***SPOILERS BELOW***
Superworld - Synopsis
In 1963 a wave of cosmic light hits the Earth without warning or explanation. After six days of mass unconsciousness, humanity awakens to find that everyone in the world now has a superpower. Chaos ensues, but after approximately a year order begins to return as the social contract re-establishes itself – the relative random equality of superhuman abilities preventing any one group of people dominating the rest.
Thirty-seven years later, superhumanism is now normal, even banal. Several things are taken for granted; that everyone has a power, which they begin manifesting at puberty; that everyone only has one power; and that nobody has any control over what power they have. The past four decades has seen a lot of change (and a number of revolutions) across the world, but in most countries life is peaceful and prosperous, with universal and inalienable superpowers being both a strong advancing and equalising factor.
On the eve of his eighteenth birthday, Matthew Callaghan wakes up and attends school like any other day. Matt is from a happy, stable middle-class family, the eldest of three, with a telekinetic father and an aquamorph mother, and is registered as a clairvoyant. He provides clairvoyant readings for other people as part of his Powers Development at high school, and privately spends a good hour and a half each day practising his mental defences to prevent telepathic intrusion. Matt appears perfectly ordinary, with a healthy cohort of friends, decent grades and an uneventful home life.
Except Matt is not ordinary – nor is he in fact clairvoyant. Secretly, he has reached adulthood without manifesting any superpower, and to the best of his knowledge is the only person in the world to do so. Matt has created the lie that he is clairvoyant – a vague and uncommon power – to hide his base humanity, using cold reading, psychological manipulation and just plain lies to give his predictions the illusion of accuracy in hopes of avoiding being exposed and spending the rest of his life as a medical oddity. Matt’s eighteenth birthday brings no reprieve from his condition – though unbeknownst to him, as he falls asleep, he is being watched.
Jane Walker is in the same grade as Matt, although the two initially do not know each other. Unlike Matt, Jane does have a power – one she’s all too aware of. Jane is an “empath”, a shorthand term for someone with the ability to copy another person’s powers. Empaths are widely hated after a disaster 10 years earlier, wherein blood-based empath Klaus Heydrich, a.k.a. The Black Death, absorbed hundreds of powers and committed mass murder on an unprecedented scale. Armed with almost every ability imaginable, Heydrich proved almost unstoppable, and killed all but one of the Legion of Heroes – the world’s foremost superhero organisation – when they attempted to stop him. The sole survivor, Walter Reid a.k.a. Captain Dawn, with the near‑godlike power of unlimited energy (which he could express in flight, inhuman strength and endurance, and searing blasts of golden light), finally managed to defeat Heydrich, but rather than suffering defeat Heydrich combined several of his powers to unleash a titanic explosion, which devastated Africa and left hundreds of millions dead.
The taint of this incident – the greatest genocide in historical memory – marks empaths hard. In most countries strict laws govern empath behaviour, including the copying of powers and the need to be tattooed and recognisable at all times – which is considered a more tolerable evil than (as has occurred in some places) outright mass empath extermination.
Jane, who was eight at the time of Heydrich’s cataclysm, has grown up suffering from anti‑empath hatred and prejudice since she manifested. She is regularly bullied, harassed and finds little support from authorities, and as a result has developed into an angry, reclusive young woman. Her ability has also meant a level of hardship and vicarious societal contempt for her single father, who has been shunted from crappy job to crappy job almost as often as Jane has switched schools.
When several of her latest classmates attack her, Jane is forced to move schools once again, and ends up enrolled at Matt’s high school. Petrified of her presence, the school faculty ask Matt to “keep an eye” on Jane clairvoyantly to head off any trouble. Despite initially frightened, Matt soon has a revelation that, ironically, he has less to fear from Jane than anyone; that the danger she poses to him is really no greater than the danger posed by anyone with superpowers. Determined to do the right thing, Matt attempts to befriend Jane, or at least normalise her presence to try and defuse tensions between her and the rest of the school. This proves more difficult than he originally anticipated, as Jane is very suspicious, standoffish and hostile towards any attempted social contact. A complicating factor arises when Matt witnesses Jane in Powers Development and discovers that in addition to being moody she is a naturally gifted and dangerous superpowered fighter.
Matt’s uncertainty about what to do with Jane is cut short when he witnesses a group of African refugees from his year moving to assault her. He intervenes, preventing the conflict, and in the aftermath Jane drops her guard somewhat. The two talk, and Jane explains that she is a touch-based empath, different to Heydrich in that she only needs to touch someone to copy their powers rather than absorb their blood, but that she can only at maximum hold four powers at once. She also admits that her rigorous training is not just for self-defence, but to pursue goals of super‑heroism; Jane’s childhood dream is to join the Legion of Heroes.
