After taking a week break, we’re back with the penultimate episode of Supergirl‘s first season. After teaming up with The Flash to stop Livewire and Silver Banshee and tongue wrestling with Jimmy Olsen, Kara found everyone but her had seemingly been turned into mindless zombies. With Myriad in full effect, we’re racing towards the finale of Supergirl‘s first season and things are looking dire.
As always, this is going to contain spoilers for the episode, so watch before you read!
1. Supergirl Versus The World
You know what I like about this episode? The big threat that’s been set up against Supergirl isn’t a giant monster. It isn’t a battle through the city against Non that would level most of the buildings in the city. It’s the threat of the safety of everyone in National City being in the hands of Non. It isn’t a test of Supergirl’s physical strength, but a strength of Supergirl’s character.
This is what the show understands more than most: the biggest threat to Supergirl or Superman or any of the Superpeople isn’t a bigger monster they need to punch a lot, but to put them in a position where they need to accept the limitations of their powers. This episode did this incredibly well with the scene where Kara managed to save Jimmy and Winn after they leapt off a building, but couldn’t save Kelly from the same fate.
This moment shook Kara to her very core, made her doubt her abilities and made her realise that she can’t save everyone… which is going to make it all the more rewarding when she still tries to next episode.
2. Sir Not Appearing In This Episode
This is was kind of weird.
Sure, I know the show had to establish what was up with Superman during the crisis where everyone in National City came under mind control from a Kryptonian general, but I feel like this was another instance of the show not being able to use Superman properly shooting them in the foot. At first, Kara travelling to the Fortress Of Solitude, being told that Superman was “off world” (as he is wont to be) and getting information from her mother’s hologram about Myriad was totally fine. It was a well done scene that explained why Superman wouldn’t be showing up.
And then Superman texted Kara like “Hey, I’ll be there in two secs,” flew towards the screen then dropped into the faceless crowd of zombies never to be seen again. And I was like… right. That was pointless, you already established why he wouldn’t be in the episode. And then they have Max Lord talk about how his brain is more human cause he was raised on a farm? And now I’m like right you’re pushing it too far, we get it.
It went a long way to establish something I was willing to accept right off the bat.
3. Cat Grant, Savior Of The Universe
You know, I kind of love how much this episode hates Dawn Of Justice. Maybe that’s cause I hate it too, but it felt like every word out of Cat Grant’s mouth in this episode was designed to show up the muddy morals of DC’s films. This episode was all about Cat Grant pushing Supergirl past the limits she thought she had. As she’s said in a previous episode, Supergirl doesn’t get to have a normal life and she doesn’t get to have limits purely for the fact that she’s Supergirl. She’ll fail, sure, everyone does, but she’s a symbol for something better and she doesn’t get to stop or give up because she couldn’t save one person when she could go on to save millions more.
This is why Cat Grant is maybe my favourite aspect of this whole show. She exists to show the effect Supergirl has on the world. She admits herself in this episode that just interacting with Supergirl has changed her, has made her a better person. And Cat uses that to push Supergirl past her own self doubt, reminding her that she’s a symbol of the city and that she can be the one who fights back.
Also, Cat Grant’s crack at Harrison Ford was the best of her celebrity namedrops in the entire season. It was a goddamn masterpiece.
Continued below4. Kara V. Alex: Dawn Of The Finale
Speaking of Dawn Of Justice, this episode ends with a mind-controlled Alex in Kryptonite-laced armour and a Kryptonite weapon facing down Supergirl in an alley at night. Does this remind anyone of anything? In all seriousness, I actually think this is a pretty neat cliffhanger to end the episode on because it does two things better than Dawn Of Justice‘s version of this: 1) the entire show has built up Alex and Kara’s relationship, through the ups and downs, and we, as the audience, know that they love each other more than anything, making Alex being mindcontrolled an element of tension to the fight and 2) we know Supergirl would never even think of hurting Alex, nevermind killing her, and so the element of tension is compounded when you realise that Kara’s going to have to stop Alex without hurting her.
It’s another example of testing the strength of Supergirl’s character more than simply testing her physical strength, something I think Dawn Of Justice was too hung up on.
5. Let’s Talk About Non
Finally, let’s get into something I’ve been ignoring for a while because I was hoping it would get better: Non is boring. Non is one of the least interesting villains I’ve ever seen in a live action superhero property. His motivations are unclear at best and the whole bait and switch where Astra got a heroic sacrifice and Non moved to become the season’s big bad has left him picking up the pieces of Astra’s already poorly explained villainous exploits while being severely underdeveloped in the process.
It probably doesn’t help that it mostly feels like this was meant to be Astra and Zod (Non even has a line about making someone kneel before him this episode), but I’m assuming that was shot down for the same reason showing Superman was. Still, even if it had been Zod, it would have meant we’d have gotten a Zod who kinda just shows up, says something vaguely menacing and then buggers off without doing anything about it.
When most of the villain’s time on screen in an episode is being berated by his second-in-command for being flakey and not finishing the job and you agree with her, something’s not right. Hopefully they can bring it home for the finale, but I think I’m more interested in Kara battling Alex than I am in her fighting Non.
