Black Lightning's Lynn Pierce Isn't The Typical Powerless Character
Superhero TV shows have an interesting balance to maintain between their characters. There are superpowered vigilantes who go out into the streets to battle bad guys. But there are also usually powerless individuals they maintain as allies. It would be irresponsible to have them try to fight people with powers, so they usually get relegated to minor roles behind computers when they're not getting kidnapped.
Fortunately, "Black Lightning" on The CW managed to subvert these expectations with Lynn Pierce (Christine Adams). Lynn is Jefferson's (Cress Williams) ex-wife who learns about his superhero identity. She's already well-acquainted with this new area of life as she's a neuroscientist specializing in metahuman studies, which means she can help Jefferson even though she doesn't have powers of her own.
In an interview with Collider, Adams spoke about feeling appreciative that her character wasn't pushed to the background, as has happened so many times before. She explained, "Actually with Lynn, again, you see her trying to solve the puzzle and put the pieces together and dig into the past and dig into how Jefferson became who he is. So you'll start to see her relationship with Gambi, and how that starts to grow and what that really means, and their conflict and how they're adversaries, and enemies but friends." This was particularly the case as Green Light began playing a larger role in the superhero series.
Lynn helps break down Black Lightning's mysteries
Normally, non-superpowered individuals in superhero shows need some other special skill to be an asset to the team. That was the case with Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards), who has a penchant for hacking, and even though she receives a cool codename, "Overwatch," she's mostly relegated to helping the team by looking up information on their adversaries. Lynn Stewart has a similar intellect, except this time, it relates to chemical compounds.
Christine Adams continued to tell Collider about how that skill allowed the character to remain on the frontlines even when she wasn't the one getting into fights. She said, "We don't know how directly yet, but we're starting to get a sense, and Lynn gets a sample of this Green Light and starts to break it down and the molecular compound of it, and starts to see similarities in what's in it and what's happening with Jeff. So she's the one who starts to unlock this initial mystery." Lynn's ultimately the one who starts to put the puzzle together in figuring out how Green Light factors into everything happening in their town, and Adams loved how there was an element of realism to it.
She continued, "When I read it in the script I was like oh my God, this is brilliant. And it's still rooted in a reality, even though it's this thing that superheroes have or maybe have ingested or imbibed in some way, it still feels like something that you've seen in the newspaper or that you've read about in the way that it comes into the community and that it dominates the community." "Black Lightning" may have ended sooner than most fans would've liked, but Lynn established herself as a standout character in the CW superhero-verse.