Supergirl S03E12 Review: Mama Luthor's Boba Fett Cosplay

Supergirl, Season 3, Episode 12: For Good

Okay, this episode of Supergirl is... conceptually solid. I mean, the little superhero fanboy in me is just excited when Lillian Luthor dons that Lex-suit at the beginning of the third act in a legitimately neat CGI sequence for this show's standards, before fighting toe-to-toe with Supergirl and Mon-El.

But at the same time, though, the episode itself is probably conceptually meant to be the culmination of so many multiple plot threads -- Lillian Luthor, Morgan Edge and various other lesser plot lines -- and they're just trying to mush them together in a single episode. Throw in some James and Lena drama into the whole thing, have some other characters say dialogue that they normally say, and it ends up a horribly messy mush.

And the episode isn't the worst episode of Supergirl I've ever seen, because, y'know, I survived through that dire first season, but it's just so messy. "Is Lena evil?" is such a tired and cliched storyline because they will never allow Lena Luthor as a character to even embrace her evil Luthor side at all, because the whole point of her character is the subversion of the Luthor name. And while it's a thrilling character concept for the first two or three times we saw it, at this point it's just a huge eyeball-rolling moment that everyone is all "gasp, is Lena evil now?" Likewise, the villainous Morgan Edge is just so bland and uninteresting, playing into every unlikable sexist corporate overlord trope that I'm genuinely glad that he got arrested at the end of this episode -- not because he's evil and I want to see him pay for his crimes, but because I genuinely cannot stand the character on-screen at all.

Again, as someone who loves continuity, it's a very interesting idea to wrap up the whole Morgan Edge versus Lena Luthor storyline with them lobbing around defamation accusations and seemingly someone manipulating both of them to assassinate the other... but this mystery never really ended up engaging me, and it all turns out to hinge on yet another Kara friendship speech to get Lena to stand down from actually going murder-y. Guardian/James is thrown in there with some rather bland speeches just because. Throw in some genuinely shitty plot holes -- like why Lillian doesn't care that her daughter is dying of cyanide poisoning and cares more about shooting a fancy-ass bullet, or why Kara brings the poisoned Lena to the DEO instead of, y'know, an ER... obviously both those answers is that "we needed cool scenes", since they led to Lena being quote-unquote "smart" for following the breadcrumbs, and Supergirl gets to freeze Lena to put her body into hypothermia... but neither scenes really offset the silliness of the plot-hole scenes.

At least we've got some decent Sam/Alex scenes, with Sam's absolute horror at her condition of blacking out all the time needing some time to develop, and Alex being a supporting friend is far, far more poignant than any of the repetitive scenes Kara, Lena or James does this episode. The fact that Lena's supposed big character turn this episode is the fact that she decides to embrace her strategic, smart, cunning side without also being evil really, really rings hollow to me considering all throughout the season she's always been established as smart-and-cunning without being evil. And as much as actress Katie McGrath tries, the script and the plot really doesn't give me enough to be sold that Lena's a changed person after the events of this episode. I mean, yeah, the Lex-o-suit is cool and all, but that only brings the episode so much.

DC Easter Eggs Corner: 

• Alex apparently trained to be a doctor in Seattle, which, of course, is a reference to actress Chyler Leigh's older role as a main character in Grey's Anatomy, a medical show set in Seattle.
• Lillian's Lexosuit is based on the green-and-purple armour that Lex Luthor wore to fight Superman all throughout the Golden and Silver Age. After the character was redesigend to be a businessman, Luthor's Lex-suit was dropped, until the Superman/Batman: Public Enemies storyline brought it back in a bulkier, more modern design. 
• The Legion of Super-Heroes apparently fought General Zod in the future. We also get some off-hand confirmation that, yes, Zod is killed by Superman sometime in the past. But, y'know, comic book rules.