The following contains major spoilers for Stargirl Season 3, now streaming on HBO Max and The CW App.

After an acclaimed three-season run, the DC superhero series Stargirl has come to an end on The CW with a triumphant finale closing out the show on its own terms. Created by Geoff Johns, the series followed Courtney Whitmore as the eponymous teenage superhero defending her small town of Blue Valley from supervillains while putting together a new iteration of the Justice Society of America. The explosive series finale pits the team against Icicle and the Ultra-Humanite, with the latter masquerading as Courtney and her stepfather's personal hero Sylvester Pemberton, Starman. By the time the dust has settled, the villains are defeated and the day is saved, while an epilogue provides a glimpse at the team's enduring legacy years into the future.

In an exclusive interview with CBR, series creator and showrunner Geoff Johns reflected on the series' entire run. He spoke about preparing the third season to be the show's last and explained the major moments from the Stargirl series finale.

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Stargirl Finale Sylvester

CBR: This season really pays off on something we've seen since the end of Stargirl Season 1, which is the return of "Sylvester." How was it building the twist that he was actually the Ultra-Humanite all along?

Geoff Johns: It was actually from Season 1 on, from the last scene in Season 1 to the first scene in Season 2, when he's checking for scars along his hairline in the mirror when he's going to see Mike's mom. We've planted this since the beginning of the show, so we've all been dying for people to see [Season 3] Episode 12 because we finally reveal that he's the Ultra-Humanite. We were very careful along the whole way to show different sides of Sylvester as we got to know him. He's a hero who returned. He's supportive. He wants the staff. He doesn't know who he is without Starman. He loses his temper and regrets it. There are so many emotional places for a viewer to go, and you look at Sylvester and go, "He's a jerk. Wait, he's kind. He's heroic. He's trying to be better. He's regretful."

There are so many different places that we wanted Sylvester to be all over the map, so you didn't quite know how you felt about him. You would never suspect him or his plan by making him incredibly flawed and struggling because the Ultra-Humanite is getting lost in the character and, at many times, believing he was Sylvester. It was really gratifying to get to Episode 12 and suddenly see this huge revelation, and very few people suspected this twist. That was great.

What was it about having Season 3's overall narrative structure be a murder mystery full of fake-outs and misdirection?

I really wanted every season to feel like, although it's Stargirl, it also had a different flavor or theme to it. The first season was designed to be a classic coming-of-age story in the same vein as Back to the Future, The Karate Kid, [and] the first Spider-Man with Tom Holland. I love those films, and Stargirl Season 1 was very influenced by them as well as the comic books that I wrote way back when. The second was influenced and inspired by things like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Flatliners -- the horror films that I grew up with that took your dark secrets and exposed them, manifested them, and had you confront them.

That was really what Season 2 was about, and I think it was cool having Eclipso do this, with Eclipso going, "There is darkness in everybody, even you, Courtney." Courtney had to face that, but with Courtney going, "Maybe so, but there's also good in everybody." That's what Eclipso taught her: "Yeah, there's darkness in everybody, but there is good in everybody, and I believe in that more than I believe in darkness." I love that, and that had a full arc, so when we got to Season 3 [subtitled] Frenemies, it was all about giving these villains a second chance to try to find the good in them. If you're going to have the heroes and villains of Blue Valley try to coexist, the best thing to do to disrupt that is to create an event that's going to cause a break in trust so you don't know who to trust.

Murder mysteries are those classic whodunnits where everyone is a suspect, you don't know who to trust. Knives Out, Murder, She Wrote, and all those classic murder mystery books, movies, and TV shows were going to be an inspiration for that. The murder mystery of it all made it a lot of fun, and we wanted to make sure it was fun to do, too. We wanted to do a fun season. If we had continued, we would have done that every season, but having these three seasons -- which I'm really grateful for -- it was always important to have the murder mystery for this specific season because it was an issue of trust at a time when you were learning how to trust people.

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The JSA assembles in the Stargirl Finale

The JSA really goes through the wringer in these last couple of episodes on a personal level, with Rick confronting his anger issues, Yolanda addressing the lies she's kept from her mother, and Beth dealing with her parents. How was it exploring these more emotional moments for the characters?

