Well, we’re finally here. After a long, often messy and somewhat cluttered season, we’ve reached the finale and I have to commend Supergirl for how much it’s been able to turn things around since that three week break a few episodes back. Things have been back on track for the last few episodes and last night’s finale was an epic showdown with an emotionally affecting, bittersweet ending. It finally felt like Supergirl again after so long.
Without any further ado, let’s dive into our Five Thoughts on Supergirl‘s Season 2 finale! Obviously, spoilers ahead.
1. Clash Of The Supers
Well, of course it was kryptonite! It’s Superman. Every time he shows up as the bad guy, it’s either kryptonite or mind control. That being said, this was an epic way to start an episode. It reminded me of the fight between Kara and the Myriad-controlled Alex that kicked off last season’s finale, just scaled up. And it was just as intense and gratifying to see someone get the hero vs. hero fight right.
The key is that Supergirl clearly doesn’t want to fight, but has no choice while Superman wants to fight, but doesn’t realise who he’s fighting. This brings a lot of depth to the conflict because Superman thinks he’s still being Superman, defending National City from Zod. He isn’t picking a fight with his cousin, he’s attacking in accordance to his character it’s just that his perception has been skewed.
That, leading up to the punch up in the pool where the two Kyrptonians just lay into each other showed that this show has finally gotten itself back on the rails and lead to easily the best episode of the season.
2. The Luthor Who Saved The World
I’m try to order these thoughts somewhat chronologically, but that’s going to be a bit hard with this episode because of how much everything played off of each other. Still, I’m glad Lena as meaty a role as she did in the finale. Katie McGrath does a fantastic job of toeing the line here as she wallows in her own misery over being tricked by Rhea and even lays it out for Lilian that it was her neglect as a mother that lead her to seek validation elsewhere.
Lena has developed into a complex, multi-layered individual and my initial assessment of her playing multiple sides turned out to not be the case. She was never hiding some nefarious scheme, she was just trying to make a name for herself and combat a legacy of a maniacal brother and a borderline abusive mother. That, in a lot of ways, has made her all the more interesting than having her pretend to be good and pure only to secretly be as Luthor-y as the rest of them.
3. Trial By Combat
The one thing about superheroes on TV is that they rarely come down to a straightforward punchout with the villain. Indeed, that’s the cast with most live action superhero adaptations. The hero generally has to overcome some abstract obstacle of strength (like throwing a big spaceship into space at the end of season one?) in order to foil the villain’s plans.
Here, thankfully, the show has no qualms with the fate of national coming down to a fistfight and actually did a good job of setting up why. The idea of trial by combat seems like it would fit with the proud culture of Daxam and Kara having already beaten Superman (at full strength, the episode is sure to add to stop flamewars in power level forums) makes her the right choice to be champion of Earth.
And the fight itself was fantastic. I was really worried about how they’d make it seem like Teri Hatcher’s Rhea could go toe to toe with Supergirl, but they made it work. And there was a story to the fight. It was the central point to the conflict as Rhea used cheap tricks to get the upper hand like ordering her ships to fire on the city or even weaponising her own blood against Supergirl.
It’s where the ripped-from-February’s headlines title of the episode came from, but it was a great showcase of the persistence of Supergirl in the face of an enemy.
Continued below4. Mon-El, Hero Of Earth
This season has paid a lot of lip service to the idea that Kara has trained to Mon-El to be a hero over the course of the season and one of my biggest grievances with this is that it’s never been shown. We saw his training in the beginning before he gave up to be a bartender for a while before actually beginning to date Kara and from there, it was really only mentioned in passing. Finally, thankfully, we got to see Mon-El’s heroics in action as he takes to the streets to defend the people of National City from his kinsmen.
It’s an important moment because not only does it finally pay off the storyline that they’ve been hammering home all season, but sets up Mon-El’s sacrifice later in the episode. We get to see that his time spent on Earth with Kara has genuinely changed him and that makes the fact that he has to leave Earth all the more tragic. And it leaves the episode with a hell of a bittersweet ending.
5. You Can’t Always Get What You Want
I genuinely forgot what it was like to be emotionally affected by Supergirl. It felt like by the end of the first season, nearly every episode would move me to tears. It was one of the reasons I felt so connected to the show; every episode felt so emotionally charged and spoke directly to that sense of awe-inspired hope that these characters create. This season, it’s been a rough road to get here, but, boy, did it pay off.
This season felt like it was searching through any plot thread it could drum up to find a cohesive theme. Is it about immigration and refugees? Is it about overcoming stereotypes and hatred? Is it about… I don’t know, whatever the hell the message with Guardian was supposed to be. Turns out, the unifying theme of this episode has always been central to Kara’s character and it was there all along, buried beneath everyone else. Kara spent all season struggling with the nothing of trying to have everything. Of being a hero to National City while being an operative of the DEO and a reporter for CatCo and a sister to Alex and a surrogate daughter to J’onn and a friend to Lena and Winn and James and a girlfriend to Mon-El.
As you might have guessed, no, you can’t have everything. Heroes are built on sacrifice. Kara may be invulnerable to harm, but her heart is very vulnerable. And this show made a very smart move in ending this season on a very bittersweet note, letting Supergirl save the world while destroying Kara’s. It was emotionally affecting and finally brought some weight to the relationship that they’d been forcing to work all season. It’ll be interesting to see where Kara’s character will go from here.
Bonus Thoughts: This episode was chock full of stuff I want to talk about, but don’t have the space to include in Five Thoughts and aren’t important enough to warrant a bumper Ten Thoughts write up.
- Tyler Hoechlin’s return as Superman and Clark Kent was a delight and I hope he returns in Season 3.
- M’Gann returning was a great touch and I hope she sticks around longer next season.
- ALEX ASKED MAGGIE TO MARRY HER AND I CRIED REAL TEARS OF JOY
- We get another stinger with a mysterious pod leaving Krypton, but who’s in this one? Zod? Doomsday? We’ll find out later this year.
