Supergirl S02E11 Review: Martian Drama

Supergirl, Season 4, Episode 11: The Martian Chronicles

Man, I am so sad that the White Martian thing ends up just being seemingly a single episode, with only two White Martian hunters coming to Earth to hunt down M'gann, and M'gann herself actually leaving Earth this episode. I really, really want a storyline about the martians. Aw, boo. After everything that's happened, I honestly wished we saw a lot more of M'gann, because she spent a good chunk of her earlier screentime as more of a plot device than a character, and prior to this episode a good chunk of her screentime is just in a cell.

And to top it off, we had to bog down the otherwise-excellent martian episode with Kara's inadequacy problems, where she's trying to hold everyone to the status quo of the past -- not forcibly, of course, but more in subconscious manners as Alex points out. Part of it is because of her rejecting Mon-El and regretting it, but seeing James and Winn go off as Guardian (none of that this episode, thank god) and Alex taking time off of her Earth Birthday to go on a super-VIP-concert date with Maggie has Kara on a funk... and I absolutely did not care for this particular subplot as the episode goes on.

Mind you, as much as the Alex-Maggie relationship is cute, Alex's epiphany about not ignoring your family in favour of a new girlfriend... might honestly be applied to her suddenly-halted search for her father. Which, to be fair, was something I forgot myself.

The martian stuff was good, though, from the confrontation between M'gann and Armek in the bar (Armek is a suitably ass-faced douchebag) to M'gann's alliance with J'onn, to the absolutely fun and pretty tense Thing-style paranoia fuel in the DEO when the White Martian shapeshifts into one of them, to the creepy revelation that the Alex Kara's been pouring her heart out to is actually a second White Martian, to the superpowered alien beatdown between Supergirl, J'onn, M'gann and two White Martians... it's great. There is my continued problem of J'onn and M'gann "defaulting" to their human forms whenever they get knocked around or have a vulnerable, intimate moment, when really they should return to their martian form... but it's a small quibble.

There's honestly not much to say beyond the fact that the scenes are all well-acted, and M'gann really starts to get a lot of interest with her absolute tossing away of her old white martian roots and firmly entrenching herself in the green camp. A real-life version of this might be a bit... controversial... but in a fantasy setting with shape-shifting martians it's just awesome. M'gann herself has really grown, allowing herself to go from someone who's running from her heritage and her past to someone who's determined to, well, break the system, return back to her planet and try and get as many white martians to rebel against their "kill green martians!" society. J'onn himself isn't much of a slouch, though most of his character development happened in the previous episode so in this one he's fully in the 'save M'gann' camp, and his vulnerable side when he speaks with M'gann at the end of the episode is amazingly acted from both sides.


So it's an absolute shame that she leaves the show for the forseeable future at the end of the episode, and just as J'onn confesses his feelings to M'gann, too! I think why I don't care about Kara and Mon-El's love story is that, well, J'onn and M'gann do it so well. Even if a small part of me is weirded out how these former uncle/niece pair is turned into unrelated lovers, it's still very well done how two people from different races that hate each other end up finding love... Kara and Mon-El are from Krypton and Daxam, who hate each other, but while the two actors have great chemistry, the conflict in their relationship just felt... forced, especially last episode's rejection and this episode's regret. That just felt like something that came out of nowhere and I honestly just don't give a fuck about.

Overall, it definitely is an episode that delivers, just one that I'm sad we didn't have much more of. Really sad we didn't get a proper White Martian war, but I guess White Martians are just so much more expensive to animate than a bunch of flying Kyptonians, who are just normal actors in funny suits.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• M'gann didn't have a martian mate in the comics, being, y'know, a kid, but Armek is based on a White Martian villain, specifically a member of the Hyperclan, a villainous team of White Martians posing as superheroes in JLA #1.
• The martian God of Death H'ronmeer is mentioned in one of Armek's lines.
• The martians' fear of fire is adapted here, with J'onn being visibly distressed by it, while the White Martians are forced to reveal their true forms. In the comics both green and white martians alike are weakened by fire.