Naomi – Ready or Not

By starrymag | May 17, 2022

By: Atiya Irvin-Mitchell

 

 

The episode opens with a dream. Baby Naomi (Kaci Walfall) is back on Earth-29. Things have gone wrong and they’re are two masked individuals preparing to leave. They’re talking about how important it is to protect Naomi. While they’re leaving an assassin comes after them so they make a run for it. They put the baby inside a transport vessel that takes her to a different earth. When she wakes up she’s shaken.

 

And her waking life is no less peaceful. When she goes downstairs Greg (Barry Watson), Jennifer (Mouzam Makkar), Dee (Alexander Wraith), Akira (Stephanie March) and Zumbado (Cranston Johnson) are making plans to get Naomi out of town. What they’re discussing isn’t just a new city but possibly another planet. Once Naomi enters the kitchen she tells the grownups that she doesn’t want to run. Greg and Jennifer say they’re sorry but what happened at the prom sealed the deal. Brutus won’t stop coming after her, so they need to get her somewhere safe. However, it hopefully won’t be forever.

 

At school Naomi isn’t feeling very social. Anthony (Will Meyers) tracks her down to an empty classroom and notes that isolation isn’t her usual style. She vaguely says she’s got a lot going on right now. He changes the subject and tells her the newspaper is doing a follow up story on the superman sighting. Naomi says she’s not so into superman anymore. This surprises Anthony and he realizes she must be really off.

 

Naomi goes to see Akira and gets some clarity. She tells Akira that she’s been having flashes of things that happened when she was a baby. Akira explains they’re most likely psychic visions. It’s a difficult gift to control, but she thinks Naomi can do it. After some hesitation she decides to give her a locket that she thinks might hold some answers for her. She explains her mother was a good friend of hers, she kept her distance to protect Naomi. But now she wants her to know she thinks her birth mother would be proud.

 

Anthony goes to the comic book shop to interview Lourdes (Camila Moreno) and learn more about superman mythos. She points out he’s never been interested in comic books or super heroes. So, she figures this is probably about Naomi. Anthony explains that he wants to do a follow up on the superman sighting, but Naomi isn’t interested in being interviewed. They compare notes on Naomi’s behavior and realize she started acting strange right around the time superman was seen, so they decide to investigate.

 

They’re not the only ones. Naomi gets a vision from the locket and she and Annabelle decide to go to the location that she saw in the vision. She hasn’t been able to open the locket, but she thinks the flowers she saw might mean something. So, they’re on a mini road trip to Nevada. That is until the car breaks down. They stop at a diner and reminisce. Naomi misses it when things were simpler. Then, she has a vision of an assassin after her and is firmly reminded that there’s no looking back.

 

Greg, Jennifer and Akira work on the vessel and disagree about the plan to get Naomi off the planet. Akira thinks running is wrong because Naomi could save the planet. Jennifer and Greg says it shouldn’t be her responsibility. Akira thinks her birth parents would’ve wanted her to live up to their potential. Greg says they’re dead right now because of decisions that endangered them. So, it’s up to them to figure out what’s best for Naomi.

 

Lourdes and Anthony visit Dee’s tattoo shop. They’re hoping for answers but Dee is stoic as ever. They ask him about why he took the wrap for staging the superman incident. He says it was for artistic purposes, but that was months ago and they should drop it. They keep pressing him for answers though and Zumbado, who has been listening, tells them to leave this alone and stop poking around in things that don’t concern them.

 

Because of their car troubles Naomi and Annabelle (Mary-Charles Jones) crash at a hotel for the night. Naomi asks Annabelle if she ever wishes she could go back to the way things were before the superman sighting. Annabelle thinks the way things are now is pretty cool. Naomi wants to go back to the time when she could trust her parents and was a normal teenager. Annabelle believes Naomi can be as great a hero as superman. Naomi isn’t so sure. The conversation is interrupted by another vision. The assassin is at the motel.

 

Greg goes to work and Jennifer stays with Akira and reveals that over the years she’s had doubts. She says she has wondered at times if she and Greg were the best people to protect Naomi. But, Akira reminds her that they all knew Naomi’s birth parents. She thinks they’d be proud that they’d taken such good care of their daughter. Akira admits that she’d resigned herself to their planet dying again, but because of Naomi she has hope again.

 

Anthony and Lourdes go looking for answers in the woods and are nearly taken out by a hired gun named Julian (Owen Harn). But lucky for them Dee and Zumbado come to their rescue. They’re both pretty shocked when they see Dee and Zumbado using their powers. Still Zumbado and Dee take them back to the tattoo shop and give them a crash course in the multiverse and aliens. Anthony and Lourdes wonder why they saved them and the answer is that it’s because Naomi cares for them.

 

Speaking of Naomi, we see her running through a field trying to get away from the assassin. But they’re not so lucky. Naomi tries to get Annabelle to leave without her because it’s really her that the assassin wants. Annabelle refuses to leave though, so they come face to face with the assassin. Naomi gets another vision and realizes that he’s the man that was chasing her mother and father. He says he loves how things come full circle. Others, he says, have come to capture her. He’s just there to kill her. There’s a fight and it doesn’t look good for Naomi, until the assassin uses his sword to go in for the kill. But it doesn’t pierce Naomi’s skin. This surprises him as much as her. He says this isn’t what he’s signed up for and leaves. Mac (Briana Venskus) comes to see Dee and offers him a deal: she’ll take him to a not dead Qyeala if he betrays Naomi.

 

Naomi doesn’t understand what happened, but the assassin talking about full circle moments gave her an idea. When they get back to Portland she puts the locket in her birth rock and it conjures the essence of her parents. She talks to the memory of them (think Superman talking to Jor-El in the Fortress of Solitude) and tells them she misses them even though she never knew them. They say they wish they’d raised her. But if she’s watching this something horrible happened and someone betrayed them. There is a power source that can save the planet and they reveal that it’s Naomi. But she’ll need help from the Twenty-Nine. They tell her to trust no one.