Naomi on the CW is a superhero coming of age story. The superhero here is a high school junior beautifully played by Kaci Walfall. The casting in this series is inclusive and one of the best aspects of the series.
When Naomi began, the 16 year old thought she was a regular high school nerd with a thing about Superman. Then Superman flew through her town. She felt a strange sensation, and began her journey of discovery. She discovers she has powers, that she’s an alien.
In typical teen age fashion, Naomi blabs about her discoveries her best friend Annabelle (Mary-Charles Jones). She tells other friends. Eventually she tells Lourdes (Camila Moreno). Lourdes runs a comic book store and has a burning crush on Naomi.
The person she doesn’t tell right away is her boyfriend Nathan (Daniel Puig).
People she knows from her town such as the used car dealer Zumbado (Cranston Johnson) and the tattoo artist Dee (Alexander Wraith) suddenly start interfering in her life. Turns out, they are aliens just like Naomi. They are there to protect her from the bad guys who want to kill her.
Her parents (Barry Watson and Mouzam Makkar) knew she was an alien all along. They wanted to protect her too.
Naomi has to dig out every little truth on her own. None of the adults want to tell her anything because she’s “not ready.” Each new power is a discovery, each new secret adds to her knowledge of who she is and what she can do.
She learns who she can trust and who she can’t. She meets aliens sent to earth to kill her. She’s pretty unkillable, because – powers. In the climactic moments at the end of season 1, she discovers she can fly.
Part origin story, part coming of age story, and part typical teenager story, Naomi has charm, excitement, and mystery. Most importantly, it has a Black girl as the superhero. We’ve needed a role model like Naomi for a long time and I’m happy to see how well done season 1 of this series was.
The series was created for television by Ava DuVernay and Jill Blankenship. There were plenty of women directors in season 1, including DeMane Davis, Neema Barnette, Lisa France, Amanda Marsalis, Stephanie Turner, and Angel Kristi Williams.
Thanks so much for this. 12 minutes in and I’m loving it so far. The only other CW show I still watch is Legends of Tomorrow — I grew tired of Flash and Arrow and unfortunately Batwoman just had too much dark and horror for me. Now I want to know how I hadn’t heard anything about Naomi till now.
Hope you keep enjoying it to the end. Just read the news that it won’t be renewed like a number of other CW properties. But apparently they are shopping it around elsewhere so it may survive somewhere else.
I’m about to watch Episode 2 and saw that same news. It’s so disappointing when shows like this aren’t renewed. I guess racist and sexist decisions are still the go-to.
I surely hope so. The show kept getting better each week and the story line was just starting to all come together. They should have given it a chance with a second season and better marketing.
Really. She just figured out who she is and what she’s capable of. Now she needs to go off and use what she has for good in the world. Not a good time to end the story.