Supergirl will be getting some help in the field, as James Olsen will be taking to the streets as the masked vigilante Guardian.
Supergirl season 2 will feature another hero alongside the titular heroine, EW reports.
“James has a pretty big turn coming up,” executive producer Andrew Kreisberg said at a recent press event. “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.”
James will turn to Winn for help, and Kreisberg calls Winn James’ “man in the van.” He adds, “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.”
While James recruits Winn, he won’t be telling Kara about his nighttime activities. According to Kreisberg, this “is going to cause a massive problem in his relationship with Kara.”
He adds, “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.”
Guardian first appeared in 1942’s Star-Spangled Comics #7 as a hero with no superpowers; however, like Captain America on the Marvel side, he carried an indestructible shield.
He was initially a Metropolis police office named Jim Harper who became a vigilante to catch criminals the law could not stop. In the comics, Guardian has deep ties to Cadmus, which, interestingly, is appearing this season on Supergirl.
Supergirl season 2 airs Mondays at 8:00 p.m. ET on The CW.