Lulled into complacency by their budding rapport, Matt makes a crucial mistake – he offers Jane his hand, which she takes. Instantly realising he has no powers she can absorb, the empath demands answers, and Matt flees, terrified, before she can work it out. His initial dread turns to astonishment however as he learns Jane has no plans to expose him – the two talk, Matt reveals the true extent of his condition, Jane agrees to keep his secret, and the pair’s friendship begins to bloom.
Several weeks later, just as things are becoming settled, the students of Matt and Jane’s high school are called together for the announcement that one of their number has had their application accepted by the Legion of Heroes. Initially Matt thinks it is Jane, given her strength and prodigious ability – but the recruiter turns out to be there for Matt. Despite never applying, the Legion has received an application for Matt, and are now keen to recruit and cultivate his clairvoyancy.
Desperate for a way out without revealing the truth, Matt refuses to join the Legion unless Jane – who by all rights with her grading should be offered entry, and likely would be were she not an empath – is allowed in too. This backfires, however, when the Legion agrees to let Jane in, and before either know it a week has passed and they are both headed to Morningstar, the Legion’s training academy.
Despairing at his fate, during the journey Matt tries to sleep off his hangover while Jane grows ever-more excited about what lies ahead. After Jane steps out for a few moments however, Matt abruptly finds himself face-to-face with a pale, blue-eyed child, who holds up a note saying “Death stalks Morningstar” before disappearing. Shaken, Matt writes it off as a hallucination, but is nevertheless increasingly wary.
The pair arrive at the Academy, a large multi-story manor with a number of ranges and other facilities around it. Similar in many ways to a superhuman university, Morningstar has live-in accommodation housing both Acolytes (trainees for the Legion) and Ashes (Acolytes who were not full Legion members during the African Devastation and now serve in a supporting role). The pair are introduced to the other students, with Matt sparking curiosity while Jane draws outright hostility.
Come morning, Matt is surprised to find that his movements are not curtailed and his activities not mandated, with the exception of meditation with an astral-projectionist Ashes man to help focus his clairvoyant skills. Matt quickly deduces that the Academy is nearly all self‑directed and self‑motivated learning, clearly used to Acolytes eager to be there and improve. Matt undertakes some security admin with Edward Rakowski, the resident superhuman genius at the Academy, and with nothing better to do soon begins killing time playing video games with the sheepish, socially‑clumsy Ed.
Jane meanwhile begins her training, facing derision, disregard and hostility from her Acolyte peers. The Ashes quickly spread orders that Jane, being (like all Acolytes) selected to the Academy by Captain Dawn, is not to be harmed, but this decree only prevents outright violence, not contempt. Meanwhile Matt finds himself making easy social inroads, meeting a laid-back red-headed psychic Wally Cykes, a tall, irrepressible speedster Giselle Pixus, and a horse-loving faunamorph, Celeste. Matt’s progressing sense of ease is shattered, however, when he returns to his room to find the bleu-eyed child waiting for him with another enigmatic warning – “Stay hidden, Matt Callaghan, or the world ends.” Matt grabs the child, confirms he is real, but the boy vanishes before Matt can get any more out of him.
Matt’s anxiety only increases the following day when Academy administration unveils a testing regiment they expect him to undergo to map the progress of his clairvoyant powers. With a sudden revelation, he resolves to get expelled from Morningstar before his secret can be uncovered, and begins brainstorming delinquent and degenerative acts. Despairing of this plan, Jane resumes training and challenges one of the senior Acolytes, the titanic strongman James Conrad, to single combat – only to lose viciously and be beaten near death. This is all within the scope of Legion training however, and Jane is supernaturally healed, waking up in Morningstar’s Infirmary covered in a cast. While immobilised, she is visited by the elusive Captain Dawn, who encourages her to stay on, and to not let getting beaten by someone powerful deter her from her goals.
The following morning Jane is discharged from the Infirmary, only to face open mockery by James and another psychic, Natalia Baroque, in the dining hall. Enraged, Jane accepts Natalia’s challenge to test her mental defences, only to be beaten horribly and left reeling. Terrified his secret is about to be uncovered, Matt intervenes, and due to his rigorous training manages to resist Natalia’s incursion and hold the telepath to a stalemate. Matt then publicly proclaims that the reason for his victory is that he is taking Psy-Block (an anti-telepathy drug), sparing Natalia the shame of losing the contest. Matt’s victory, however, rubs salt in the wound of Jane’s defeat, and privately the two rage at each other, him furious at her for being reckless and her embittered at him for being better liked by the other budding heroes.
