Supergirl, Season 6
The final stretch of Supergirl's episodes, and... I wouldn't say it 'stuck the landing' and was anywhere as good as the series was in its golden ages (which would be season 2-3, I would say?) but I did enjoy this last season, especially considering how much it was hampered in production due to scheduling conflicts. I'm unconvinced that all the characters got a nice chance to shine, or that all the plot threads are properly wrapped-up, but all in all I did find this season enjoyable.
Again, as a note, these episodes were watched separately over the course of 2024-2025, and I did short notes and reviews that I turned into paragraphs, almost always not in the same writing session. It's more of a collection of 'reactions' than anything.
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Episode 15: Hope For Tomorrow
I am actually a huge fan of this episode's non-superheroic plot, with the bulk of that side of the episode dealing with Alex adopting little girl Esme. It's your typical Supergirl sugary-sweet stuff, but I thought the usage of alien superpowers and the fear of rejection as a metaphor for the fears of being rejected for adoption is probably one of the better 'social drama' storylines we've had in the series. From Kara and J'onn being excited in the beginning of the episode, to Alex's fuck-ups when she defaults to 'drill sergeant' instead of being a mom, and the great acting of the child actor showing how frustrated and unable to communicate and how fearful she was at potentially losing another foster family and not even daring to hope... it's all well done, even if, again, it's a bit too feel-good-y.
I enjoyed it much more than everything else to do with William last episode anyway, or the Totem plot. Which kind of merge together as Nyxly and Supergirl both hunt the Totem of Hope... which refuses to be moved, Mjolnir-style, until someone displays that they can inspire a huge amount of hope. Coincidentally (and apparently next-door to the museum) is a UN negotiations that went south between Kazina and Corto Maltese, amplified by the effects of the totem. And the conflict seems to be just forced to homage Superman IV: Quest for Peace, because Supergirl angsts a bit that she's 'forbidden to interfere in human history', and then decides that it's okay because the totem is affecting people's mind, so she and her allies pull off a, well, Quest for Peace by gathering all the nukes and launching it into the sun. There could've been some kind of an actual discussion about the degree of how much a superhero is allowed to interfere in geopolitics, but just like last episode's Lena angst, it's just handwaved.
This, apparently, is a big enough of a 'hopeful gesture' that the Totem accepts Kara's solution, which is extremely rushed compared to the past couple of totems. The underwhelming hostage situation in CatCo was also very rushed and disappointing, and only serves to get our heroes to steal the totem in Nyxly's possession. And then they decide to just deny Nyxly the All-Stone altogether, and Supergirl chucks the Totem of Hope into the sun. Which I guess is an attempt to shake up the already iffy 'totem' formula. Nyxly gets pissed, but gets a LexCorp suit from her 'secret admirer', hinting at a Lex Luthor return. Again, this episode was a bit all-over-the-place with its plot developments.
Episode 16: Nightmare in National City
We get a fair bit more progression in this episode, which focuses on the Dream Totem. As the chase for the plot coupons continue, the cast is neatly split into two with Nia and Nyxly going off to hunt for the Dream Totem, while Supergirl and the rest of the Super-Friends have to deal with a giant CGI whirling-metal dream monster unleashed upon the world. The former is a particularly strong bit of character-centric episode (and one that, as befitting a final season, wraps up some plot threads!) while the latter is... not the best.
In her attempt to figure out the specifics of the Dream Totem, Nia ends up bumping into her older sister Maeve, who is estranged from her from what we learned about Nia all the way back in season 4. Unlike the brand-new characters that I have no real attachment to, or the absurd shoehorning of Lena's magical background, I was a lot more invested with Nia's drama in this episode. The acting and writing between Nia and Maeve are a nice balance of the two being cautious while also hopeful, which fits the two sisters' heavy history... and the fact that it looks like things are going to get better between them makes Maeve's eventual betrayal even more hurtful. Yes, Nia showing off her dream powers and rescuing Maeve from Nyxly is enough for Maeve to get the episode-finale apologies, but I really do like that while Nia is willing to give Maeve a second (and last) chance, she's not going to forgive all the bullshit and grief her sister put her through. For a show that tends to lean towards optimistic, convenient solutions, this was a surprisingly satisfying one.
Nyxly, meanwhile, follows the strange voice in the obviously-Lex-Luthor gauntlets given to her, which claims to be her from the future. It turns out to just be Lex, showing up at the end of the episode to finally participate in the last couple of episodes.
The Kara stuff... is all right. It's the cumulative build-up of all of the anxiety of Kara Danvers' double life, which we've been building up throughout various episode sin the season. It's some nice acting as Supergirl has to struggle with the ever-anxiety-inducing time management as she zips back and forth in attending her duties as Supergirl and participating as a reporter to mediate the peace treaty... but it's also a bit tiresome to see, since neither the reporter stuff nor the superheroing stuff are particularly exciting. (The CGI monster was cool, but it also spends 80% of its screentime invisible). I also think that the episode doesn't do a particularly good job at showing why the Super-Friends need Supergirl since J'onn and the others seem to have things down pat. Ultimately while I like the concept of having a relatable protagonist pulled in all directions, it's also nothing particularly new and I felt like the conclusion of Kara quitting CatCo feels extremely muted.
