Naomi: Premiere Review - IGN

Naomi premieres on The CW on Jan. 11.

In the DC Comics series Naomi by Brian Michael Bendis, David F. Walker, and Jamal Campbell, the titular teenager begins investigating past superhero activity in her small Oregon hometown after its downtown is torn up by a fight between Superman and the alien supervillain Mongol. A Superman sighting also triggers Naomi’s search for answers in The CW’s Naomi, but it’s a lot more surprising in the show’s world, where Superman is just a famous comic book character and superheroes aren’t real.

That flip sets up a compelling mystery in the show’s pilot, as Naomi (Kaci Walfall) begins to realize that several people in her hometown have major secrets. Given that Superman has his own show on the same network, and The CW has repeatedly placed its superheroes on different versions of Earth only to have them meet in crossovers, it’s likely that Naomi won’t stay isolated from the rest of the Arrowverse for long. But the current plot and setting allow for a fascinating journey of self discovery that also provides a meta commentary on the power of superhero stories.

The Best Comic Book TV Series of 2021

Naomi’s pilot starts off a bit rough, though, trying too hard to celebrate Naomi’s Gen Z hipness while also channeling a Stranger Things-esque nostalgia. There’s an unnecessary opening voiceover where Naomi explains that this is her superhero origin story before the action heads to a house party where all the other high school kids seem to think she’s the coolest. Maybe it will turn out that this entire world has been built around her as its main character, The Truman Show style. If not, the repeated shouts of “Naomi!” as she enters the scene and starts dancing after exclaiming “This is my jam!” feel extremely forced.

So does the saccharine banter where her dad says she won’t be allowed to drive before graduation, so she takes off on her skateboard shouting “These are the only wheels I’ve got!” Just to make sure millennials watching feel old, her dad, Greg (Barry Watson), mentions that the last time he and his wife Jennifer, (Mouzam Makkar), stayed out until midnight was a 2009 Coldplay concert.

In another significant departure from the comic, the series is set in a town with a major military base and Naomi is an army brat who’s repeatedly moved around with her adopted parents. The shift provides ammo for conflict between the town’s permanent residents and those deployed there, while also quickly amplifying the stakes of the strange events.

Naomi’s been a major fan of Superman since her dad bought her a comic while she was feeling isolated when he was stationed in Japan. She feels a kinship with the last son of Krypton since both are adopted, and she’s created one of the world’s most popular Superman fansites. When she misses a “stunt” involving Superman in the town square, she goes into full investigation mode and finds that both the town’s menacing car dealer Zumbado (Cranston Johnson) and off-putting tattoo artist Dee (Alexander Wraith) seem to be oddly unsurprised by what’s happening.

A fresh face on a new world could give The CW a needed revival.

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Naomi enlists the help of her buddies, most of whom she seems to have some form of romantic entanglement with. The CW has been something of a trailblazer in LGBTQ representation and it seems like Naomi will explore polyamory, though the teen currently is still trying to figure out what she wants herself. Greg insists his daughter has to make a choice about what relationships to pursue, but instead, Naomi keeps cutting things off quickly while still trying to maintain close bonds with her exes. Her gang of friends is willing to put hurt feelings aside to help her with some breaking and entering where they inexplicably use walkie talkies to communicate instead of cellphones.

The Naomi comic was a sort of backdoor reboot of Superman, a new story of a powerful young hero from another world learning their secret origins and embracing goodness with the help of their kind adoptive parents. The Arrowverse leaned on big alien plots and social justice themes in Supergirl and family drama in Superman & Lois, but Naomi comes closest to capturing the wonder of early Superman stories. There’s even a bit of Clark Kent in Naomi’s investigative blogging, which actually feels better realized than the journalism plots in Supergirl or Superman & Lois.

Naomi is written and executive produced by Selma and A Wrinkle in Time director Ava DuVernay and Arrow writer and producer Jill Blankenship, and has the Arrowverse’s distinctive superhero soap opera vibe. But at a time when many of The CW’s superhero shows have wrapped or dropped in popularity and quality, a fresh face on a new world could give the network a needed revival, if it improves upon some of the flaws in its premiere.

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