Diksha Sundriyal
In Netflix’s ‘Supacell,’ dormant genes are awakened, giving superpowers to normal people, who find themselves in a completely new world once they realize what they are in for. The show’s first season sets up the grounds for what will potentially expand into a whole new territory, but with just six episodes, it has a lot to cover. So, every scene and every character is put to good use, and with each episode, it becomes clear that nothing is presented unnecessarily in the show. The mystery surrounding Tazer’s mother is one of those things. Interestingly, the show gives us the answer before posing the question. SPOILERS AHEAD
Tazer’s Journey is Shaped by His Mother’s Absence
Every protagonist in ‘Supacell’ is defined by their personal struggles. While one battles with their criminal past while trying to do better for their family, the other is simply focused on making money because they have been abandoned by their family. In Tazer’s case, things are a bit more complicated. He lives with his grandmother since his mother walked out on them. His grandma believes she will return one day, but Tazer holds a grudge and cannot forgive her for walking out on her family so easily. Why she walked out and where she went is not revealed, but it remains a point of conflict for Tazer because the absence of his mother fuels his rage and leads him on a path that could end catastrophically for him.
As Tazer’s powers are activated, he becomes more interested in finding ways to do away with the competition and becoming the top boy of the South London scene. But in all this, he forgets to ask a pertinent question: where did his powers come from? With the show bringing up sickle cell repeatedly, it becomes clear that this has something to do with the superpowers. Sure enough, three of the five protagonists are confirmed to have had one of their parents affected by sickle cell. But we don’t get this confirmation in Tazer’s case. It isn’t until the final episode that he discovers what really happened to his mother. In a bout of anger, Krazy reveals that his mother was held captive by the villains for years before she was killed. Tazer calls it a lie, unable to believe a word that comes out of his enemy’s mouth. Sadly, bitter as it might, it’s the truth.
Tazer’s Mother’s Tragic Fate is Revealed Quite Early in Supacell
The first scene of ‘Supacell’ shows a woman trying to escape a heavily guarded facility. When she finds herself in front of a door, she doesn’t have a key; she uses her powers to blow the door off its hinges. However, before she can run to her freedom, she is shot down by a bunch of soldiers, who then drag her body back to where she tried to run from, in full view of the rest of the people held in captivity. It is a great introduction to the series, which sets up the villains before the heroes, showing us what’s at stake. It also confirms the truth about Taser’s mother. The woman shot down in this scene is her.
It’s quite a tragic way to start a story but also a rather clever one. In one scene, the show manages to set up the story for the audience, telling us what to look out for in future episodes. But it doesn’t waste the screen time on an irrelevant character. At first, the prisoner seems like a random woman, considering we don’t know most people behind the glass screens in those cells. Later in the episode, however, the show drops the details about her real identity when we see a picture of her in Tazer’s house. It’s an easily missable detail but serves as a clever hint for the audience, giving them the answer to the most important question in Taser’s life but being very subtle about it.
The show carries this subtlety in other aspects of storytelling as well. It sets up the origins of the superpowers in a similar manner by dropping hints along the way instead of having a character break into a monologue and explain everything to another character and the audience, and the story is all the better for it.
Read More: What is Supacell? Why do Only Black People Have Powers in Supacell?
