Justin the Janitor approaches Pat for help while Courtney meets her real father.
Tropes:
- 10-Minute Retirement: Courtney briefly gives up being Stargirl after learning the truth about her father, but a pep talk from Pat helps her see that she doesn't need that legacy to be a hero.
- An Aesop:
- Anyone can be a hero, regardless of who they are or where they came from.
- Family is who loves you, not whose genes you have.
- Broken Pedestal: Courtney's image of her father being a noble, heroic man is completely shattered in this episode.
- Call-Back: When Pat shows Beth and Rick the photo of the Seven Soldiers of Victory, Beth comments on how there are eight of them, the same observation that Courtney had made a few episodes ago. Pat just brushes it off, not wanting to debate the point again.
- Crocodile Tears: Henry Sr feigns sadness at his son's memorial, despite the fact that he was secretly the one who murdered him (as Courtney and her friends, and the audience, know) and feels zero remorse for it.
- Determinator: Even though the Seven Soldiers of Victory had gone their separate ways, Shining Knight still pursued Dr. Ito. Unfortunately, this led to him being captured by the ISA.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Subverted. Whatever feelings Jordan may have for Barbara aren't enough to deter him from targeting Courtney, at least once he realizes that Barbara knows his true identity.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: "Evil" might be going a bit far, but the family dog is visibly displeased at Sam being in the house. Turns out, it's an Excellent Judge of Character.
- From Zero to Hero: Despite his lowly origins as a page, Justin was deemed worthy to inherit Excalibur by King Arthur himself, eventually becoming the great hero Shining Knight. This parallels Courtney's plot in the episode, as she realizes that while she wasn't born special like she thought, she's still the one that was chosen by the Staff and she can still be a great hero despite her humble origins.
- Heroic BSoD: Courtney slips into one of these upon coming to the realization that not only was her birth father not Starman, but he's an absolute sleaze ball willing to con his daughter out of a locket she's held onto for years so he can make a quick buck. It's not helped by the Cosmic Staff no longer working for her, seemingly because it knows Courtney and Sylvester Pemberton aren't father and daughter, and Courtney rationalizing that Joey Zarrick and Henry Jr. would never have lost their lives if she had never found the staff and made up the Stargirl moniker in the first place. Fortunately, her teammates, Pat, and Barbara manage to snap her out of this so that she can get the staff to work for her again.
- Hypocrite: Brainwave accuses Jordan of being one when Jordan hesitates to target Courtney and her family:Brainwave: I killed my own wife and son for your dream of a new America and you're hesitating because of a woman who works for you?
- Identity Amnesia: Dragon King captured Shining Knight and experimented on him, leaving him with fragmented memories of his past self.
- Internal Reveal:
- Courtney learns that Starman isn't her father, as do the rest of the team.
- Brainwave reveals Courtney's identity to Icicle, and makes the connection that Pat must be Stripsey.
- Icicle realizes that Barbara knows who he really is when he goes through her computer and learns she's been researching Starman.
- Pat surmises that the ISA's plan involves a mass brainwashing.
- Irony: As revealed in the previous episode, Jordan once had to squash Brainwave's Conflicting Loyalty between the woman he loved and the ISA. Now Jordan is experiencing similar Conflicting Loyalty between his cause and Barbara, and Brainwave is the one who has to squash it out of him.
- Jerkass: Sam, Courtney's real father. At first, it seems like he wants to rebuild a relationship with his daughter, but it turns out to be a ploy to con her out of the locket he had given her ten years ago.
- Jerkass Has a Point: He may have been rude to him and threatened to call the cops, but the farmer is correct about Justin bothering him on his farm when he was asking for help finding a specific horse.
- Kick the Dog: During the school memorial for Henry Jr., his father reassures the student body that no one is to blame for his death, while secretly telling Courtney via telepathy "Except you".
- Kick Them While They Are Down: The above mentioned Kick the Dog moment came while Courtney was already experiencing a Heroic BSoD.
- Lack of Empathy: Brainwave has absolutely zero remorse for murdering his wife and son, and to the extent that he's upset about it he blames other people for it.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Brainwave offers to do this to Barbara for Icicle since he has a thing for her, thereby getting around the issue of killing her daughter and husband, but Icicle refuses because she'd be a fundamentally different person without those memories.
- Leave No Survivors: Icicle orders Brainwave to kill Courtney's entire family, even Mike, so as not to leave a legacy running around.
- Morton's Fork: Barbara finds herself in one: if she stays in Blue Valley and let Courtney fight, there's a chance she'll get killed, but if they leave, Blue Valley will be at the mercy of the ISA.
- Mythology Gag:
- Brainwave reveals that after he killed his son, the boy's powers transferred to him, making him even more powerful. In the comics, it was the opposite: Brainwave's powers transferred to Junior before he died in his arms.
- The porch scene from Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. Issue #14, in which Sam asks for Courtney's locket so he could make a quick buck, is recreated nearly shot-for-shot in this episode, right down to the leaf falling above a heartbroken Courtney.
- Never My Fault: In his speech at Henry Jr.'s funeral, Brainwave says that no one is responsible for his son's death, then adds telepathically to Courtney, "Except you."
- Oh, Crap!: Courtney's appropriate reaction when she learns that Brainwave remembers her identity.
- Papa Wolf: After seeing the kind of person Sam really is and how hurt Courtney is by the betrayal, Pat politely but firmly tells him not to come back. When Sam also makes a crass remark about Barbara's looks, Pat decks him and says Sam's lucky he's too busy to do worse.
- Psychosomatic Superpower Outage: Courtney is unable to use the Cosmic Staff after learning she isn't Starman's daughter, as her self-doubt is clouding her judgement. Once she's convinced that the staff chose her for the qualities that make her a hero, rather than who she assumed herself to be, it reactivates with even more power than it had before.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- By killing his son, Brainwave has absorbed his powers and become even stronger, boasting that he'll be able to brainwash half the country instead of just six states.
- The Cosmic Staff is seemingly even more powerful now that Courtney is wielding it out of her faith in herself rather than who she believed herself to be.Justin: Aye, our queen has risen.
- Wham Line: Project New America no longer involves just brainwashing six states. Thanks to Brainwave's rise in power, it now involves brainwashing half the country.
- Wham Shot: As Icicle sends Brainwave off to kill Courtney and her family, a nearby monitor shows that they plan to launch Project New America in 12 hours.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: When Shining Knight was captured by Dragon King and the ISA, they settled for just giving him a Mind Wipe and even letting him keep Excalibur. This is strangely merciful for a group that has no qualms with even killing family members when necessary, though it's implied they were using him as a test subject for what would become Project New America.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Upon learning the harsh truth about what her birth dad is really like, Courtney becomes filled with doubt that she was ever worthy of wielding the Cosmic Staff due to not being related to Starman by blood. Pat and Barbara assure her that she doesn't need a connection with Starman in order to wield the staff, and that it chose her on account of her character, not her background.
