Created by British rapper and director Rapman, Supacell is a new action thriller series on Netflix that comes with a rather unnatural premise. Set in South London, the series follows the lives of five ordinary individuals who suddenly realize that they possess some unique superpowers in them. In order to figure out the mystery behind these superpowers, the characters must unite and find some common trait among them, as the only apparent one is that they are all Black. Supacell is quite thrilling and makes for an exciting watch, mostly because we have not really seen something like this play out on OTT screens before.
Spoiler Alert
What is the Netflix series about?
Supacell begins with a short teaser of the wild action that is about to come in a scene that shows a woman desperately trying to escape some facility where she has been evidently kept hostage for a long time. The woman has made numerous attempts to escape, and now that she is finally able to, she is not concerned about the dangers she is facing at the moment. As soldiers armed with weapons rush behind her, she is somehow able to reach the main gate of the facility, but the button to open it has already been deactivated by the authorities. That’s when the woman uses a strange supernatural power, as her eyes glow yellow, and she uses some kind of telekinesis to shatter the metal door open. However, before the woman can escape, she is killed by the soldiers, and her body is dragged back into the facility, with the leader of the place being informed about the development.
Supacell then shifts its focus to South London, where five individuals go about living their normal lives, unaware of the fact that they are soon about to be part of something extremely strange. Michael works as a delivery driver and dreams of proposing to his longtime girlfriend, Dionne. The lovers are inseparable as they share an extremely close bond, with Michael even buying a new car for themselves. On his delivery route, he often meets Sharleen, a woman who casually flirts with him at every chance, and she happens to be the sister of Sabrina, who is one of the central characters. Sabrina works as a nurse and is quite loved by her patients and also by her bosses at the hospital. Sabrina has been housing and helping Sharleen ever since the latter’s boyfriend, a drug dealer known as Krazy, was imprisoned for physically assaulting her. Tazer is a young miscreant in one of the South London neighborhoods, where he is the leader of a violent street gang named the Tower Boys. During a house party, the gang’s main rival, the Sixers, comes for a confrontation, and the whole ordeal leaves Tazer stabbed and hungry for revenge. Andre is a man with a criminal record, as he once got involved in drug smuggling, but he repents of his past actions and currently just wants to spend time with his teenage son, AJ. Rodney is a young bloke who struggles to make ends meet and tries his hand at peddling drugs on the streets, although he is evidently not very good at the unlawful job.
Apart from the fact that all these five characters are Black, there is one common matter that soon starts to crop up as they all realize that they have some superhuman powers at their disposal. Rodney can run at the speed of lightning, covering extensive distances in mere seconds. Andre has superhuman strength, with which he can break open any machine or create cracks in the walls of buildings with a mere punch. Tazer has the ability to become invisible and stay untraceable, making him a literal ghost. Sabrina has the power of telekinesis, as she can throw things and people around without touching them. Lastly, Michael is able to stop and control time, as well as use teleportation, and it is he who gets a vision from the future, which convinces the young man to find the other four characters and solve the mystery behind their sudden superpowers.
What is the vision of the future that Michael sees?
Along with his plans to marry his girlfriend, Michael also currently deals with his mother’s treatment for sickle cell disease, as the woman has been struggling for a long time with the effects of the ailment. When she has to be hospitalized at present, Michael and his mother are approached by workers from the sickle cell center, a private organization with expertise in research and treatment of the blood disorder. Although the treatment promised by the center is expensive, Michael is determined to give his mother the best remedy possible, and so he signs her up to be admitted to the center’s facility. Soon after this, Michael also succeeds in another way of life, as he proposes marriage to Dionne, much to her delight, and the two are now engaged. But the young man also has a strange experience during one of his delivery routes, when he is surrounded by the High Tower goons. The situation gets out of hand when one of the young men, incidentally Tazer himself, stabs Michael.
However, in an inexplicable manner, Michael is suddenly transferred back into his van right before he is about to get out and attempt the delivery, as if the stabbing was only part of a premonition or vision of the future. He still remembers the experience, though, and that’s why he carefully avoids repetition while dealing with the High Tower goons, but Michael does not think much about the incident. Later on, he has an even stranger experience when he is almost pulled away from his reality and placed inside a scene from the future. Shocked and bewildered, Michael sees a future version of himself, fighting against some black-hooded figures alongside the other central characters introduced earlier, as they all have certain superpowers. The Future Michael takes his younger self to a gravesite somewhere in London and explains the real reason for bringing him into the future timeline. If this vision is to be believed, then Michael’s beloved fiancée, Dionne, would die only a few months after their engagement.
Future Michael obviously wants to avoid this loss, which is why he has brought his younger self to this timeline, and his instructions are quite clear. Michael is to find each of the other four individuals who have developed superpowers at the same time as him—Sabrina, Tazer, Andre, and Rodney—and they all have to together ensure that none of them dies. If any of them lose their lives in the months following Michael and Dionne’s engagement, then the street gangs would somehow get involved in the matter and kill Dionne. With this knowledge of the future, Michael immediately tries to look for others with superpowers, even lying to Dionne in the process, only so that he can prevent his beloved’s death.
What Is The Origin Of The Characters’ Superpowers?
