Jordan Calloway's Painkiller will get a backdoor pilot for a spinoff of The CW's Black Lightning during its fourth season.
According to Deadline, Painkiller will star in a planned spinoff episode of Black Lightning Season 4, with Salim Akil serving as writer, executive producer and director of the pilot.
Calloway starred as Khalil Payne in the first season of Black Lightning and was upped to a series regular for Season 2. Khalil Payne was a promising track star and student at Freeland High School -- where Black Lightning (Cress Williams) was the Principal -- before he suffered a gunshot wound to his spine. Unable to walk, Khalil became embittered until Black Lightning's archnemesis Tobias Whale (Marvin "Krondon" Jones III) offered him the chance to walk again through cybernetic enhancements.
Under loyalty to Tobias Whale, Khalil was transformed into Painkiller, meta-strong and with the power to generate a paralyzing agent from his body that is distributed through darts. With a new lease on life, Painkiller began to reminisce on his previous life and romance with Black Lightning's daughter, Jennifer Pierce (China Anne McClain).
Season 3 saw Painkiller wrestle with his inner demons while also eventually joining Black Lightning and his Outsiders in their war against Markovia.
The synopsis for Painkiller can be found below.
Based on characters created for DC by Tony Isabella with Eddie Newell, "Painkiller" follows Khalil Payne (Calloway), a young man ridden with the guilt of his troubled past from his former life in Freeland City. As a super-enhanced killing machine known as Painkiller, he was both a member of Tobias Whale’' gang and a weapon of Agent Odell and the shadowy ASA. After attempting to bury the darker, devastatingly lethal Painkiller part of his persona, Khalil has distanced himself away from everyone he knows and loves in a new city, Akashic Valley, in order to find peace. But peace never comes easy for men with pasts like his. As his violent, destructive history crashes his idyllic new beginning, Khalil is thrust back into action with a new mission – bring justice where he once gave out punishment – but to do that, he will first have to deal with and harness his darker side.
Black Lightning stars Cress Williams as Jefferson Pierce/Black Lightning, China Anne McClain as Jennifer Pierce, Nafessa Williams as Anissa Pierce/Thunder, Christine Adams as Lynn Stewart, Marvin "Krondon" Jones III as Tobias Whale and James Remar as Peter Gambi. Season 4 premieres Feb. 8, 2021 on The CW.
Source: Deadline