persona in the next episode. It was made very clear here that Cindy died in this episode and that Shiv was finally born and it was done so in a very solid fashion.

The JSA in training

After last week’s episode, it was clear that the newly formed JSA needed so much training it wasn’t even funny. They got rocked by Sportsmaster and Tigress. So, who else to train them but the man who worked the original JSA. It’s too bad Pat has one little problem regarding this new training regiment, and her name is Courtney.

What’s great about the training portion of this episode, even though the actual would-be training of the episode is relegated to one scene, is how it ties Courtney and Cindy intrinsically together. Both of them are trying to prove to their fathers that they are ready to go after each, but for very different, yet similar reasons. Courtney is trying to prove that she’s ready to be a superhero, even without the rest of the JSA supporting her. She obviously wants the team with her, but continuously acts like she’s better than they are.

As for Cindy, she’s trying to prove that she’s ready to join the ISA, basically the complete inverse of Courtney. Whereas Courtney basically has everything that Cindy actually wants, Courtney doesn’t realize it. It’s great dichotomy for them as they are two sides of the same coin and why they were always destined to be enemies.

The search for the JSA

While Cindy and Courtney are having their respective journeys in this episode, we also get a little bit of a glimpse of what the ISA is doing and well, that’s trying to figure out who the new JSA is. More than that though, we get an even better glimpse as to what their plans are and if you know, you know, that’s about the most spoilerly this will be right now.

What’s great about the Injustice Society searching for the identities of the JSA is that is the complete inverse of what usually is the case in superhero stories. It’s almost always the hero trying to discover who the new villain is, but here, it’s obviously the opposite. It’s something so small, and again, relegated to one scene, but it’s so incredibly fun regardless. It’s a nice twist on the trope.

Stargirl returns to screens next Monday. Did you enjoy the latest episode? Let us know in the comments below!