It's all about the emotion for this. One of the things I'm the most proud of about Stargirl is that I think the emotions that our characters experience and feel. We really take our time with that. We really make sure that we're trying to let the audience experience those emotions with our characters. We don't have the characters in scene after scene of dialog explaining how they feel. You get to sit with them in moments where there is no dialogue and feel what they feel.

To have them confront the hardest things that are in front of them and grow as people and grow closer with the ones they care about, that's the whole point of life but also the whole point of the show -- for these characters to confront the hard things and get rewarded for it because it's not easy. They get rewarded for it through their relationships, their families, and friends. Being heroes, they deserve a reward for all the sacrifices they make, and I wanted to make sure they got it in this episode.

I was surprised by how affecting Sportsmaster and Tigress' death were earlier this season; it's very emotional, with them reaching for each other as they die. Why did you want to kill them off and have Artemis hunt down Icicle in the finale?

I love that scene with Artemis and Icicle. It's one of my favorite scenes, and it's an important scene. Even as important is the final scene afterward with Shade talking about who's on the JSA 10 years from now, and you hear that Artemis is because she found her way back. We don't know how or why, but we know she could because the JSA are the JSA, and Courtney is who she is. The Crocks themselves -- Joy Osmanski, who plays Tigress, and Neil Hopkins, who plays Sportsmaster -- were so fun to work with in the first season.

In the second season, when they broke out and came to the Whitmore-Dugan household, the comedy between Paula and Barbara and Crusher and Pat was so palpable and so funny. It just allowed us to lean into those relationships. As we leaned into those relationships, knowing full and well before we shot a frame of Season 3 that that's what was going to happen, we worked really hard to show the Crocks grow and to have those relationships become meaningful and real so that by the time they're killed, it hurts because you don't want to just kill people, and you don't care.

We really wanted to build the Crocks up so you would feel grief, be angry, and want Jordan stopped. Joy and Neil loved those characters so much. They were so great playing it. Someday, I'll talk about what Season 4 would've been and what we had planned if we had done it because I think people would've really liked it, but I'll save that for another day.

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Stargirl Finale Courtney

I did want to talk about the epilogue, with Jay Garrick back and the Shade teasing possible directions for the story, including the Seven Soldiers of Victory and Sylvester's true resurrection. What was it about ending the series with this window of the future?

It was incredibly important, and I always knew that was going to be the last scene for the series, always. It was this future scene where we'd jump ahead and see the JSA as this fully formed team. I never wanted to work on the show after they graduated from high school. The show would've ended regardless as soon as they graduated from high school because it's not a college show or superhero show about a team of adults. It was important to go into the future, especially with this finale, and have someone like the Shade talk about what happened to the team, about the adventures that they had, who was on the team, where they ended up, what that meant, and how the legacy of the JSA continues.

Having Jay Garrick was really important because Jay Garrick coming in tells you that it's not over yet. The adventures are going to keep going, and Shade is now on the team as we learn from Jay Garrick. There's something exhilarating about that, and I just wanted people's imaginations to be able to build out the rest of this world and the rest of the time and these adventures and know that they're still going on. Even though we only got to show people three seasons of these stories, they all exist and still happened. I wanted people to leave this show, as they finish watching that final scene, with a sense of warmth, love, and excitement.

I wanted to minimize the sadness as much as possible because the passion that the people who watch and love the show have is palpable. It's the same that myself, James Robinson and the writers, Brec Bassinger, Luke Wilson, and the rest of the cast and the crew, directors, and post team all have for the show, for Stargirl, and for the JSA. I wanted to try to capture a really exciting moment for us to go out on.

Any time James Robinson gets to write the Shade is just the best.

It's epic. James Robinson did passes on every line of dialogue that Shade ever said.

This show really does feel like justice for sidekicks, whether it's Pat triumphing over the Ultra-Humanite or Beth's parents overjoyed to become sidekicks for their daughter. Between the show and your current comic work with The New Golden Age, what is it about the theme of sidekicks?

I love sidekicks, and I love legacy Golden Age characters -- characters with history. It's all just super special.

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Stargirl Finale Cindy

With rumblings behind-the-scenes about The CW, was there anything planned for further down the line that you accelerated to include and give their due in Season 3, knowing it could be the show's last?

