We had a chance to speak with Nicole Maines, currently starring on The CW’s Supergirl as television’s first transgender superhero, Nia Nal AKA Dreamer, about what’s coming for Nia on the rest of the season.

Nia Nal (Nicole Maines) has taken the backseat for much of the season until Supergirl season 5, episode 15, which saw Nia taking on an anti-trans villain that physically assaulted her best friend and roommate, Yvette (Roxy Wood), to get a message to Dreamer: Stop being a superhero. Fans are calling the episode one of the most powerful of the series and praising Maines’ work, who — as a transgender woman and activist — helped the series to make sure this topic was handled properly.

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We were given a chance to speak with Nicole Maines, who teased the rest of the Supergirl season, including what’s next for her character and just how important that last Nia-centric episode was to her, personally! It’s clear there are some exciting things coming for Nia Nal, and Maines’ passion for the character and her role on Supergirl shines so brightly through her answers.

Interview with Nicole Maines

Hypable: Now that it’s been almost two full seasons, what does portraying Nia mean to you?

Nicole Maines: I think, of course, it’s so monumental and historic to have me as a trans superhero. It’s meant so much to me to be able to play that, and get to see her grow as a hero. Really, what’s been so amazing to experience and to watch is how Nia has changed as a character. I mean, going into the end of the season 5, and looking at Nia at the beginning of season 4, she’s almost a completely different character.

She’s completely come out of her shell, she’s stepped up, and she doesn’t back down. She just has an insane amount of confidence now. It really feels like she has grown up and become quite the little badass.

Now that she’s gone through her mandatory “To kill or not to kill?” phase of being a hero, what would you say is next for Nia?

Next for Nia, especially going towards the end of season 5, now [we’ve seen] Nia breakdown. You’ve seen her kind of let out all of the things that she’s been bottling up for the past season. Now we kind of get to finally start watching her heal. She’s less crying-on-the-couch Nia and more let’s-get-to-work Nia.

We’re going to see her start to dream more. We’re going to see her start to have dreams with bigger consequence, and pertaining to Brainiac, we’re going to start seeing her potentially start to heal, which is good for her, but [also] could be bad for her relationship with Brainiac.

Are you rooting for [Brainy and Nia] to get back together? What do you think is so unique about those two as a couple?

I am absolutely rooting for them to get back together. I love doing those scenes with Jesse. I think they’re such a cute relationship. As a couple, I think they’re just a couple of nerds. They both mean so well. I want to see them get back together and have some time on-screen to be happy because they’ve had a happy relationship, but that kind of happened off-screen in the month between season 4 and season 5.

With season 5, we see them miscommunicating and struggling to find their footing in their relationship. I think it would be exciting to see them be doing well and happy. We kind of saw that a little [on] the first few episodes of season 5, when [Brainy] made her breakfast in bed and when they were arguing over the best movie villain. I think more of that would be really fun, just because we haven’t really gotten a chance to explore that as much as I’d like to.

As for Nia’s dream ability, how important do you think mastering that skill is for her overall character development?

I think it’s really important. If she can master the dreaming, I think, one, she’s going to be able to prevent a lot more disaster. I mean, [that’s] something she’s been dealing with. She didn’t even see [“Crisis on Infinite Earths”] coming. She’s put a lot of pressure on herself to kind of step it up. I think if she’s able to master that, it’s going to be even more of a force to be reckoned. It’s going to eliminate a lot of the element of surprise against the Super Friends.

I’ve always said, I’m like, “Listen, I don’t care what villain comes at them, the one thing I don’t want to see is anybody acting surprised, [like] “Oh my God, how couldn’t we see this coming?” I’m like, “Dreamer. That’s how we see this coming.”

We start to see her getting more and more of those [dreams]. She starts to interpret more. It’s just a question of whether or not she will let that in.

Will Nia become more involved with either the Luthor or the Leviathan stories?

Yeah, absolutely. We’re really seeing, as the season is wrapping up, we’re starting to see all of those storylines that have kind of been doing their own thing, we start to see that all come to a head, and start to see those all intertwined, [and] see how it’s all been relating to each other. We’re absolutely going to be seeing Nia dealing with both of those. If I do say so myself, she’s a little badass doing it.

We haven’t really seen what Nia thinks of the path Lena is on. Do you think Nia would encourage Kara to keep fighting for Lena, or try and help Kara prepare for the worst?

I think Nia is loyal — first and foremost — to Kara. She doesn’t have nearly as good a relationship with Lena as she does with Kara. They’ve really only interacted at game night and stuff like that. Moving forward, I think Nia’s first concern is making sure that Kara is going to be okay. She maintains a level of skepticism about Lena moving forward because she never wants to tell Kara, “No. Don’t be friends with Lena, don’t trust her,” because Nia knows how much that friendship means to Kara. She knows how important friendship is. She, of course, wants to see them reconnect and make up, but she also doesn’t want to see Kara get hurt.

As for [Supergirl season 5, episode 15], you tweeted that you helped in the writer’s room as the episode was being created. Can you elaborate more on what role you had in the creation of the episode?

I was on phone calls with the writers before we even got the first writers’ draft done. We were just on the phone for an hour, and it was all of us talking about, “How can we do this with the most integrity? How can we share the story the most honestly? Who do we want this guy to be? How do we want to raise awareness?” [We discussed] how we want to bring these points into the spotlight, how we want to make these points and never [do] it in a way that feels like we are just using this story, and using this side of the trans experience, as a literary tool or just using it. We really wanted to make sure that did this honestly, and so people who are not aware of that situation, [see] just exactly what so many people in the trans community face and what they’re up against.

