James Olsen is set to take on an alter-ego of his own in Season 2 of “Supergirl”, adopting the “Guardian” persona.
The revelation was hinted at during a Q&A held by The CW, with a photo of Mehcad Brooks as “The Guardian” expected to be released tomorrow.
UPDATE: Executive producer Andrew Kreisberg revealed that Olsen will take to the streets as a vigilante this year. “James has a pretty big turn coming up,” Kreisberg says. “These next few episodes are going to make him realize that being a photographer… is not enough for him, so he’s going to go on a pretty exciting career trajectory that we’re really pumped by. James is going to decide that he can no longer sit back and be a sidekick, so he’s going to decide to become a vigilante and he’s going to become Guardian – complete with the shield – which is going to cause a massive problem in his relationship with Kara [Melissa Benoist], because he has decided not to tell her.
“Now there’s this new masked vigilante, and she has her own feelings about vigilantes, and it becomes a push and pull about who gets to decide who gets to be a hero?” Kreisberg continues. “He’s recruited Winn [Jeremy Jordan] to help him, Winn is his man in the van, so the two of them are doing this together. Winn and James together is comedy gold. Watching Winn, as he takes his job at the DEO, but then he’s lying to everybody about how he’s spending his nights, because he’s going out with James, and how he walks in exhausted or walks in with a black eye and says he walked into a door, is the fun excitement of building these first 10 episodes.”
Source: EW.com
Eh, I’d really rather they didn’t turn Jimmy/James into a superhero. I think if you start handing out powers and identities to the heroes mortal supporting cast you really start losing much needed contrast. In comics terms, Supergirl is a solo-hero book (relatively at least). If you want the book where everybody and their mom has superpowers that’s when you go read JLA or the Avengers.
C’mon now. Supergirl is part of the “Super Family”. She’s got a Super CAT for heavens sake.
In regards to the article. Jimmy Olsen being a Superhero is nothing new. It’s pretty clear that the status quo is god, and he’ll just stop eventually at some point.
I’m just perplexed that they chose him to be Guardian of all people. Turtle Man should have been the obvious choice here. 🙁
The “family’s” thing is a bit different from handing out super powers and costumes to the regular supporting cast IMO.
This is going to be an interesting twist. I’m looking forward to seeing how it will turn out.
Eeeh, why Guardian? Especially when they already had Jim Harper on? If they wanted the comic book connection, they could do Gangbuster or something. Or, better, since he’s doing this with Winn, have Winn try out different formulas and alien artifacts from the DEO on him that give him different powers each time to pay tribute to the character’s Silver Age adventures.
Hmmm… I don’t care for this idea. James can be, and is, a hero in his own right. He just needs to be a crusading photojournalist. Nothing wrong with that.
nope