A week passes and Matt’s anger subsides somewhat. Still keen to get expelled, he sets up an Acolyte party full of drug use and underage drinking, figuring that if his own delinquency is not enough than maybe disrupting others might trigger expulsion. Jane is reluctantly coaxed down to the party, and something of a truce and understanding is achieved between her, Matt, and the senior Acolytes Ed, Wally, James and Giselle.
As the weeks pass, Jane dives deeper into training, assisted by Giselle and Wally, and Matt leans into a routine of time wasting and delinquency. Sprinkled in amongst this Matt continues to muddle through his clairvoyant assessments, providing the Academy assessor with what he hopes is just enough information to keep his cover intact while not making him look like a valuable asset. Without warning however, Matt is called up and deployed on a mission to rural Albania – told, to his shock, that the Legion has located another clairvoyant. Matt lies that his future sight requires Jane to be brought along, and he, Jane, James, Giselle, Natalia, and the teleporter Will Herd teleport to the countryside to track the clairvoyant down.
Prior to going in, the other Acolytes relay the truth of their mission. This is not the first clairvoyant the Legion has identified – far from it. On a number of occasions the Legion has received evidence of people robbing banks or high security facilities with split second predictive timing, clearly possessing clairvoyant abilities; however every time they have thus far tried to make contact with these people, the clairvoyants have killed themselves before anyone from the Legion has a chance to talk. This, understandably, has the Legion rattled, and is why finding Matt was such a relief. This latest clairvoyant similarly fits the old pattern, but the Legion’s hope is that with Matt now in tow he can help predict the other clairvoyant’s moves, or maybe sense whatever danger is driving them to self-harm.
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Matt, naturally, is terrified, and very highly concerned that he is in way over his head. Privately, Jane suggests coming clean, but the child’s warning hangs over Matt, and the two resolve that the real clairvoyant not preventing their finding them must mean that they (the clairvoyant) want to be found by Matt and Jane. The pair cautiously investigate an abandoned farmstead, and when Jane splits off to clear a bunch of traps Matt is swallowed by a hidden trapdoor.
Caught in a darkened cellar, Matt comes face to face with the “clairvoyant”, who reveals herself as being named Cassandra Atropos, to have gouged her own eyes out, and to be (it appears) stark raving mad. As Matt listens in panic, the eyeless Cassandra raves about two figures who are manipulating things, one good, one evil, and how there are great plans for Matt. Speaking directly into Matt’s mind, she implies that she and the “clairvoyants” which came before her were not actually clairvoyant, merely telepathic conduits to create some great distraction, and provides Matt with a set of lottery numbers. She then reveals an explosive vest, but moments before it detonates Jane reaches Matt and is able to shape the blast around them. Matt and Jane survive, although the “clairvoyant” is obliterated, and the pair warily agree that something strange is going on.
Returning to the Academy, Matt and Jane are debriefed, and Matt’s attempts to be expelled continue to be rebuffed. Jane’s excitement at her first successful Legion mission fades as she realises no one at the Academy knows or treats her any differently – melancholy which transitions into anxiety as the memorial day for the African Devastation approaches, which Jane has found historically triggers people to violently seek empaths out. During late night exercises she again encounters Captain Dawn, who once more encourages Jane to have confidence in herself and to attend the memorial ceremony. Matt is sceptical of this plan and quietly dubious about Jane’s clear infatuation with Captain Dawn, which has brought out an uncharacteristic level of fangirl hero-worship. The two discuss the upcoming memorial with Ed, who in the process reveals that one of his projects is attempting to reverse‑engineer original human DNA, potentially with the application of stripping people of their powers – a coincidence which makes Matt very uneasy.
The morning of the memorial arrives, and despite her best efforts Jane is spotted by the press, who run wild with the story that there is now an empath at the Academy. Paparazzi began setting up around Academy grounds attempting to get pictures of Jane, who is warned by Legion staff to remain unnoticed. With paparazzi stalking Morningstar and Matt’s clairvoyant assessments getting more intense since he successfully delivered Cassandra’s winning lottery numbers, Jane agrees to attend Matt’s home while the Academy breaks for Thanksgiving. At Thanksgiving lunch however, Jane gets into a heated argument with her father (who shows up late and drunk) and it is revealed that Jane’s mother died in the African Devastation, which shattered her father and has made Jane’s empath powers and entry into the Legion an ongoing emotional wound. Hurt, Jane turns her rage on Matt, and fleeing back to the Academy throws herself deeper into training with her now-mentor Captain Dawn.
