Vanessa Hudgens to Star in DC Comics Series About “Powerless” People

Always wondered how bystanders feel when superheroes crash their city? NBC’s new DC Comics Powerless is going to give you the answer. Spoiler: They don’t think it’s super cool.

Vanessa Hudgens, known best for her roles in Disney Channel’s High School Musical franchise and most recently for Grease Live, has been cast as a lead in the pilot, according to Variety. The series is a workplace comedy based in the DC Comics universe about people who have no powers. Like, none whatsoever. Not even in the Green Arrow or Batman way.

It means that the series will more than dabble in self-referential humor while playing with a version of the “everyone is a super” trope shamelessly. It could work really well if only to appeal to our own awareness of continuity and plot hole issues within many of the superhero universes happening on TV.

Hudgens character Emily Locke is an insurance claims adjuster (how fitting), who “likes to fly under the radar and just get her work done.” I mean, who doesn’t? Especially in a world where you could literally fly or never die or set things on fire with your eyes. Unfortunately but not shockingly, that’s going to be hard for Locke in a city where scarecrows that release a fear-inducing toxin reign supreme.

Of course, the girl who just wants to “fly under the radar” will find herself growing increasingly exasperated by the disruptive and destructive antics of the city’s various crimefighters.

This presumably super meta pilot was written by Ben Queen. Queen is also serving as an executive producer while Michael Patrick Jann will direct.