Naomi – Enigma

By starrymag | February 8, 2022

By: Atiya Irvin-Mitchell

 

 

We open in the woods. Greg (Barry Watson) and Jennifer (Mouzam Makkar) tell Naomi (Kaci Walfall) about how they met and how they found her. They were walking in the woods one day when what looks like a meteor shower started, they ran for cover. When it looked like the dust had settled they headed out of the woods and while they were walking they found baby Naomi. Naomi is understandably a little miffed. She said she’s been wondering about her birth parents her whole life and her parents have been withholding really important information from her.

 

Her parents apologize, but say they were trying to protect her. They add that they really don’t know anything about her biological parents. Greg used his military connections to try and find out more info about that day but he always hit a wall. Also, Naomi seemed happy and they’ve been happy raising her. They didn’t want to ruin that. So, Greg and Jennifer apologize and say they hope she can forgive them.

 

The next morning Naomi tells Annabelle (Mary-Charles Jones) the story and we learn she decided to forgive her parents and reciprocated the honesty. She told them about Dee (Alexander Wraith), Zumbado (Crantson Johnson) and the disk. The talk is interrupted by Anthony (Will Meyers) and Jacob (Aidan Gemme) who say they’ve got a snack emergency. Esme (Alie Urquhart), th​​e class President, has removed all the candy from the vending machine. The gang say she needs to be stopped and push Naomi to run against her in an emergency recall election. Reluctantly Naomi agrees to run and bring back the candy.

 

In an unspecified location Dee is teaching Naomi to box. It’s going well, up until Naomi hits the bag so hard it goes flying into a wall. The excess display of super strength makes Dee decide that meditation is a good idea. In response to Dee observing that she seems stressed Naomi tells him she told her parents everything. Also, they’ve insisted that Dee come over for dinner. Naomi apologizes for springing this all on him, but she says it just sort of happened. Like with most things, Dee takes the news calmly. Naomi is struggling with the calm. Before she thought her birth parents were dead, now she’s worried they didn’t want her.

 

Dee tries to reassure her that if Naomi’s birth parents sent her away it must’ve been to protect her. He then explains that when it comes to the planets there’s a hierarchy, sometimes in the name of protecting that hierarchy the inhabitants of the less powerful planets get hurt. But from the moment Dee sensed Naomi he’s known she’s exceptionally powerful. So, he says whatever happened on her home planet most likely left Naomi’s birth family with no other choice.

 

With that in mind Naomi confronts Zumbado about the disk. He mostly tries to ignore her at first in favor of a metaphor about patience, but she says she’s not leaving without the disk. Zumbado points out that he’s warned her and threatened her and she still won’t leave well enough alone. So, now he’s gonna give her the disk, much to her confusion. But he reminds her again not to believe everything she thinks.

 

Later Naomi toys around with the disk and it glows and causes a slight blackout. She takes down the numbers and shows them to Annabelle and Jacob. At first there’s confusion but then Jacob suggests that they use coding to crack the code. However, the disk’s impact is limited to Naomi. At work Greg learns the blackout is on Commander Steel’s (Michael Brightman) radar. He wants to find out the origin of the blackout. Greg doesn’t realize yet how close to home the answer is yet.

 

Naomi is alone in a classroom trying to write an algorithm instead of going to the campaign event happening outside. Nathan (Daniel Puig) ducks inside and asks Naomi why she’s not participating as it is technically for her campaign and she’s hiding. Naomi tries to act like she’s excited, but then she admits that she never really wanted to be president. Everyone else was just so thrilled that she couldn’t stand the idea of disappointing them.  The admission is interrupted by Jacob and Annabelle who have a suggestion for the disk dilemma: a Turing machine. It is a World War II era machine designed by Alan Turing to crack codes, but for obvious reasons they’re kind of obscure. Still, the group decides to try and find one.

 

Dee comes over for dinner with the McDuffies and it’s awkward. Naomi tells her parents about what Dee’s been teaching her. The McDuffies and Dee try to learn a little about each other. Jennifer is a little taken aback to learn that Dee can fly. Dee asks for details about the day Naomi’s parents found her and he’s confused when they say there was no flash of light. Usually, he explains, there’s a flash of light during extraterrestrial occurrences. It seems what they told Naomi might not have been the whole story. Plus, we learn that Dee left Earth briefly in 2012. He doesn’t explain what took him away, yet.

 

Once dinner ends Naomi, Annabelle, Lourdes, Anthony and Jacob go to an escape room. The Turing Machine is a part of the escape room and they’ve just got to find it first. After they look for an unspecified amount of time they beat the game and find the Turing machine. When they type in the numbers they find that they’re coordinates and the machine gives them a description: a blonde woman with blue eyes. The coordinates lead to a a street in Portland. Naomi says she’s going.

 

Naomi goes to Portland and finds Akira (Stephanie March). When Akira realizes who she is she runs and Naomi chases her. Akira nearly gets away but Naomi gets her attention by using her powers. When Akira finally comes face to face with Naomi, she tells her using her powers in public was reckless. But Naomi says she left her no other choice. At first Akira assumes Zumbado sent Naomi here, but when it’s clear he didn’t Akira explains why she shouldn’t trust him. She says that their home, Earth-29, was beautiful and filled with amazing people. Now it’s gone and it’s all because of Zumbado.

 

Speaking of him, a man (Aaron Farb) goes to Zumbado and he’s not happy to see him. They talk in circles for a bit and the man says he’s looking for something powerful and rare. But Zumbado says he can’t handle what he’s looking for so he should back off. He then tells  the man to leave.

 

Akira left Naomi with few answers, but she said it was for her own good. Dee comes to pick her up and Naomi thanks him for being so consistently understanding. Dee says it’s no problem, but observes that when she was upset she made the lights flicker at dinner. She realizes she’s been upset since she learned her parents have been lying and that’s why she’s less in control of her powers. Elsewhere, while trying to find the root of the blackout, Greg realizes that someone else is tracking the source of the blackout. When he figures out that the tracking device is located at the spot where he and Jennifer found Naomi he determines that someone’s after Naomi.

 

Naomi and Annabelle are supposed to meet up, but Naomi forgot something at school in her locker. She doubles back and when she’s going to leave she’s confronted by the man who went to Zumbado’s dealership. He’s a bounty hunter and tells Naomi that a lot of people are looking for her. She tries to run and sees that he has powers like her. It seems like he’s going to succeed in kidnapping her until Dee arrives. Dee and the bounty hunter fight and, although things look dicey, Dee wins and gives a shaken up Naomi a hug.

 

Afterwards Naomi’s a little weepy and Dee does his best to comfort her. He explains that her powers are like a magnet and they might attract more people like the bounty hunter, but they’ll have to go through Dee to get to her. He explains the reason he left the earth in 2012 was because he was in love. But he wasn’t brave enough to tell her at the time so now he doesn’t know where she is. He tells Naomi not to make the same mistakes.

 

Naomi drops out of the presidential race later and Greg makes a judgment call at work. He lies to Commander Steel about whether or not he found anything at the signal location that they can use. However, he hasn’t told Naomi or Jennifer about the military’s interest in the blackout and Naomi by association.

 

With Dee’s advice in mind Naomi goes to find Nathan who’s getting in some late night soccer practice. Nathan asks Naomi if she finally knows what she wants. She tells Nathan she does and says Nathan she’s ready to be with him now much to his glee. They share a kiss.