Neil Jackson remembers constantly telling Johns during filming that he didn't know how the show's two tones would work together. "And when he had episode 2, he took me in his office and sat me down and showed me it on his computer, and like 15 minutes in I was grinning," he says. "I was like, 'Oh, you've done it perfectly.' Then when he finally showed me that bit where Jordan arrives to the tune of 'The Man,' I was laughing out loud. He did a great job marrying these worlds together. S--'s about to get real. [Laughs] Daddy's home."
When Geoff Johns called Neil Jackson in January 2019 about joining Stargirl in the main villain role, he hesitated. "I got a call from Geoff just saying, 'We're doing this live-action version of Stargirl and I'd love you to come on board and play the main antagonist character of Jordan/Icicle,' and when he told me that the character's name was Icicle, I was like, 'What is this, a Nickelodeon show?'" Jackson says with a laugh. "Because there's nothing about the name Icicle that really kind of instilled a sense of dread. Then he pitched it to me and he told me about this gorgeous backstory that we see in episode 3."
Icicle is so ruthless and terrifying that even Neil Jackson was worried the character wouldn't fit into the fun, cheerful world of the new CW and DC Universe series. "When I was talking with Geoff Johns, the creator of the show, one of the things we were constantly talking about was the tone," Jackson tells EW. "He had his touchstones with '80s classics Back to the Future, E.T., that kind of stuff and I kept saying to him, 'You've got two sides of this show.' There's the very fun, lighthearted, colorful Riverdale high school drama, all the stuff with the family. And I felt like at times I was in a completely different show because the stuff that Jordan is a part of is brooding and menacing and sinister."
While fans only get a tease of Jordan at the end of episode 2, it's the next episode that details exactly who Jordan is, how he became Icicle, and what his plans are. "It's the pain of him losing his wife and how that galvanized him into wanting to make sure that nobody suffered the same injustice again, it set him on this righteous path to try to eradicate all the people that led to his wife's death but also to make sure that the community and society is better as a result of that," Neil Jackson explains. "When he pitched it to me, I got it: This guy's not a villain, he's a hero." Well, not quite. "In his own mind, he sees himself as the only person with the strength of character to make the really difficult decisions to make sure that society thrives," Jackson says. "If it wasn't for these pesky kids [Courtney recruits as heroes], he'd achieve it. That was my in towards the character."
While Neil Jackson did the necessary research and looked up all the different versions of Jordan/Icicle that have existed in the comic books and on TV in the past, he "quickly realized that none of them really applied" to the role he'd been cast to play. "Geoff has created a brand-new version of this with the TV show, and so we concentrated on what this version of Icicle and Jordan is," he says. "What we settled on was his despair. It would be very easy to play him as this menacing, vitriolic, angry person. But I actually said, talking in colors, instead of painting him with a red hue, I think it would be more interesting if we painted him with a blue hue. There's a deep sadness in him. And instead of making him angry, making him incredibly sad, so that all of his actions are laced with his sadness." In Jordan's mind, "He wishes he didn't have to do this, that society would thrive without his having to make these changes," Jackson says. "But his is the necessary evil that the world needs in his own opinion