‘Supergirl’: Nia’s Origin Revealed in “Bunker Hill”

Tonight’s episode of Supergirl saw Nia Nal (Nicole Maines) manifest her powers as part of her path to becoming the superhero, Dreamer, but it also revealed some other important information about Kara Danvers’ (Melissa Benoist) CatCo protege.

Spoilers for tonight’s episode of Supergirl, “Bunker Hill”, below.

Right off the bat tonight, fans were introduced to the truth behind Nia’s sleeping spells at work. It turns out she has highly vivid dreams of a precognitive nature. They’re so upsetting for Nia that she has been asking her roommate to keep her from falling asleep, thus creating the cycle of sleepiness that has her falling asleep at her desk and drinking lots of coffee.

But while Kara is worried about Nia and her secrets, it turns out that Brainy (Jesse Rath) already knows quite a bit about Nia thanks to his coming from the future. It seems that Nia is well known in the far future, something that Brainy reveals to Supergirl and Alex (Chyler Leigh) but refuses to elaborate on so as not to accidentally alter history in any way.

Later, Kara pays Nia a visit to reach out to her and that’s when Nia reveals the truth: she’s not human. Nia tells Kara that her family is from far away. How far away? They’re from a planet called Naltor, but that’s not all. Nia also reveals that every so many generations, the women in her family have the power to literally dream the future. Once Nia confesses this to Kara, Brainy comes out to help her deal with some of the things she’s seen in her dreams.

Brainy’s involvement also leads to an interesting tidbit of information about Nia. The 12th level intellect refers to Nia as “Nura”, something that Nia catches, but Brainy quickly dismisses.

For fans of DC Comics, tonight’s reveals about Nia will ring quite a few bells. While Supergirl fans have known for a while that Nia will eventually become Dreamer, the first transgender superhero on television, it seems like the show will connect her more closely to Nura Nal, the Legion of Super-Heroes member initially known as Dream Girl in comics. Nura, created by Edmond Hamilton and John Forte in 1964, was from the planet Naltor, though in comics nearly all of Naltor’s inhabitants possess some form of precognitive abilities. The Dreamer identity, which appears to be the one that Supergirl will explore, initially debuted in 1996 in a story by Tom Peyer, Tom McGraw, and Lee Moder.

As for Maines, she’s excited for her character’s continued evolution — specifically her eventually super suit.

“I’m so excited. I’m trying to conduct myself on set in a professional manner and be like ‘I’m not completely obsessed with the super-suit,’ but it’s all I think about,” Maines told reporters during a visit to the Supergirl set. “Every morning I wake up, ‘I’m getting a super suit!’ I’m going to sleep, ‘I’m getting a super-suit!’ I’m really, really excited. It’s gonna be gorgeous! I have the best super-suit. I do.”

Were you excited for Nia’s origin reveal? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Supergirl airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.