Supergirl, Season 2, Episode 7: The Darkest Place
Hooo boy, it's been a while since I sat down and watched superhero shows. Last we left off, I'm just wrapping things up for the Invasion crossover between the CW shows, with only Arrow and Supergirl being one episode off from actually starting off the crossover. So let's start off with Supergirl. I'll try to keep this batch of episode reviews shorter and sweeter because holy shit, there's a lot that I missed out on, and that's before getting into Gotham and SHIELD, both of which I've been utterly neglecting for the past couple of months.
Anyway, this episode is very eventful, with the pacing picking up. We've got so much being moved into place, with both the Cadmus, Martian and Guardian plotlines all being pushed forwards one way or another. Oh, and Alex's coming-out story which, despite the strength of the actress playing Alex... is starting to get repetitive. Let's get that bit out of our hair before we tackle the other bigger plotlines. As in previous episodes, it's still mostly well-written so it's not an obnoxious romantic plot tumour, but I am just so uninterested in Alex's love-life when, at the same time, James and Winn are dealing with a Guardian impostor, J'onn is finding out that he's being injected with White Martian blood, while Kara and Mon-El are kidnapped by Cadmus. Oh, and the real Hank Henshaw is alive and very, very much able to take on Supergirl in a fight. Next to all of this? Yeah, I just find it hard to really give a shit that Alex is confronting Maggie about sending mixed signals to her.
At least Alex's subplot took like two, three short scenes, whereas the Guardian subplot is just being absolutely irritating. It takes up a significant focus in the episode, and honestly Guardian, and James Olsen in general, felt very, very disappointing. James is just so... weird. He tries too hard to distance himself from the traditional wimpy dude-in-distress Superman's-best-buddy portrayal, but in the process he lost every single interesting thing about him and just became Generic Handsome Love Interest with nearly no personality. This attempt at dressing him up in a costume and have him fight crime? Not very impressive, especially in the half-baked way that the show sets him up to be. It really felt like James and Winn are trying to become Arrow-lite, except that in a city where Supergirl flies around there's legitimately little reason that someone like Guardian would be more effective than, say, dressing up a trained military agent like Alex or one of those DEO soldiers in the Guardian suit.
We even get a ripoff of the Vigilante subplot from Arrow, where some random dude goes around executing criminals that Guardian is tracking down, and we have some cursory detective work from James and Winn to clear Guardian's name. I don't know. Maybe it's just that Arrow (and in a less-current sense, Daredevil) is on a streak of very good episodes with discussing the vigilante-that-kills character that this very bland ripoff just doesn't interest me. It's a generic hero-gets-framed-by-the-villain subplot, and any chance of this being interesting, like involving Supergirl actually confronting the framed Guardian, is removed by Supergirl herself being removed from play. Hell, even the villain of the week, Barrage (who doesn't even get his supervillain name spoken on the show), looks like he's trying to cosplay as Arrow's Vigilante. Blah.
Meanwhile, a far more interesting villain is the return of Hank Henshaw. Just like Tom Cavanaugh doubling between playing the various Harrison Wells's as well as the villainous Eobard Thawne, this time around David Harewood shows off his acting skills as he steps out of playing J'onn, but as the villainous Hank Henshaw that J'onn borrows the face of. He actually calls himself "Cyborg Superman", which is a bit weird -- just like the Mon-El example, it doesn't make sense in the context of the show because Hank actually hates Superman and all aliens, and his costume here isn't him trying to impersonate Superman or whatever. But eh. Hank was pretty impressive. He basically can take on Supergirl toe-to-toe, and it's very fun seeing him just full of hatred and anger at the alien that took over his life -- which can't be good for his already-established xenophobia. That hallway battle against Supergirl, which involves him tanking Kara's eye-beams and having his cyborg endoskeleton revealed, is pretty awesome.
