Agent Liberty has been stirring up trouble on Supergirl season 4 and has recently labeled James’ Guardian the “human hero” America needs. How far should James go to separate himself from this movement? Is it necessary?

The anti-alien sentiment that Supergirl is aiming to dive into has taken a twist as of late. Ben Lockwood’s Children of Liberty are using Guardian, James’ vigilante identity, to heighten fears about Earth’s alien protectors (Superman and Supergirl, in particular) that the world has so desperately started clinging to.

After breaking the law showing up to protect innocent people as Guardian, even though he was threatened with jail time should he parade around National City in his body armor again, James was labeled the hero of humans by Ben Lockwood and his crazy Children of Liberty.

It’s interesting how the writers have completely failed to develop James, much less as Guardian, over the last two seasons, and now we are just supposed to start caring.

Season 1 wasn’t really great when it came to developing James. As Kara’s main love interest, there were certain expectations for how his story would unfold, which we saw through his relationship with Lucy and working relationship with Cat.

After the move to The CW, James was basically shoved to the background, only brought to the surface enough to keep the actor on as a series regular despite his clearly lackluster stories.

Taking over as CEO to CatCo should have been a much greater moment that showed what James is capable of, but instead they pretended like James didn’t have a learning curve and he was completely fine with running a multimedia corporation.

After he and Winn teamed up to be the Guardian vigilante team in the streets, that’s the only time in season 2 where we saw what James was made of. And though we’ve seen more from him lately, Guardian is the biggest part of his story, and it just doesn’t work.

We’ve had two, maybe three, episodes where we actually were able to see what being Guardian means for James and how he handles being a vigilante in a town with an alien superhero protecting it at all times.

James has proven himself useful in various situations where Kara’s alien nature was unable to save the day because her life was at risk, but that’s an even larger issue.

James is only relevant enough to save the day when Kara is down for the count, like when the air was laced with kryptonite on Supergirl season 4 episode 4 and her L-Corp suit began to malfunction.

That moment, when James rushed in to help protect the city, led to the “bad thing” Nia predicted, so was it really a win for James? Also, what happened to the threat of jail time which was such a huge deal in the season premiere?

Regardless, James is being used for a nationalist movement in National City, and I can’t understand why it’s not taking a larger toll on him.

A black man is being used as the centerpiece for an anti-alien (largely white) nationalist movement, which you would think should have a greater emotional impact on him. Shouldn’t it?

First, James was set on “equal and balanced reporting” when it came to the alien hate crimes around the city, which he later had to be told was wrong (as the best friend of Clark Kent and confidant of Kara Danvers).

Now, James is the “human hero” they’re proclaiming, and he’s interested in exploring what they stand for firsthand. It’s hard to see this person as someone with such close ties to at least three aliens because he’s far too open to the idea of people antagonizing them.

However, when it comes to James’ role as Guardian, a bigger question is: Does National City even need another hero, much less a human one?

Kara spends all of her time protecting the city, and she even has the ability to leave her job in the middle of the day, multiple times, to put on her suit and become Supergirl. Perks of having a boss that knows your secrets, right?

However, this has made James’ Guardian virtually unimportant in the narrative until now. Maybe if James stayed in Metropolis, he could have pulled off this vigilante stint. Clark is going off-world quite a lot and his city could use some back up protection once in a while.

A human vigilante seems, well, useless when there are literal aliens to do the job with more powers backing them. James’ strength is no match to Kara’s and while he may be a skilled fighter, Kara could easily overpower him, so what would Guardian really do if Supergirl went wild on the city?

If this was Arrow, maybe Guardian would have a role, but it’s completely unnecessary to have a vigilante on Supergirl that has to sit out the big fights.

Supergirl airs Sundays at 8/7c on The CW.