After Supergirl: Five More Female Heroes Perfect For TV

Batgirl

The Pitch: The Batgirl of Burnside enters CBS's shared Supergirl universe.

We've seen how well growing a universe around the Oliver Queen-Barry Allen bromance has worked for The CW, so why shouldn't CBS attempt something similar, with a little added girl power?

The current take on Batgirl, where Barbara Gordon lives in the hip Burnside borough of Gotham and frequents a circle of friends who work for tech and social media companies, seems like she would fit right in with CBS's modern take on Supergirl.

CBS could use an episode of Superigrl as a backdoor pilot, with Batgirl tracking one of her rogues to National City. She runs into Supergirl and, after some initial mistrust, a friendship is formed, and audiences get the midseason premiere of a Batgirl TV series that's got the same tone as Supergirl, but is more focused on street level villains than alien threats.

Ms. Marvel

The Pitch: The Supergirl of Marvel's Jersey City

Kamala Khan is one of Marvel's most popular new characters in years. She's a Muslim teenager from Jersey who is transformed by the Terrigen Mists and takes on the mantle of the new Ms. Marvel. The creative team of G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona, and Sana Amanat have done amazing things with her adventures so far.

Ms. Marvel displays many of the same characteristics that viewer helped viewers connect with Supergirl. She's a young woman looking for her place in the world, which includes figuring out how to handle the responsibility that comes with her powers. Kamala's cultural heritage only adds an additional layer.

Marvel made a splash by making a young minority character one of their premiere heroes. We're thinking they could do the same by bringing that character to network television. Ms. Marvel's Inhuman origin gives her built-in crossover potential with Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

She-Hulk

The Pitch: Ally McBeal SMASH!

TV loves lawyers, and everyone loves superheroes, so why not combine the two?

She-Hulk is practically a walking, talking network TV pitch already. Lawyer by day, superhero by night. At least that's the case when her house in order. When it's not, the lines start to blur.

There have been several She-Hulk series that take this concept and show that it can work. Peter David and Dan Slott took it in a mostly humorous direction, but we think Charles Soule's most recent interpretation really nailed the tone and concept (the fact that Soule is a lawyer himself probably helped) by having She-Hulk launch her own private practice and hire friends like Hellcat to help her out.

Sure, none of those series had particularly long lifetimes, but we think this idea is perhaps better suited for a television audience than a comic book audience. And just like Supergirl, She-Hulk can keep referencing her much more famous "cousin" without actually saying his name.

X-23

The Pitch: Orphan Black with mutants.

Fox is getting ready to extend its X-Men film franchise into the television space with pilots for Legion and Hellfire. At the same time, Hugh Jackman is getting ready to hang up his claws after the next Wolverine movie.

Instead of trying to replace Jackman's considerable big screen presence, let's take the Wolverine story to the small screen by following Logan's female clone, X-23. Also known as Laura Kinney, X-23 gets her codename because she's the 23rd attempt at cloning Wolverine

We're thinking a show like this could tweak X-23's origin a bit, with some inspiration from Orphan Black. Instead of beginning with Laura escaping from her creators, she could be living a normal life until the day Weapon X comes to collect her. That's when the claws pop out of her hands and feet, and she's forced to go on the run.

What follows is Laura's attempt to unravel the mystery of Weapon X, while fending off genetically enhanced hunters the organization keeps sending after her.

This sounds like a recipe for a thriller we could get into.

Zatanna

The Pitch: DC's answer to Daredevil, Jessica Jones and The Defenders.

Zatanna would be an opportunity to go dark on the DC Universe. We imagine this show being a good fit for a streaming service like Netflix, as it would essentially be Constantine with the network shackles taken off.

Zatanna may be a stage magician by day, but she delves into real magic by night. She may have tried to put that life behind her at some point, but it just keeps pulling her back in, and the arcane pathways of the DC Universe hold all sorts of nasty surprises.

Since we're dreaming big here, we also imagine Zatanna could be the start of DC's answer to the Defenders. Taking inspiration from the Grant Morrison series, Zatanna would be the first of seven series that would be part of Seven Soldiers of Victory. Sure, the chances of something that ambitious happening seems small, but it would be amazing.