At the time of filming, the actual mortality rate for trans women in the [United States] had been 24 reported as a consequence of hate-related violence. We made sure that was the actual number we used in that scene with Kara and William. We wanted to be [including] as many actual real statistics and facts as we could, because some of the response I was seeing leading up to this episode was there were a lot of people who didn’t believe that this was as big of a problem as it is. There were a lot of people who didn’t believe that there are people out there who are willing to attack trans people because we’re trans.

That’s why with the Angus character — who is the famous Gregory Bauer — we wanted to be using soundbites and be using rhetoric thrown around by people with anti-trans sentiment. We wanted this to be a guy was very reminiscent of the idea of gay panic. You’re into the trans person and you find out they’re trans. You feel that you have to prove something. We wanted to really show who that guy is, and talked about giving him a backstory, and showing who this person is, and why he’s like this.

At the end of the day, we decided, why waste our time and waste our breath trying to make this character a sympathetic villain? Why waste our time trying to give a reason? At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter what the reason is, if you’re intentionally hurting people because of who they are. It doesn’t matter why you’re doing that. What matters is that you’re doing that and it’s wrong. We talked about making him an Agent of Liberty straggler from last season even, but it just got to the point where his back story didn’t matter, because he could be anybody.

Also, on [episode 15], we saw Alex entering the virtual world. She saw a few different realities based on her greatest hopes. What do you think Nia’s greatest hopes/virtual worlds would look like?

I feel like there [would] be a couple. There definitely be one where she’s back with Brainiac. There [would] definitely be one where her mother and her sister [are still] in her life. Let’s see, what else? There’s probably one where she’s fully realized her [Dreamer] powers. [And then] probably one where she’s the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or something.

A few people [actually] sent me questions for you about Nia saying last season she wanted to become a CEO. Is that something you’d like to revisit, and with Andrea [Rojas] potentially sticking around for [Supergirl season 6], is that someone you’d want Nia to learn from?

Yeah. I’d really like to explore the Andrea/Nia relationship, because Andrea’s approach to reporting and clickbait is [such] a stark 180 to what Nia does, and Nia can’t stand it.

It’d be really interesting to kind of see how that relationship goes moving forward. Of course, Nia is still at CatCo, but she cannot keep doing the clickbait. It is against the very fiber [of her] soul because she’s so dedicated to truth and honest storytelling; clickbait is a foreign concept to Nia. She’s like, “How could you call yourself a reporter and do that?”. She’s like, “What?”

Do you want Nia to reveal her secret to Yvette?

I think it would be meaningful, but I think Yvette would tell people. I think Yvette is [a] bit of a gossip, and I think that tea is too piping hot to not share.

That would be quite a story to watch though.

That would, that would. I am open for any story that brings back Yvette, because I am absolutely in love with Roxy.

We haven’t seen Nia much as a reporter this season. Will we get [to see] Nia working with Kara and William on their exposé of Lex Luthor for the rest of the season?

That’s more of the William/Kara storyline. Nia’s story, moving forward, is more her as Dreamer, and more her starting to, like I said, dream more, dream bigger, have bigger consequences, and dealing with whether or not she wants to let those dreams in, and then having those dreams kind of propelled them into larger conflict.

Nia didn’t really leave off with her sister in the best way last season. Is that something you’d want to see revisited in the future, or do you think that’s kind of done?

No, she didn’t. I absolutely want to see that revisited in the future, and that’s something we keep up on the board. It’s always something you want, but then it’s just a matter of trying to figure out the best way to bring that in. I think moving forward, her relationship with her family, it definitely will ask to come back up. It’s a big part of everybody’s lives, and it just left off on such a sour note, and it’s so uncertain. I think for, especially Nia’s well being, it has to be readdressed at some point.

Fans have really been looking forward to watching Alex as Supergirl on the next episode, and then Melissa [Benoist]’s directorial debut. Are there any teases you can get about these next two episodes?

Yeah, I wasn’t involved [in season 5, episode] 17. I wasn’t in Melissa’s episode. I was the only person who didn’t get to be directed by her, so I was a little heartbroken. I don’t know exactly what to expect for that episode.

For the Supergirl Alex episode, those were a lot of fun, and we kind of get to see… Oh man, it’s… I mean, first of all, Alex as a superhero is so cool, and Alex with a Cape is so cool. It was really awesome to get to just see Chyler doing all of that. It’s going to be really interesting to see what her virtual reality kind of paradise looks like, how her friends are involved in that, and what Alex is [facing] as she plunges into the virtual reality is kind of an escape.

Nia’s role on the remainder of the season

I don’t know about you, but I’m so excited to see Nia’s (Nicole Maines) dream ability continue to grow over the rest of the season (and hopefully the momentum will continue into season 6)! This is arguably her most important power, which reminds me a lot of Phoebe Halliwell’s power on the original Charmed and how often the show emphasized that premonitions were the most important power they had to save people. I want to see that same energy put into Nia’s dreams for the rest of Supergirl!

It’s also incredibly exciting that Nia will finally become more involved with the two stories — Luthors and Leviathan — that have been the “Big Bad” focus of the season. I really wonder what role her dreams will play in that, if they’re going to be getting bigger and bigger…

Let us know what you thought of our interview with Supergirl‘s Nicole Maines in the comments below!

Supergirl season 5 continues Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on The CW!