Only tangentially related, but I've always thought it's a shame that most adaptations of Courtney/Stargirl have done away with how she was the continuation of two different legacies - Sly Pemberton's Star-Spangled Kid when she started, and then adding the Knight family's Starman when Jack Knight gave her the Cosmic Staff. I think that's pretty unique and it's too bad that the Knights seem to have disappeared into Sylvester in this adaptation he's fine and all, but Jack Knight would have been a much cooler source of the staff.
The thing is, that's rather dependent on being a continuation of a well-established history and mythology. When you're rebooting a concept from scratch for a new audience, you kind of have to simplify such things or the audience will be lost in the weeds.
I'm reminded of the
Birds of Prey TV series from the early 2000s. It went for this very complicated backstory -- "Once there was Batman, and he fell in love with Catwoman and had a metahuman daughter, and then the Joker killed Catwoman and paralyzed Batgirl, and Batman retired and vanished, and Batgirl became Oracle and trained Batman & Catwoman's daughter to become Huntress, and my name is Alfred Pennyworth and this opening narration has taken so long that most of you have probably already changed the channel." There was just such a long on-ramp to figuring out the premise, and it was poured on in such a heavy infodump at the start of every episode, that I feel many viewers would've seen it as a barrier to entry and just walked away.
It's somewhat easier with today's serialized shows where you can ease the characters and the audience into the backstory. But
Stargirl has such a complicated backstory/mythos already that it makes sense to streamline where they can. Courtney was already torn between two father figures in season 1, so bringing in a third would've been an excessive complication.
And speaking of costuming. Court should probably lay off the stars and stripes motifs in her civilian attire.
Taking a cue from a generation of Power Rangers who always wear civilian clothes the same color as their Ranger identities.
Really, though, it's not much of an issue here, since the Junior JSA operates in secret and the general public has never seen Stargirl.
I love the costumes as well. I think that part of the point of the series is that they are supposed to look awkward on the kids.
Which is fine for the first season or so, but it feels right for them to eventually mature beyond that, to make the identities their own. If you're going to tell a story where costumes are a major element, it's often good to use costume upgrades to symbolize milestones in character development. Like Robin becoming Nightwing, say.