Hank isn't the only good villain this episode, because Mama Luthor, whose name we learn is Lillian, explains a long, long family history and basically paints her own son, Lex, as this very brilliant child who gets taken down by Superman's alien propaganda. She's basically the supervillain version of that one mom whose child can never do any wrong in her eyes and will defend her child in front of teachers or whatever because her child is such a beautiful angel that no, the world is wrong, and her child is in the right. It does take away some of her 'this is for the betterment of mankind' angle, because now she just feels like a petulant mother, but Lillian Luthor is still miles and miles better of a villain than Astra, Non or Indigo from the previous season. And even without being a super-three-dimensional villain, both Lillian and Hank are far more impressive in terms of being actual villains. Lillian smoothly shooting the captured Mon-El with lead and threatening to murder him, and basically getting Kara to exhaust herself by unleashing her solar flare, then bitch-slapping her and getting her blood....
It begs to question why Lillian didn't just kill Kara and Mon right then and there, of course, but I guess she just wants to keep them around for experimentation or whatever? We get the revelation that Jeremiah Danvers is still alive, and also has some kind of enhanced strength. He's apparently so valuable to Cadmus that he's sure that Cadmus won't, like, execute him for letting Kara and Mon-El escape. I honestly forgot that the Jeremiah Danvers plot was even a thing, but hey, there it is.
Oh, and at the end of the episode, Hank goes off to the Fortress of Solitude, and uses Kara's blood to activate the Solitude computers and obtain something called the Medusa.
Meanwhile, J'onn has his own little subplot in this episode that's easily my favourite part -- though I am biased at anything that features the Martian Manhunter, so. He basically hallucinates a fair bit throughout the episode, first his family and then a white martian, before running tests and finding out that the blood transfusion he received from M'gann was that of a white martian. The confrontation was absolutely fueled by rage and anger, and it is a bit hard to see cool, collected J'onn J'onzz throwing M'gann around and smashing her through buildings and shit and basically ready to murder her. M'gann isn't resisting and basically resigned to her fate, but refuses to die as a white martian, preferring to identify as a human. J'onn's rage at M'gann is absolutely unjustified, of course, but his anger at the white martians in general? Kara's racism towards the Daxamites has been dealt with in previous episodes, but J'onn has genuine reason to actually hate the white martians, who genocided his people and killed his family. And it's implied that J'onn's anger isn't just one borne of vengeance for the green martians or his dead family, but more of an anger that M'gann has fooled and betrayed him.
Oh, and apparently M'gann's blood is slowly turning J'onn into a white martian, because genocide isn't enough, and the white martians are now practicing forcible racial purity. Man, the White Martians are dicks. M'gann excepted, of course.
Overall, we've got a strong Cadmus plot and a strong J'onn plot, a forgettable Alex plot and a very, very generic Guardian plot. Still, it's a very entertaining episode to watch, and I'm looking forward to reviewing the Invasion crossover quite soon.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- BATMAN! Well, a reference to him, anyway. While on the topic of vigilantes, Supergirl notes how Superman once worked with a vigilante with lots of gadgets. Man, even this small reference to Batman is so much more interesting than the Guardian stuff we got.
- Phillip Karnowsky in the comics is the rather minor Superman villain Barrage. In the comics he's even more uninteresting than his show portrayal, just some dude with a mechanical suit and a cannon-arm, without any of the Punisher/Vigilante-esque backstory he has here.
- Hank Henshaw has been transformed into Cyborg Superman, which, like I mentioned above, doesn't really make that much sense. In the comics, Henshaw actually shows up impersonating Superman after his death at the hands of Doomsday, having cybernetics 'replace' the parts of his body that were wounded during Superman's fight with Doomsday. Both the comics and TV version of Henshaw are still dicks, thoguh.
- The reason Mon-El and Kara can't break their way out of the Cadmus cells is that they're made out of Thanagarian Nth Metal, which is known to not only resist Kryptonian strength, but also magic. Thanagarians have previously been mentioned in Legends of Tomorrow, which isn't set in the same universe... but apparently Thanagarians exist here as well.
- Luthor's mother is never named in the comics, but in the TV series Smallville, she was given the name Lillian, which is adapted into this show as well.
- Mon-El mentions a Valeronian as one of the aliens he's been banging. Valeronian is the species that Vartox, the disposable alien that Supergirl defeats in the pilot, belongs to.
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