Supergirl (TV Series)

Magical Thinking (2021)

Staz Nair: William Dey

Photos 

Quotes 

• William Dey : I just wanted to say I appreciate you trusting me with your secrets, J'onn. Or should I call you "Mr. Manhunter"?

  J'onn J'onnz : "J'onn" will do.

• William Dey : [in the Tower]  This place is incredible. How do you fund an operation like this?

  Dreamer : Not easily. You would be amazed how much these suits cost to dry clean.

• Alex Danvers : We do have some ground rules.

  William Dey : I don't let my sources dictate what I write. I'm sorry.

  Supergirl : No, it's... it's nothing like that, William. We're never gonna ask you to lie. Only that you help us protect the people of National City by keeping private some things that may jeopardize our missions. Trust me, I believe in a free press more than you know.

  William Dey : Good to hear. So, how does this work?

  Alex Danvers : Well, you can't disclose the location of the Tower, and you can't ID the Super Friends or even try to learn their identities. Not even my sister Kara knows.

  J'onn J'onnz : If you do, I'll wipe your mind.

  Dreamer : [William chuckles, not sure if he's serious]  He'll do it.

  Alex Danvers : Yeah.

  Supergirl : Oh, and before you file any story, just run it by one of us, please.

• William Dey : A P.I. office as cover, huh?

  J'onn J'onnz : I've always found it's best to hide in plain sight.

• Supergirl : So, Alex caught you up?

  William Dey : Yeah. A revenge-obsessed imp hell-bent on acquiring interdimensional totems capable of wreaking universal destruction is here on Earth, and Lena Luthor has magical abilities.

  Supergirl : Just another Tuesday in National City.

• William Dey : How did Kara and Nia develop such close relationships with the Martian head of the former DEO?

  Alex Danvers : Let's just say they have a friend in common.

  William Dey : [surprised to see her]  Alex, you're, uh...

  J'onn J'onnz : My partner in crime.

  Alex Danvers : Welcome to the Tower.

• Supergirl : Nxyly is overwhelmed with feelings. It's almost like all of the humanity she took from her victims had to go somewhere, and now it's going into her.

  Lena Luthor : Wait, you said that Nxyly used the totem immediately. But that would mean that there's no gauntlet. And from all of our research, we know that there's always a gauntlet.

  Dreamer : That could mean that using the totem itself is the gauntlet.

  Supergirl : And we may be able to use that to our advantage.

  William Dey : How?

  Supergirl : By repeating Lena's mistake at the botanical gardens and taking more humanity away from the original people that were affected at the arena in the first place. And in the same way that National City is overrun by chaos right now, if we flood Nxyly with emotions, it might be too much for her to handle. And-and... and it might force her to restore everyone's humanity and get rid of the totem.

  Dreamer : It'd be sure to draw her out. We could capture the totems and Nxyly.

  Supergirl : We can end this today.

  Lena Luthor : Can't do it.

  Supergirl : What?

  Lena Luthor : I won't do it. It's wrong.

  Supergirl : Lena, people need help now. This... this is for the greater good.

  Lena Luthor : For the greater good? Do you hear yourself right now?

  Supergirl : That's not what I meant.

  Dreamer : Um...

  [leading him out to give them privacy] 

  Dreamer : William, have I shown you the kitchen yet? We have a new coffee machine that is literally out of this world. Brainy picked it up from Corvon-4...

• William Dey : I did not come here to report on the Tower's kitchen appliances.

  Alex Danvers : Excuse me?

  William Dey : Why did you even allow me in here if you won't let me report on what's really going on?

  J'onn J'onnz : You agreed to our ground rules.

  William Dey : The situation has changed. The violence in the city is getting worse. You guys have no plan.

  Supergirl : [coming in with Lena]  Yes, we do. Lena is going to amplify the totem's power... so that everyone who was within Nxyly's blast radius at the arena will lose their humanity, too.

  Lena Luthor : We believe that Nxyly is being infused with the compassion that she's drained from her victims. With more people affected, we think she'll get overwhelmed and then use the totem again to restore everyone's humanity.

  Alex Danvers : Okay, but doing so will cause even more chaos and destruction throughout the entire city.

  Supergirl : So, we'll have to spread out and try our best to keep the city safe.

  Alex Danvers : Until when?

  Lena Luthor : Until Nxyly's drawn out.

  J'onn J'onnz : If she comes out. She might not. And the longer people are affected by the totem's power, the less they seem to care about anything. This is a dangerous situation.

• Andrea Rojas : "The epicenter of the inexplicable chaos seems to be..."

  [putting her coffee mug down, it spills] 

  Andrea Rojas : "... Burnett Arena."

  William Dey : Wait, that's my story. I'm literally writing it right now. Have you hacked my computer?

  Andrea Rojas : Kara and others are already covering the chaos. You are embedded with the Super Friends. You need to play up that angle. What do they know about what's happening, when did they find out, and who is responsible for it?

  William Dey : There are certain things I'm not able to report on. At least not yet.

  Andrea Rojas : You're the reporter who broke open the BX gas scandal in Kaznia. And you didn't do it by pussyfooting around the story. You're holding out on me. Start naming names.