Dispirited, Matt manages to avoid returning to Morningstar until after Christmas when it can no longer be put off. On his way back he trips in a snowdrift and cuts open his leg, requiring a trip to the Infirmary, where he encounters Jane. More determined than ever to get expelled, Matt plans a massive New Years Eve party. Wally encourages Jane to go to the party and apologise, while Matt encourages Ed to go with the predictions that he might successfully ask out Giselle, who Ed has a long-term crush on.
The party is a raging success and Matt gets blind drunk. Jane fails to apologise but manages to carry Matt into his room while he is intoxicated to avoid him passing out in a snowdrift. As the night winds down, Ed, alone in his room after being rejected by Giselle, works forlornly on his computer, but suddenly comes to a revelation – only to immediately climb to the highest tower of Morningstar and throw himself off.
In the morning, Matt awakes to the news that his friend is dead. Matt is devastated, but then remembers that Ed sent him a text before he died – a single word, ‘Dawn’. As this message makes no sense in context, Matt suspects foul play, and he and Jane investigate the circumstances around Ed’s death. At first they find nothing – Ed’s computer is locked and slated to self-wipe, and the police are ruling the death as suicide – but during a walk in the woods Matt encounters a photographer who claims to have seen a small pale child, and who has photographs of New Years night.
The photographs capture Ed’s death, and indicate two things; first, that he sent the SMS as his final act after he jumped, and second that he may have been under psychic possession. Matt becomes convinced that Ed has been psychically forced to kill himself, possibly because Ed was on the verge of creating a device which would allow non-telepaths to make psychic connections, the only prototype of which Matt managed to steal from Ed’s lab. This theory is challenged by Wally though, who informs them that overriding a person’s survival instinct is incredibly difficult and could only be done by a psychic making eye contact in the same room. Since footage of Ed before he died shows no one else present, Wally declares psychic possession to be impossible. Frustrated and unable to figure out how all the pieces fit together, Matt attends Ed’s funeral, after which James pulls him aside and explains that Ed was organising a surprise birthday party for Captain Dawn.
Matt deduces that it was in the process of organising this party that Ed uncovered something – hence the “Dawn” text. Tapped (as the party person) to pick up the deceased genius’s organising duties, Matt throws himself into research regarding Captain Dawn’s background, convinced he will find something in his past which led to Ed’s “suicide”. Meanwhile, in their training sessions Captain Dawn tells Jane that he plans to reform the Legion soon, and Jane trains ferociously to gain admittance. In a final battle royale, Jane beats James and several other Acolytes, earning herself both her comrades’ begrudging respect, and the Legion’s silver insignia from the Captain.
As Jane fights, Matt’s investigations take him to Captain Dawn’s childhood hometown, which seems oddly withered and depopulated. Combing through historical records, he realises that every single person who knew Captain Dawn is dead, though without any clear motive and from a myriad of causes. With Jane’s help, the pair determine that there was a surge in deaths after 1990, and Jane reluctantly postulates that the culprit may be Viktor Mentok, the sole surviving supervillain the Legion faced.
Mentok, a genius, was a former member of the Legion of Heroes who became convinced more needed to be done to protect humanity after the death of Captain Dawn’s wife Caitlin in a random traffic accident. He developed body-controlling technology, and after leaving the Legion implanted and took over an entire town, placing the whole population under the control of his mind. When confronted by Captain Dawn, however, Mentok backed down and was jailed, only to be transferred to a prison hospice after he was diagnosed with Scarlett’s Syndrome, a degenerative neurological condition where the afflicted’s thoughts grow increasingly fast and debilitating. Matt is convinced Mentok is faking being in a coma and is responsible for everything, killing everyone Captain Dawn knows as revenge against his imprisonment and defeat, but Jane disagrees. Regardless, the pair agree that Matt will visit Mentok while Jane confronts Captain Dawn with the news of their discovery.
Unbeknownst to either of them, the blue-eyed child actively guides both Matt and Jane to their targets. At the prison, Matt finds Mentok still comatose, but rather than being any grand gloating supervillain is instead a withered husk of his former self. As Jane confesses her love and their discoveries to the Captain – including that all the information has been sent to the press to be made public – Matt vents to Mentok’s silent form, talking over everything they’ve found. The comatose Mentok stirs, and to Matt’s horror awakes and, struggling to speak, tells him that Captain Dawn is an imposter.
