Supergirl Resist Television 

Five Thoughts On Supergirl‘s “Resist”

By | May 16th, 2017
Posted in Television | % Comments

Holy hell, that’s one way to kick off a season finale! With National City dwarfed by hovering space ships and beset by Daxamite warriors, our heroes must seek help from unlikely sources in order to save their loved ones.

As always, there are spoilers below.

1. When Daxam Ruled The World

I’ll give the CW this: they know how to do big special effects on a network TV budget. The opening of Daxam’s invasion of National City was fantastically put together and clearly had a lot of money and effort put into it. From the Daxam ships hanging in the air over the city, projecting Rhea’s face and her message of subjugation to Maggie defending the police station with a shotgun to the attack on the DEO and Alex’s amazing jump off the balcony into Supergirl’s arms.

This is the kind of setpiece usually seen in Arrow or The Flash, but feels pretty epic here in kicking off this huge invasion angle. It reminded me of the long way we’ve come since Season 1’s idea of an alien invasion being a crowd of people walking down a city street in a trance.

And that was just the start of a hell of a great, action-packed and emotional kickoff to a finale that just might save this season.

2. Bunker Of The Resistance

Finally, the bar makes sense. The recurring bar set has never really felt right to me throughout this season, especially the attempts to make Mon-El fit in on Earth by getting him a job there. Here, though, staging the anti-Daxam resistance in a dive bar that doubles as an alien sanctuary? That’s more like it, honestly, and staging most of the episode here as opposed to the DEO set actually ratcheted up the stakes of the finale.

With the DEO overrun, our heroes feel trapped. Driven underground by the invasion. Sure, they just switched sets for a while after an action scene at the DEO in the cold open, but it added and extra layer to making the Daxam invasion feel like an actual event. I appreciated that.

3. The Return Of CADMUS & The Wedding Of A Luthor

God, finally. This played out pretty much exactly how I wanted it to with Lilian Luthor showing up out of nowhere now that Lena is in harm’s way to reluctantly partner with Supergirl only to betray her once Lena was safe. It was fairly obvious how the episode was going to play out, but it was obvious in a satisfying way. Sure, CADMUS has pretty much turned into just Lilian and Henshaw and their on-and-off partnership with Lena, but it was nice to see the show remember that they were the ones posing the threat to National City in the beginning of the season.

On the other hand, the whole thing with Lena and Mon-El’s “marriage?” I was… underwhelmed, let’s say. It felt like an excuse to have both Lena and Mon-El hostage so Supergirl would have to go save them and need Lilian’s help. Everything else around this one plot thread was incredibly strong, but this was the weak link of the episode.

Sidebar: the episode repeatedly mentions that Kara loves both Mon-El and Lena. If there was ever a time to have Kara come out as bi and actually do something with her character, it was this episode. Wasted opportunity, I’d say.

4. She’s Back!

Oh, how I’ve missed Cat Grant. And this episode clearly knows that the season has been lacking for her disappearance. From moment one, it felt like the old Supergirl again. Complete with the unnecessary trans-exclusionary “women don’t have dicks” joke. Okay, it was a gross joke, but it was a small aspect of the episode I otherwise enjoyed and I’m not making a mountain out of a molehill here.

Especially when I can spend the rest of this thought talking about how cool the Air Force One rescue sequence was. Or how cool it was to have Calista Flockhart and Lynda Carter share the screen. Or Cat’s customary speech tearing down Rhea. Or how she immediately recognised James as Guardian just by looking at his eye (something that’s bugged me about every live action Batman suit).

Continued below

The point is: this show needs Cat Grant and I’m glad she returned for this episode. I just hope they can find a way to keep her around longer next season.

5. An Alien President

Oh, how I long to live in a world where the biggest secret the president is hiding is that she’s not from Earth. This was a pretty anticlimactic reveal, I think, but not necessarily in a bad way. This has been set up since the very first episodes of this season and I think I prefer the casual nature with which our few heroes find out about the President’s true nature over some overwrought narrative arc where he secret is revealed publicly and they try to have some timely political storyline about it.

Look, let’s face it: Supergirl’s politics are a special blend of toothless liberalism. It’s empty slogans about resisting and Girl Power without actually examining the ramifications of they metaphors. Resist our conquerors who falsely claim to make our country great again… but here they’re aliens. No, not the good aliens we were using as immigration and refugee metaphors. These are bad aliens because we’re going to lightly compare them to a vague notion of Conservatism.

In the ’40s, The Adventures Of Superman ran an expose of the Ku Klux Klan and helped bring their atrocities to light in the masses. In 2017, Supergirl is regurgitating liberal slogans without addressing any real problems. It needs more fight.


//TAGS | Supergirl

Alice W. Castle

Sworn to protect a world that hates and fears her, Alice W. Castle is a trans femme writing about comics. All things considered, it’s going surprisingly well. Ask her about the unproduced Superman films of 1990 - 2006. She can be found on various corners of the internet, but most frequently on Twitter: @alicewcastle

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