  William Dey : The Super Friends are my sources. I've only just gained their trust. It isn't in my interest or CatCo's interest to burn them right away. The longer I embed with them, the more I learn, the better the eventual story will be.

  Andrea Rojas : Oh, I see what is happening. They're making you feel welcome, showing you around, showing off their gadgets, making you feel like you're one of them. But you are not.

  William Dey : I know I'm not one of them.

  Andrea Rojas : Good, because they may be the Super friends... but they are not your friends. Now come back with a real story... or you don't come back at all.

• J'onn J'onnz : The chaos is spreading out from the arena to the waterfront.

  Supergirl : Have the satellites picked up anything?

  William Dey : Spy satellites?

  Supergirl : [covering]  We, uh... we borrowed some satellites to track Nxyly's ship.

  J'onn J'onnz : Yeah, that's off the record. And, uh, no, nothing.

  Supergirl : No Nxyly, no totem. We're still at square one.

  Lena Luthor : [coming in]  Maybe not. The seeds we used came from a big-box store. They'd been packaged, processed, and made dull. That's not how they would've been gathered when my mother wrote the spell. We need seeds from the wild. Sheep Laurel is a flowering shrub from the Limestone Barrens of Newfoundland. Here, it would have to be grown under the right conditions.

  J'onn J'onnz : The Botanical Gardens. That's close to the arena. Ground zero for the violence.

  Supergirl : I'll go get you some.

  Lena Luthor : No. I need to come with you. The effective particles are unstable and diminishing in potency. I need to be on site to make the spell work.

  William Dey : I'm coming, too.

  [Supergirl looks at him curiously] 

  William Dey : I was a war correspondent. Closer I am to the action, the better my reporting.

• William Dey : This Nxyly is unlike anything the public has faced before. The threats and strange events of the past few weeks are because of her, aren't they?

  [getting his answer from her reaction] 

  William Dey : The people deserve to know who and what they're up against.

  Supergirl : There are so many other things you could write about, like how we work together or keep people safe.

  William Dey : Naming Nxyly is about safety. Keeping this a secret will only cause more harm.

  Supergirl : Nxyly doesn't know we have Lena right now, that we have magic. So if you write about this and what we're doing, Nxyly could find a way to stop us. But if you write about this and don't write about what we're doing, it'll look like we're losing, and that will cause people to panic. So your only move is to not write about Nxyly at all.

  William Dey : You'd make a good reporter.

• William Dey : Supergirl brought me up to speed. So, Lena Luthor can do magic.

  Lena Luthor : That's off the record.

  William Dey : Of course. You can trust me.

  Lena Luthor : I'm not sure how accurate that statement is, anyway.

  William Dey : So, what else are you working on?

  Lena Luthor : It's a spell from my mother's book. I'm trying to track the humanity totem's energy, and hopefully, Nxyly as well.

  William Dey : This is your mum's book? Reminds me of a family recipe book.

  Lena Luthor : Yeah, I guess you could call it that. Except I have followed this spell's recipe to a T, I have checked all the directions. I have measured all the ingredients twice, and... all I managed to do was break Dreamer.

  William Dey : Hmm. I remember when I was a kid. Every Sunday, I'd wake up and my dad was already in the kitchen tossing something together. Muffins, scones, the occasional pie. You name it. After he died... I would try to recreate his pastries, but they always came out... off. What I eventually realized was that I was being too technical. I was so focused on the exact measurements, I'd forgotten the ingredients. Berries he'd picked from our garden. The crust he'd make by hand. And he wasn't just baking. He was creating. Put his heart into it. When I stopped comparing my skills to my dad's, and I began to trust myself to make his recipes my way... I finally became the baker I'd always hoped to be. Next time you try one of your mum's spells, put your heart into it. Maybe you'd be surprised at the result.

• Andrea Rojas : William, your article is fantastic. "A frustrated imp hell-bent on revenge". "The Super Friends in a race to get powerful totems." Magic? Our readers are gonna eat this up.

  William Dey : I'm glad you liked it.

  Andrea Rojas : I love it. And now for your follow-up, this... this Tower the Super Friends work out of, where is it? And what are their plans to defeat this Nxyly? Oh, and you must reveal who among the Super Friends has the magical power to fight her.

  William Dey : No.

  Andrea Rojas : I'm sorry, did you say no?

  William Dey : I'm the one embedded with the Super Friends. So I'm going to cover the story my way. Not theirs, and not yours. You don't get to tell me how to do my job anymore. Now, you can either take the stories I give you, or I am sure the Daily Planet would be interested in running them.

  Andrea Rojas : Hmm. Fine. But I'm moving your desk next to the bathrooms.

• William Dey : Lena, you were against this plan before. What changed?

  Lena Luthor : You. You have to write about what's going on here, so people can't accuse us of operating in secret.

  Supergirl : The time has come for full transparency. By shining a light on our actions, the people will be able to make up their own opinions about our methods.

  William Dey : If I agree to this, I tell the story my way. Nxyly's identification, her search for the totems, and the role of magic in all this. Those are *my* ground rules.

  J'onn J'onnz : All right, tell your story. I'll set the computers to search for Nxyly's ship and alert us if she, uh, shows up. I hope this works.

  Supergirl : You wanted closer to the action, you got it.