Jeremy Jordan Talks Winn's Evolution on Supergirl

01/02/2017 05:34 pm EST

Last season on Supergirl, Jeremy Jordan's Winn Schott -- son of Superman villain Winslow "Toyman" Schott -- was seen almost exclusively in and around CatCo, where he was the IT guy, Kara Danvers's lovestruck co-worker, and ultimately the first official member of Team Supergirl.

This season, along with Cat Grant herself (who went on sabbatical when actress Calista Flockhart decided not to relocate to Vancouver along with the series' production), Jordan's character left CatCo -- and while the core of his personality remains in place, audiences are seeing him in a very different light.

Instead of CatCo, or instance, Winn finds himself working at the Department of Extranormal Operations, under director Hank Henshaw/J'Onn J'Onzz, and alongside Agent Alex Danvers. He has, as a result, missed out on the experience of working under the truculent and mean-spirited Snapper Carr.

"I think Winn is happy to be away from [Snapper Carr's] energy," Jordan told ComicBook.com during a recent interview.

Winn's personal life -- last season after pursuing Kara, he also briefly dated Siobhan Smythe, who would become the villain known as Silver Banshee -- hasn't been a huge focus, either, and Jordan says that's not changing anytime soon. Still, he says, he feels like audiences are getting a sense for Winn's personality through his work with the DEO.

"I think we're seeing Winn as a person through how he handles his business and his confrontations with James," Jordan said, referring to James Olsen (Mehcad Brooks). Winn has become James's assistant and technical adviser now that the longtime sidekick/pal to Superman and Supergirl has decided to become a costumed vigilante known as The Guardian. "We see that while being the sort of irrational fanboy, he's actually one of the more rational characters around. He's trying to think of everybody's well being and how things work out. At this point, there's not a whole lot that we see of Winn's personal life, but I certainly can't discount it in the future. There's a lot of fun stuff coming up, but it all involves the DEO and adventures that Winn gets to go on. I think that this has sort of become his life at this point. We also see Winn dealing with this potential Kara/Mon-El relationship that's been budding. That's not going to be an easy thing for him to deal with."

Those confrontations have been kept largely between the two so far. James was eager to get suited up and out on the street, and while he was eventually won over, Winn was...less excited, citing the potential for serious injury to a guy in a suit of armor running around trying to do Supergirlk's job.

Even now that it's happening, Supergirl and other members of the DEO team don't know -- except for Alex, who shushed the boys into submission when they wanted to reveal his secret at Thanksgiving dinner.

"Given Winn's complete inability to keep a secret, I can't imagine it's going to last very long," Jordan said of that status quo. "I think it shouldn't last very long; I think it provides more of an exciting story to present that problem of when Kara actually finally finds out about what's going on with Guardian and Winn and how they're going to deal with all that. People will slowly start to find out very quickly. In the next episode, Alex basically beats it out of Winn, so it's going ot become increasingly difficult for them to keep that secret."

The dynamic between Winn and James won't be too dramatically altered going forward, apparently, as Jordan told ComicBook.com that while on the surface it may seem like he's playing the Jimmy Olsen archetype -- the young, enthusiastic superhero "fan" who gets to tag along with The Guardian, who was one of Olsen's pals in the Silver Age -- that's not entirely fair, since Winn won't go straight into the gushing and running into danger like a more "traditional" Jimmy did in the comics.

"I think how we play against that archetype -- which is not a bad archetype to have -- is that Winn is a lot more aware of the dangers that are going on and has become sort of the more rational thinker," Jordan said. "We see the struggle already starting to happen where doesn't fully think that this is the best idea, but his nerd brain and fanboy brain thinks this is amazing, so he's struggling whether to keep his friends and himself safe, or actually go out and try to make a difference and step out of Supergirl's shadow. We see him struggling a lot more, whereas when I think of a Jimmy Olsen sort of character, you think of the more fun side of Winn and the more goofy, ambling, fumbling around and making silly mistakes kind of thing. But I think Winn is smarter than that and he's a little bit more cautious."

Leaving CatCo for the DEO -- besides missing out on abuse from Ian Gomez's Snapper Carr -- has been a good experience for Jordan all around. Playing off of David Harewood's Henshaw and Chyler Leigh's Alex Danvers has changed the way audiences -- and Jordan -- see the character.

"It's been really fun. Developing Winn's relationship with Alex and Hank has been really exciting," Jordan said. "Even though she's Kara's big sister and a little bit older than Winn, Winn sort of becomes a little bit more of a sounding board for Alex. She has someone that she trusts that she can talk to, while at the same time constantly rolling her eyes at. Winn's relationship with J'Onn-slash-Hank is really fun to explore. Hank is that reluctantly proud father figure but at the same time very stern and firm, so Winn has a lot of fun dealing with Hank. I think he knows tha the's not actually anybody to really be scared of in terms of he's not ever going to hurt him or anything and he's also very excited that he gets to hang out and work with a Martian on a daily basis."

That's the biggest place that Winn hasn't changed; as audiences saw in the season premiere, when he geeked out about Superman and dropped some Superman: The Movie references, he's still a fan at heart, even when he starts to get inundated with the everyday dangers of the job.

"I think that Winn has become a foil for the audience in terms of how he's giving us the fanboy reaction play by play, and that's a really fun, exciting aspect of Winn to play," Jordan said. "That's 'old Winn.' That who Winn has always been at his core. At the same time, Winn is growing up and learning to guard himself and learning to protect his friends and he kind of becomes a little bit of the sage advice-giver this season, whether he's giving advice to Alex or cautioning James to take it easy. I think he's learned a lot from Cat and he's learned a lot from his experience in the past year or so and it's forced him to grow up a lot."

Supergirl airs Monday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW. The series returns with new episodes on January 23.

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