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One of the big additions to season 2 of Supergirl was Mon-El, a similarly powerful being to Kara that crash-landed on Earth from the planet Daxam, which neighbored Krypton. Mon-El ultimately ended up eating up a bit too much of the show’s screen time for a lot of fans but his presence since left a lingering question over Supergirl: what about the Legion of Superheroes? The Legion of Superheroes are a group of teenage superheroes from the 31st century that were basically the X-Men before the X-Men.
They’re a big part of the Superman mythos and their strongest has traditionally been Mon-El. His presence on Supergirl season 2 combined with a cameo by a Legion flight ring on both The Flash and Supergirl has made it seem like CW has plans for the Legion at some point down the line. Now, an additional piece has fallen into place with the revelation Saturn Girl will be joining the cast of Supergirl season 3, played by Amy Jackson.
Let’s talk about the Legion for a quick second here. The big reason most folks haven’t really heard of them is that despite being very popular in the ‘60s they’ve had a hard time adjusting to the changing shape of the superhero landscape. DC’s always seemed a little unsure how to use them, to the point there are three distinct versions of the team that all seem to co-exist with each other in an incredibly confusing manner.
Saturn Girl is one of the most fundamental members of the team, appearing in all three versions and usually being counted among the team’s three founders. Along with Lightning Lad and Cosmic Boy, they decided to travel back in time to meet a young Clark Kent as, in the future, his secret identity as Superman is common knowledge and Superman’s past is legend. The three became such close friends with Clark on their jaunt to the past that they decided to bring him forward into the far future to hang out and fight future space crimes with their team.
I admit this is the kind of bizarre, magical thinking type plot that peppers a lot of formative Superman material, mainly stuff penned by the great Otto Binder in the mid-to-late ‘50s. Regardless the team proved immensely popular and quickly spun out into their own comic, mainly owing to how well they mixed superhero adventure with genuine human drama in the same style of Lois Lane, Supergirl, and Superboy. They were basically the first team of teen superheroes and, as I said, paved the way for the X-Men we all know and love in 1975.
I’m not exactly sure how much of this origin will translate into Supergirl though it does seem fairly confirmed that Superman has knowledge of the Legion. One of the team’s flight rings is prominently displayed in the Fortress of Solitude, so there’s definitely a relationship there. This could mean a lot of things for Saturn Girl’s appearance on Supergirl. Previously Saturn Girl has appeared on Smallville and Superman TAS but in both cases, it was part of a retelling of her meeting with a younger Clark Kent before he truly became Superman. Unless we’re expecting a full flashback episode I wouldn’t count on that.
In more recent stories the Legion has been involved in covert ops to sort of steer the present towards a more amicable future, which I could totally see being what happens with Saturn Girl here. Her origin is that she’s part of a whole race of telepaths coming from Saturn’s moon Titan so her psychic abilities would be a real boon to undercover work in the present.
What’s more, Supergirl’s development into a show about optimism and personal strength in the face of bigotry and political allegory would make a literal representative of a brighter tomorrow coming back in time to secure that future pretty on the nose.
The other option is, of course, that this will be a Saturn Girl in name only, which is hardly unheard of for Supergirl. Previously they featured an in-name-only version of Jemm, son of Saturn, whose mythos and identity is actually pretty well tied into Saturn Girl’s people. The idea is that a race of Martian slaves escaped to settle on Saturn and eventually they interbred with humans to create a new hybrid species that looked like humans but had Martian telepathic abilities.
That’s a shared origin point I would definitely expect Supergirl to use, maybe giving us a Martian Manhunter centric episode with Saturn Girl as the antagonist. I certainly hope this isn’t the way they go with the character as it’d be something of a major waste.
The path I really hope they go but I’m in no way expecting they will is to have Supergirl spend some time in the 31st century. It’s hardly unheard of; there was a whole comic under the banner Supergirl and the Legion of Superheroes, so there’s plenty of precedent for having Kara team-up with the Legion. What’s more, I think it’d be a fun way to spice up the show and give it more of an edge than previously. Supergirl is a great show but the CW shows tend to need a lot of space to move around in, like how Flash had to expand to the multiverse or Legends of Tomorrow’s time travel shenanigans.
Having Supergirl dive into the distant future for adventures and allies would be a really cool next step to take in the show’s evolution and provide a natural framework for her character arc this season- being ultimately torn between the bitter present where she was forced to banish the man she loves or a bright future where her closest friends and family are centuries dead. Like I said- I don’t think they’ll go this route but I’m giving myself leave to hope.
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