The exact reason for the central characters’ superpowers, or at least why they suddenly developed them at this stage in life, is kept unsolved in Supacell, although we are given a comprehensive idea about where they got them from. The powers are actually rooted in sickle cell disorder, which is a rare blood disease that affects the red blood cells in the human body, leading to extreme pain and infection. Although sickle cell disease is considered rare among Caucasians, it is fairly prevalent in Black folks of African descent, to the extent of one of the characters remarking that the disorder occurs only in Black individuals. Supacell is based on a fictional twist on sickle cell disease, as the cells that cause the sickness are stated to mutate in some individuals, which creates mutant cells that give the person superhuman abilities. Each of Michael, Sabrina, Tazer, Andre, and Rodney belong to families with sickle cell disease running in the blood, and in most cases, it is one of their parents who had the ailment. Since the disease is actually transferred from generation to generation, they, too, had affected cells in their bodies, which somehow mutated and gave them superhuman abilities. In fact, a private organization named the Sickle Cell Center is also directly involved in the research of this supernatural ability developing in the children of certain sickle cell disorder patients, and the extent of their operations is revealed later on.
Why are Ray and his team looking for superheroes?
Throughout the duration of Supacell, an institution is often seen observing each of the five central characters. While the name of this institution is left unmentioned throughout the show, its supposed leader is apparently a man named Ray, who is heavily invested in finding out more about the genetic mutation. It is only at the very end of the series that the real truth of this institution is revealed, for they are actually part of the very sickle cell center private organization. It is also confirmed that the genetic mutations have not occurred for the first time in the characters we see on screen, but many had already developed similar strange powers earlier. However, all of them had been captured and kept hostage inside the institution facility, where inhumane experiments were conducted on them, and there were numerous infringements of human rights. But Ray and his team never bothered about these infringements since their existence was not really known to anyone other than a select few, and even the family members of the hostages believed that their relatives had only mysteriously gone missing.
The woman seen at the very beginning of the series happened to be Tazer’s own mother, whom the boy always misunderstood for abandoning him, even though she had technically been kidnapped by the evil organization. Another young woman named Jasmine, who had suddenly developed the superpower to heal the physical injuries and ailments of others, was also kidnapped and trapped in the facility. The purpose of Ray’s team is to conduct experiments and research on the mutated superhumans, for which they need to kidnap each and every individual showing these abilities. Perhaps they are also in cahoots with the government, which is satisfied with the fact that superhumans are taken off the streets, which is rather helpful for them. Either way, the organization finds out about these individuals by accessing every security camera in the city and monitoring any unusual activity. They then employ some of the mutants trapped at their facility, against the promise of money, freedom, or some other benefit, to go out and capture others possessing similar abilities.
Therefore, when Andre is first seen breaking an ATM machine and even the wall of the building near it with a single punch, the organization starts tracking him and the others through him. At the very end of the series, it is confirmed that the woman named Victoria, who actively tracks down sickle cell disease patients and convinces them to join her center, is actually the real leader of the unlawful organization. Therefore, it must be that she brings patients like Michael’s mother to her center only to find out more about the patients and the possible superhumans that they might have given birth to.
Did Michael save Dionne?
Much of Supacell’s duration is spent on Michael trying to bring the five characters together, as they are all understandably nervous about working with strangers on such a strange mission. When they do finally agree, though, Andre is kidnapped by the organization and is employed to arrest the others as well, together with some other superhumans, including the gangster named Krazy, who had been recently released from prison on the recommendation of Victoria. A final confrontation takes place between the two sides in an abandoned neighborhood named Ashington Estate, where the organization had built its secret underground facility. By this time, both Tazer and Sabrina wanted to take revenge against the gangster for their individual reasons, as Krazy had attacked Tazer’s elderly grandmother and Sabrina’s sister, Sharleen. When the other attackers have been taken down and Andre is successfully turned over to their side by Michael, the group lets Krazy survive in the hopes that he will tell Sabrina where Sharleen is.
However, Krazy uses his superpowers, for he too has been a mutant in hiding throughout this whole time, to stab each of the members and also attack and kill Dionne, who is also present at the scene. Just like earlier, this chain of events also turns out to be a premonition witnessed by Michael, and he uses his powers to rewind the time back before Krazy’s attacks. He himself attacks Krazy this time without letting the gangster get up, but the latter still manages to pull out a gun and shoot at Michael. Although Rodney uses his speed to push Michael out of the bullet’s way, it actually goes and hits Dionne inside her car, killing her instantly. Michael is unable to use his powers again, meaning that despite his best efforts to prevent his fiancée’s death, Dionne cannot be ultimately saved, and she dies in a different way in the end.
Michael’s learning about the future and actively trying to prevent certain events had a butterfly effect on the entire world, as the deaths of the five superheroes were averted. However, its effect also ultimately led to Dionne’s death, much sooner than in the original timeline, where she died a few months later, and it all ends in despair for Michael. However, merely days after the tragic incident, he gathers the four superheroes, and they all vow to fight against the organization and find out more about their powers and also about the villains who had taken away their loved ones. On the other side, Victoria is seen taking over control from Ray, stating that she will now use her own techniques, possibly more direct ones, to capture the individuals and continue their research. The ending of Supacell absolutely keeps the possibility of season 2 open, even pushing for a scenario that would feature the heroic battle of the superhumans against Victoria and her institution.