No. Before going into Season 3, there was already news about The CW changing drastically. I think we all knew that the writing was on the wall, so I planned Season 3 to be the last right away. Every scene in the finale of Season 3 was there, and the idea for Season 4 wasn't going backward on character arcs or anything like that. It was totally different, but I don't think there was anything that was accelerated in Season 3. If there's anything, it's tiny bits, maybe, but it's pretty intact to what I planned.

How was it giving Jakeem his big payoff in the series finale as he masters the magical pen?

I wrote Jakeem Thunder for almost a decade in the comics. I love that character. I originally had planned to bring him into Season 1 early on, but the cast was already so full, so he came in Season 2, and he quickly became one of my favorites. Alkoya Brunson is so funny. He just nailed the audition.

To watch the wishes, thinking they had to be so technical and specific, but then Zeke, the hilarious character from the garage, tells him to wish with everything he cares about and everything he feels to all be in there... In Jakeem's mind, he was specific. It's all about interpretation when he says, "the most beautiful woman in the world," and Mike says, "Who's to say [Cindy] is?" Jakeem says, "I am!" That's the moment when he becomes Jakeem Thunder and says, "My specifics are what matters. How I feel and what I believe are what matters." I love that moment. I think it's a really powerful and heroic moment for Jakeem and clearly gives him his due -- plus, it's hilarious!

We'd be remiss if we didn't talk about Courtney Whitmore herself. Where did you want to take her across this three-season journey?

With Courtney, her and Pat have massive arcs in confronting Sylvester. That was the whole point in Starman being the most iconic and ultimate villain that those two could face together. There's just no one bigger and that would mean more. For Pat, it's about finally going from sidekick to truly [become a] hero, as he is the hero that goes up against Starman and defeats him and does it because he wants to protect the legacy of his friend. I love his emotion when he's fighting in S.T.R.I.P.E. with Starman in the junkyard.

On the other side, Courtney's arc is reaffirming that she's worthy, and it's not because anybody else says she is. It's because she knows who she is -- who she is and what she does. Those two moments happen on the battlefield, where they should. That, for me, is the magic for this third season, that this is the ultimate story and villain for Courtney and Pat together. That's why it's the perfect season to end the series on.

That's why, when I first imagined Stargirl as a trilogy, it ended with this. I'm so grateful we got to do these three [seasons] because I had to tell the Starman story, and we were able to tell it the way I wanted to tell it. We had so much creative freedom on this show because it's Stargirl and the JSA. There wasn't the same amount of scrutiny from the studio and the other people on how these characters should be portrayed because they hadn't really been portrayed; it was great.

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Stargirl Finale Jakeem

Stargirl has always been a passion project for you ever since you and Lee Moder created the character in comics. Looking back, what did you want to do with the show, and how was it working with this cast and crew to bring it all to life?

It's such a gift. I created the character. It was the first comic book I ever wrote. It was inspired by my sister, Courtney. I'm at my parents' house to watch the finale with them, which is so special to me that we got to do this. Just creating, building, working on it, and seeing it manifest alone would've been something that would've been really cool and fun to me personally, but the thing that made it so magical was the cast, the crew, and the writers. I got to do it with one of my best friends in the world, James Robinson -- one of the best writers in the world by my side who knows these characters like nobody else and has the same kind of heart that he tells stories with.

I got to work with a bunch of other amazing writers and the best cast in the world. Brec Bassinger is one of my favorite people on the planet, and anybody would be lucky to have someone like her as the number one on their call sheet because she brought the true spirit of Stargirl and a hero who cares about people to life on-screen and off-screen. Luke Wilson, Amy Smart, Joel McHale, Cameron Gellman, Anjelika Washington -- everyone who was just a part of the cast were magic. We all spent time together on and off set. It was a true family, and we had a fantastic crew.

I would put our superhero show up against any other superhero show. We had the same budget as the other CW shows, and I think we made our show look fantastic. We carried the show from DC Universe, and even though our budget went down, I think we carried that cinematic look and quality throughout the seasons. It was more than just a show for me -- it was an experience. I made friends that will last a lifetime and met people I will work with forever on this.

Created for television by Geoff Johns, all three seasons of Stargirl are available to stream on HBO Max. Stargirl Season 3 is available to stream on The CW App.