Supergirl S01E15 Review: Indigo! Also, Juvenile Passive-Aggressive Civil War

Supergirl, Season 1, Episode 15: Solitude

Comics Indigo

This was surprisingly decent. There's a part of me that's incensed that they turned Indigo into, well, basically just a generic mwa-ha-ha I am evil doomsday villain, and they definitely just scoured female Superman villains, went, hey, there's a female Brainiac! And then proceeded to write her as Brainiac without really learning much about Indigo. See, I read the Outsiders, and Indigo was... a relatively more complex character than that. She was sent from the future and despite being this socially awkward robot girl, Indigo ended up being a member of the Outsiders team and being a happy supporting character and whatnot, until suddenly it is revealed that 'Indigo' is a subroutine program and she's actually Brainiac 8, a future 'offspring' of the present day Brainiac, and she ends up being caught in a bit of a personal conflict. Is the Indigo subroutine, which was a mask to endear herself to the superheroes, even real? Which one was the true personality, et cetera, et cetera.

This version of Indigo? She's just an angry internet-travelling villain (who looks way too much like Mystique for my tastes) who wants to mwa-ha-ha shoot nukes and mwa-ha-ha genocide. She does make for a far more compelling and consistent villain than the likes of Master Jailer or Hellgrammite, though, and she just has such a fun time being a hammy bastard that she's fun to watch.

Indigo herself really isn't a problem. She's a great concept as a villain, someone who can just zip in and zip out of the internet (with a cool-looking effect at that), and a connection to the whole Kryptonian subplot. Indigo reveals herself to be the one responsible for hacking Kara's spaceship and helping her escape the Phantom Zone, as well as already being an acquaintance and acquaintances with Astra and Non. Apparently she's afraid of Astra for whatever reason? She's a fun villain, even if I don't fully comprehend the technological blah-blah as to why she needs to fuck up the electrical systems of National City to hack into the phone of the general going to the nuke base.

Supergirl saving a nuclear bomb is a delightfully classic Superman moment, though. 

The Fortress of Solitude is another classic Superman moment. It's got a crapton of nice Easter Eggs (which I'll cover below), including the Legion of Superheroes flight ring which is identical to the Easter Egg we glimpsed in that one episode of the Flash that allowed him to peer into other universes. It's a bit of a nice moment there. 

Sadly, other than Indigo and the Fortress of Solitude the rest of the episode kind of falls short. The whole passive-aggressiveness from the previous episode with Kara being a total child when dealing with J'onn, and Alex's big dramatic revelation that she's the one responsible for killing Astra ends up being... absolutely underwhelming and induces nothing but eyerolls. Again, yes, Astra was Supergirl's aunt and she was nice to Kara, but she's also hellbent on... wiping out humans or whatever the fuck her grand plan was I forgot. And really, if it's her adopted sister that kills her aunt it earns hugs and tears, but if it's J'onn, who's acting to save Astra, it earns nothing but Kara's scorn? Jeez. 

I also disliked how the DEO took out Indigo, with Winn using an old virus he cooked up before to somehow eliminate a hyper-advanced technological alien being with a computer virus. Anyone with a slight working knowledge of how computers work will know that a virus that worked on, say, a Windows operating system won't necessarily do anything on a Mac or whatever the hell, let alone an alien robot. It's dumb how the virus just shoots Indigo to hell. It's also boring. And really, they could've gone for a far obvious way and say that Winn reverse-engineered the virus by studying Indigo's technology from a previous encounter or some shit, or they could've used fucking Kelex, who is an alien computer, but no. Winn had to be that guy. Winn had to be that hacker who somehow is able to hack into alien computers, which is frankly one of the most moronic and stupid sci-fi cliches. 

Also, what didn't work was Lucy getting irrationally jealous of Supergirl, and Kara's attempts to smooth things over end up, y'know, making things worse. It's stupid, and poorly executed. How moronic is it for James to think that 'I must tell Lucy that Supergirl is Kara' is the only way out of his predicament? How moronic is it for Lucy to be jealous of Kara from one conversation? And Kara's talk about how James is dedicated as a boyfriend ends up falling flat when, no, we've never really seen any evidence of that. It's honestly badly written. 

There is also this utterly uninspiring Cat Co Subplot with Siobahn regarding, oh, some bullshit celebrity-leaks thing, and Siobahn is an opportunistic bitch who somehow manages to hit it up with Winn? That didn't work, really. It's not bad like the Lucy thing, but it just fell flat. Winn and Siobahn bonding over their shitty fathers is fun, though.

Overall, though, other than the nice moments with Indigo (who I'm honestly kind of surprised I'm not ranting more about), the nuke and the Fortress of Solitude, the bad things in this episode really outweighed the good, so yeah. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Fortress of Solitude, of course, has been a staple in literally every single incarnation of Superman. Back in the Golden/Silver Age comics, Superman left the key to the Fortress literally in plain sight as this gigantic key hanging out on an icy mountain, but the one used here has the key on the doorstep... but made of a condensed dwarf star material that only Superman can lift, which is taken from All-Star Superman and most modern depictions of the Fortress.
• The Fortress has crystal-style architecture that was popularized by the Christopher Reeve movies, but the giant Lara/Jor-El statues holding a globe is more inspired by the comics.
• The Legion Flight Ring on the pedestral belongs to the Legion of Superheroes, a team of superheroes in the 30th Century. This very shot of the ring has appeared in an episode of the Flash. Both Superman (as Superboy) and Supergirl has made travels to the future to work with them in the comics, so this might be a foreshadowing to a future adventure that Kara's going to take.
• Lovable Kelex, a.k.a. Superman's Kryptonian butler, returns. You might recognize him from his short-lived appearance recently in the Man of Steel movie, and I think he appeared a bit in the Black Mercy dream. 
• James mentioned that Supergirl is faster than Superman, and the post-Crisis Kara Zor-El version of Supergirl was stated to be physically stronger and faster than Superman multiple times.
• Indigo/Brainiac-8 is a Coluan, which was the species that Brainiac in his various incarnations originated from. Indigo's closeness to the operating facilities of Krypton is taken from the DCAU cartoon where that incarnation of Brainiac was the planet-wide computer in Krypton and hitched a ride on Superman's ship. 
• Indigo is played by Laura Vandervoort, who played Supergirl in Smallville.