Oh boy, there’s so much to get through this episode. With the ‘Invasion!’ crossover coming next week, Supergirl seems to have smushed two episodes together to get everything out of the way before the rest of the CW comes crashing into town. There’s so much going on that these five thoughts have more going in them than any individual thought I’ve written before now.
So, let’s get the introductions out of the way and dive into our Five Thoughts on Supergirl‘s “The Darkest Place”. Spoilers ahead!
1. Man, This Show Has Gone Full CW
There is so much going on in this episode, I can probably barely contain it in five thoughts. Everyone got a major, emotional arc with their own villain. Everyone. This is less a show about Supergirl as it is about the general superheroic populace of National City. It honestly made the episode a little unwieldy, cutting back and forth from three pretty rushed plots that could have taken up a whole episodes each.
One thing that really got me though is how much Supergirl has leaned into the CW aesthetic. Masked vigilantes fighting at night, in the rain. Masked vigilantes fighting in a darkened warehouse with intermittent explosions. A supposedly incredibly high-tech scientific operation conducting experiments out of the hospital from Jacob’s Ladder. I know this show is crossing over with Arrow and The Flash next week, but it doesn’t have to share their visual aesthetics in it’s own episodes.
What made Supergirl stand out in season one was how it’s visuals capture the brightness and heart of Supergirl herself. In focusing on some darker plotlines and the anger of it’s male stars, the show has buried Supergirl under the aesthetic of Arrow and I’m afraid of where that will take the show.
2. Inside CADMUS
Supergirl finally comes face to face with CADMUS, it’s leader, Lillian Luthor, and gets a taste of what the organisation is like. Apparently, it’s a scientific collective of actual xenophobes who operate out of a part-time sex dungeon. Seriously, I have been so disappointed in how CADMUS is presented this season. The use of generic corridors sets with dark atmospheric lighting and dingy operating labs just makes them feel so… generic. You would think a Luthor would have better standards of where to work out of. She’s not even pretending that they’re not the bad guys, she’s just leaning into the dingiest mad scientist lair possible. It’s pretty disappointing.
And speaking of disappointing, this episode showed not only the return of the original Hank Henshaw, but Jeremiah Danvers too! The original Hank Henshaw coming back as Cyborg Superman was something I’ve wanted since the very beginning of the show, but the execution here left a lot to be desired. David Harewood did a great job of distinguishing who J’onn has become with who Hank is and brought a real murderous vibe to his demeanour, but… why would Hank call himself Cyborg Superman?
In the comics, Hank harboured a grudge against Superman because he believe Superman killed his wife and friends before his consciousness was uploaded to a computer system and he rebuilt his body from the birthing matrix in Superman’s pod. The 90s were weird, but he at least had a delusional reason for masquerading himself as Superman. This episode’s drop of the name Cyborg Superman was maybe the least earned one of these nicknames has been.
Meanwhile, an actual Superman turned up in the form of “Oh shit, we forgot CADMUS has kidnapped Jeremiah Danvers”. Seriously, you could feel the moment that Dean Cain walked on screen that the show was trying to cover up the fact that Alex had made it her new quest to find her dad only to forget all about it after two episodes. It was a good, if brief, cameo that was only slightly clunky.
3. DC’s Captain America v. Punisher
You know, I think I really don’t like this whole Guardian thing. As much as I’m glad that it gives James and Winn something to do each episode, the juggling of the CADMUS storyline and what went on with J’onn and M’gann made this feel so superfluous that I wish they’d just dropped the storyline. Not only was not-Punisher so underbaked that I had to google the character’s name to find out that he’s actually a character from the comics called Barrage. This felt like a B-plot from a better version of the first season of Arrow when instead of just being a killer, Ollie has to deal with the public decrying Green Arrow because he thinks he’s a killer.
Continued belowThat might have worked then, but it doesn’t really work here because it’s, again, sandwiched between two other major storylines that aren’t giving one another room to breathe. James doesn’t even have a moment to really talk about what it might mean to do something you think is right only for the public to hate you because of misinformation. The plot just charges ahead to CW Warehouse #4 for the final showdown where Maggie finally puts away her prejudice against vigilantes and trust Guardian… or something. In trying to tell three large storylines in one episode, this storyline suffered the most for not really earning the message it was trying to tell.
4. The Martian Feelshunter
J’onn’s story, however, nailed every beat pretty consistently because it felt structure like a storyline that would have played side saddle to the CADMUS plot anyway. Building on emotional beats that have been built since season one and dealing with ingrained prejudice in a way better way than the whole Krypton/Daxam thing, the reveal that M’gann is a White Martian has serious implications for the characters. This isn’t a case of characters disliking one another because their planets had idealogical differences. The White Martians literally committed genocide and J’onn lost his family, his race and his homeworld to them and now only has M’gann’s word that she’s not like them.
It’s very easy to see both sides of the conflict here and how they’re both sympathetic to the situation at hand. J’onn’s anger feels earned and even though him throwing M’gann in a cell to rot might be an extreme measure, it’s not one that doesn’t make sense from J’onn’s point of view. And the idea that J’onn will not have to deal with not only having White Martian blood in him, but potentially become a White Martian? That’s some shit right there.
5. Wait, What Happened With Batman?
“My cousin worked with a vigilante once.”
Once. More and more, Supergirl has been referencing the world of superheroes outside of that of National City. I’ve always kind of assumed this show was operating under the assumption that, outside of Superman, there weren’t that many large scale superheroes. At least, I think we would have heard about the Justice League by now if it existed and I would like to think J’onn would have been a member. I always thought the show was presenting a world where Superman and, eventually, Supergirl were the largest scale superheroes.
But Kara is very clearly referencing Batman here with the mention of lots of gadgets and demons (I’m assuming more emotional than physical, but we do know the Al Ghuls exist over in Arrow), so Batman has existed in this world at one point or another. Long enough to team up with the Man Of Steel, at least. I wonder what happened? Is he still the urban vigilante of his early days? Is he still in his early days? Did he retire?
I had to pause the episode less than five minutes in to break down this one line reference to Batman because I am just fascinated by the implications.
