Supergirl casts young Cat Grant for final season flashback episodes

Chancellor Agard is a former staff writer atEntertainment Weekly. He left EW in 2022.

March 15, 2021 5:36 p.m. ET

Cat Grant will appear inSupergirl's final season — but not in the way you might expect.

EW has exclusively learned that newcomer Eliza Helm has been cast as a younger version of Grant — the media mogul Calista Flockhart portrayed in season 1 — in the CW superhero drama'ssixth season.

Appearing in season 6's fifth ("Prom Night") and sixth ("Prom Again!") episodes, Helm's young Cat is introduced in flashbacks to the early days of her career when she was known as "CJ Grant." "Eager to step out of Lois Lane's shadow and out from under her boss, Perry White's thumb, Cat chases a story to Kara's hometown of Midvale," reads the official character description. "This lead won't go as planned, but it will put her on the trajectory toward the Media Powerhouse we know and love as Cat Grant." (The last time we saw Flockart's Cat was in the season 3 premiere "Girl of Steel," which revealed Cat was the White House's new press secretary.)

As of right now, there isn't much known about the show's sixth season. Last week, the CW revealed the following summary for the season 6 premiere, titled "Rebirth," which picks up dangling threads from the pandemic-shortened fifth season:

"As Brainiac (Jesse Rath) lays close to death after trying to stop Lex (Jon Cryer), Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) and team soar in to save him, engaging in an epic battle with Gamenmae (guest star Cara Buono). After beating Leviathan, Supergirl turns her attention to Lex who has used the Obsidian platform to brainwash half the world to love him and follow him at all costs, no matter what horrible things he does. Knowing how dangerous this makes her brother, Lena (Katie McGrath) enlists the entire team — Alex (Chyler Leigh), J'onn (David Harewood), Dreamer (Nicole Maines), Kelly (Azie Tesfai), and Brainiac — to help, but Supergirl realizes that the only way to truly stop Lex is to sacrifice herself."

Helm is a graduate from Northwestern University's theatre program. She previously performed with Chicago's Second City sketch comedy group, and this year, her original pilotGold was accepted into the final round of the Sundance Film Festival Episodic Labs.

Supergirl returns Tuesday, March 30 at 9 p.m. on The CW.

This has been updated to reflect that Helm will appear in the season's fifth and sixth episodes.

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