It’s not at all clear how the upcoming, gritty, live-action Powerpuff Girls pilot—a.k.a. Powerpuff—is going to handle the more fantastical elements of its source material. Sure, the new series is reportedly mostly about Blossom, Buttercup, and Bubbles (Chloe Bennett, Yana Perrault, and Dove Cameron, respectively) airing their grievances about the way Professor Utonium (Donald Faison) raised them. But at some point, they’re going to have to fly around and beat up an evil cartoon monkey, right?
Or, at least, an evil cartoon monkey’s son: Variety reports that Nicholas Podany, best known for playing Harry Potter’s son Albus in the Broadway production of Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, has been cast as Mojo Jojo’s kid, Joseph “Jojo” Mondel Jr. (Not to be confused with Joey Jo-Jo Jr. Shabadoo.) Jojo is described as a character whose violent and loving sides are in conflict with each other; he is pointedly not described as being a monkey or not, which seems like a simpler bit of character exposition to us, but, hey, we’re not making the gritty Powerpuff sequel show.
After all, it’s not like Berlanti Productions—executive producing the series, which is under the more direct auspices of Heather Regnier and Diablo Cody—doesn’t have plenty of shows where large apes run around, trying to kill Barack Obama. Really, handling the Jojo family isn’t even our biggest question about how Powerpuff is going to tackle its visual duties. The real question, obviously, is going to be how the series does in capturing the sheer, raw weirdness of HIM.