The real Captain Dawn is dead, killed by Heydrich who then assumed his form. The Black Death has been masquerading as Dawn for a decade, recovering his strength and chasing the power of clairvoyancy, which he believes will make him finally unstoppable. In the meantime, he had hoped to turn the new Legion to his own, malevolent purposes – but Matt and Jane’s going to the press has destroyed that. Unmasked, Heydrich sucker punches Jane before attacking the prison – Mentok urges Matt to flee, and the genius gives his life buying Matt precious time with a makeshift suit of armour.
Matt and Will barely escape Heydrich, and The Black Death returns to Morningstar, where he sheds his disguise and explodes the Academy. By sheer chance however his final moments are witnessed by Giselle, who in a burst of superspeed manages to get a large number of people to safety despite suffering horrendous burns. Faced with the reality of this unstoppable force come back from the dead, James rallies the remaining Legion to fight Heydrich with the promise that they are humanity’s only hope. Meanwhile, Heydrich tracks Matt to a shack in the desert, where the two talk and Heydrich reveals all. Matt, playing the role of the clairvoyant, predicts that if Heydrich takes his blood he will lose, and with his incredibly mental control manages to deceive the empath’s scouring of his thoughts. Troubled, Heydrich nevertheless absorbs Matt’s blood, though he then heals Matt’s wounds with the promise they will talk later.
Heydrich assaults the world, televising his return and threatening systematic global destruction if his rule is not accepted. The Legion face off against him in battle in Detroit, and James Conrad and a large number of other Legion members are killed. Having annihilated her comrades, Heydrich privately confronts Jane, offering to make her his partner in global domination, but Jane, remembering her mother, furiously turns him down. Annoyed but patient, Heydrich beats Jane and leaves her on the outskirts of Detroit, urging her to reconsider his proposal.
The Black Death destroys Detroit, then threatens to repeat the devastation in half an hour in Chicago. With all seeming lost, Jane awakens to a scene of devastation and death, only to be met by the blue-eyed child, who says that he has done all he can do to prevent Heydrich’s ascension. The child tells Jane that The Black Death is simply too strong, and without the power of Dawn there is no hope of stopping him, then urges Jane to take his power and gives her a bizarre and very specific set of instructions. Dazed and delirious, Jane uses the child’s powers, and unknowingly travels back in time to 1988. There, she encounters the real Captain Dawn, who turns out to be a timid man broken by the death of his wife Caitlin, who had been the real driving force behind the Legion of Heroes. Captain Dawn – Walter Reid – refuses to come back to fight Heydrich, being afraid of losing, leading Jane to realise that heroism comes not from strength but from trying to do good no matter the odds.
In the present, The Black Death assaults Chicago, easily defeating hastily assembled military forces. The US president orders a nuclear strike, only for this to backfire as Heydrich takes control of the missile. Suddenly feeling himself starting to weaken however, Heydrich abruptly abandons his attack and returns to confront Matt, demanding to know what is happening and the truth of his defeat prediction. With the eyes of the world upon them, Matt admits to Heydrich to being powerless, and that The Black Death is absorbing pure human blood. Demented with rage, Heydrich prepares to kill Matt and devastate the world, only to be stopped by the return of Jane, now wielding the power of Captain Dawn.
Jane and Heydrich fight, with Heydrich’s multitude of powers allowing him to land hits but the Power of Dawn ultimately proving unstoppable. Petrified and panicked, Heydrich telepathically assaults Jane in a last-ditch attempt to stop her – mentally vulnerable, Jane starts to succumb but is saved by Matt, who utilises Ed’s telepathic prototype to join the fight inside her mind. With Matt wounded, Heydrich begins to gain the mental upper hand, only to be turned off the killing blow by thousands of distant voices connecting from around the world – telepaths from the Legion and many others projecting their minds and the minds of those around them into the psychic contest. Little more than spectral annoyances, these distractions nevertheless allow Matt to recover, and in the heat of the moment Jane is able to mentally connect with her father, who draws her out of her damaged state. While Matt holds Heydrich’s mind in place, Jane unleashes the full fury of Dawn to destroy his body, and The Black Death is annihilated once and for all.
In the aftermath, the world reels from Heydrich’s re-emergence and destruction, the Legion of Heroes begins once more to rebuild and there is a surge of pushback against anti-empath laws. Matt recovers in hospital, and upon being discharged finds a huge crowd of fans and supporters awaiting his release. He reunites with Jane and the two of them kiss for the first time, then fly off in a blaze of light and flashing cameras. Meanwhile, the blue-eyed child watches them go, unseen and satisfied with the outcome, yet nevertheless filled with a looming sense of dread – for behind it, or before it, lurks a yearning, voiceless maw, a dark abyss threatening to swallow all.
***SPOILERS ABOVE***