Naomi Creator Tease How Show Will Diverge From DC Comics Canon

We’re officially less than a week away from the premiere of Naomi, the latest live-action series within the ever-sprawling DCTV world. The CW series follows the solo stories of Naomi McDuffie (Kaci Walfall), and draws inspiration from the Brian Michael Bendis, David Walker, and Jamal Campbell series of the same name. In the grand scheme of things, Naomi is a relatively new character, with her only getting her second solo comics arc later this year. As a result, fans have already begun to wonder where the series’ narrative will go in the long run. During Naomi‘s panel as part of the Television Critics Association winter press tour, series co-creator Ava DuVernay teased that the show will be paving a unique narrative ground.

“We’ve got a lot of information in the first two episodes, which means we get to make up new, cool things. That’s exactly what’s happening,” DuVernay revealed. “This thing is off and running.”

Later in the panel, DuVernay spoke about the involvement Bendis and Walker have had in the television adaptation.

“They have been the epitome of the antithesis of toxic masculinity,” DuVernay explained. “They have said, ‘This is our baby, and you take her, and you raise her in the way that you want.’ They have been lovely in being very hands-off… That was something that they gave us as a gift as artists and creators to say, ‘Look, we’re not going to micromanage this process. We love Naomi, we would love to see how she is in the hands of two women. You all take it and do your thing.’”

“Both of them have been amazingly supportive of us going off and independently taking Naomi where she’ll go in the series, which will be a different path than where she’ll go in the next season of the comics,” DuVernay continued. “I think Naomi is a muscular enough character, and she deserves and can hold multiple iterations of artists interpreting her, just like Spider-Man, just like Batman. Naomi should be able to have those multiple interpretations as well.”

Naomi follows a teenage girl’s journey from her small northwestern town to the heights of the multiverse. When a supernatural event shakes her hometown to the core, Naomi sets out to uncover its origins, and what she discovers will challenge everything we believe about our heroes. In addition to Walfall, the series will star Camila Moreno, Alexander Wraith (Orange Is the New Black, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD), Cranston Johnson (Filthy Rich), Barry Watson (7th Heaven, Hart of Dixie), Mary-Charles Jones (Kevin Can Wait, Grey’s Anatomy), Aidan Gemme (Tomorrowland, Dora the Explorer), Mouzam Makkar (The Fix, Champions), Will Meyers (Gotham, Blue Bloods), and Daniel Puig (The System).

DC’s Naomi is set to debut on Tuesday, January 11th at 9/8c on The CW.