Episode 17: I Believe in a Thing Called Love
We now get the Love Totem episode, and... I have rather strong opinions about this. At this point we're essentially racing towards the finale of the season and the series, and episode 17 pushes a narrative about our two primary villains -- season-long threat Nyxly and series-long threat Lex Luthor -- that I'm not the biggest fan of. The acting for both actors are pretty great, in particular Jon Cryer, but the huge twist to make these two villains work together? "True love". Apparently, Luthor is in love with Nyxly, except this Luthor that showed up is actually a Lex Luthor from the future... because Luthor time-traveled earlier this season. I kind of... forgot about it, since it wasn't properly mentioned or built up. It's a bamboozling plot twist that had minimal foreshadowing, but so much of the final batch of episodes hinge on this twist that honestly feels like it came out of nowhere. It is admittedly some nice streamlining, and I'm not saying that a character like Lex Luthor shouldn't be explored in a way where he genuinely feels love. But it feels cheap, sudden and frankly other than streamlining the season's two Big Bads, I felt like it was not handled particularly well.
Speaking of love overtaking everything, our good guys plot focus on Alex and Kelly's mutual attempt at trying to do a surprise engagement party for each other. Which... it's a pretty neat fluff scene in a vacuum, but it is quite grating that after six seasons of liking Alex as a character, every scene she's in this season is just romance-related. It's similar to the confusing manner they're handling Lena, who gets saddled with this 'controlling magic' stuff that really doesn't go anywhere. (Oh, and Andrea dons her Acrata costume for some misguided villainy related to CatCo and William, which is... inoffensive.)
This is in stark contrast to Nia and Brainy, both of whom get storylines that tie in to their history as characters in the show. J'onn, too, gets a great episode here as we remember that he's more than just Team Dad but actually the Martian Manhunter, and he goes through the Courage Totem's gauntlet and faces his tragic backstory where he sees his family killed. The moral of the episode -- true strength comes from facing your fears with your family and friends -- is simple but effectively done with both J'onn and Kara's respective traumas.
Episode 18: Truth and Consequences
So we get a death. It's a final season, and even with Supergirl as a show being relatively happy-go-lucky, it is a good narrative tool that there are actual stakes with people dying and stuff. It's just that... you can't really kill a major character like Nia or J'onn or Alex without the series ending in a downer, so the solution is William Dey. Who, admittedly, did get a bit more screentime in this episode and the last couple. It's just... not handled the best. William still feels cookie-cutter as a 'nice guy', and even feels shoehorned in as part of the engagement friend group in the previous episode. But despite my negativity about William's character throughout the season, this is a very effective episode for what it does.
Andrea's Acrata-ing last episode ends up with her using William's byline to expose Lex Luthor's love diary (??????) to "prove" that Luthor is back and working with Nyxly. It does tie into some nice themes about Andrea's function throughout a season as a 'sensionalism-first' journalist, which... hasn't been the most interesting thing to watch, but it's at least building up towards something. While not exactly driven out of spite, it is definitely done well that someone as spiteful as Luthor would take the extra time to murder William in the midst of doing his "I've been two steps ahead of you, mwahaha" plans. It is an actual bit of a shocker to have William basically succeed in his recording of Luthor's plans, for Luthor to stroll out... and then come back in and shoot William in the gut.
The episode really does try to push the Luthor/Nyxly love story with some genuinely well-acted scenes. And it's basically as good as it can get with the rushed amount of screentime we have. We also have some nice action scenes with Luthor, Nyxly, Otis and alien henchman guy dressing up in LexCorp space-suits. I particularly like the scene where the Martian Manhunter shows off his badass phasing powers.
Some of the other scenes with the main characters of the show, at least, are a lot more relevant. Kara and Alex have an argument about how to raise Esme, with Kara noting that Esme could use 'power suppressors' like her own experience in the past, while Alex is projecting a bit about having to repress who she is. The argument of two well-meaning sisters, and Alex putting her foot down as a mom, is well-done, and sneakily ties into Esme's role as the damsel in distress this episode. The Love Totem migrated to her, and Luthor and Nyxly manage to kidnap her at the end of the episode.
Another great sub-plot is the surprising addition of an extra wrinkle to Brainy and Nia's storyline. Brainy being also from the 31st century is kind of a handwaved thing throughout the series. We get a surprise cameo from Winn (who I completely forgot went to the future to join the Legion!) who informs Brainy that the entire fate of the Coluan race hinges on him returning and merging with the hivemind of their technological race. It's a nice bit of drama, and both Jesse Rath and Nicole Maines play this story arc well -- a far more weighty romantic storyline than the Luthor/Nyxly one for sure.
Episode 19: The Last Gauntlet
The bulk of the climax happens in this episode, 'The Last Gauntlet', and... it feels surprisingly... episodic? For a series finale fight, at least? A good chunk of my problem is simply the lack of buildup for almost anything other than the fact that we need to protect the little girl. The action scene on the field itself is perfectly serviceable CW superhero stuff, with our heroes all getting a chance to shine, with the later episodes of the season being particularly generous with green makeup for J'onn J'onnz and Brainiac.
Unfortunately, I really do feel like two huge plotlines in this episode really do fall flat for me. Supergirl and friends utilizing some super-powered solar satellite which no one has ever mentioned before, but coincidentally can give Kara the power to fight fifth-dimensional magic, is a gigantic and frankly clumsy deus ex machina that comes out of nowhere. Sure, the Super Friends end up chickening out at the last minute because using screwing up the sun is not a very superhero-thing to do, but the choice feels like it comes out of nowhere and doesn't really fit with the rest of the season. Isn't the vague throughline supposed to be accountability or transparency or something? This doesn't really jive with it, no.
What's much worse is the handling of the Luthor/Nyxly storyline. It's already hard enough to have to take at face value the fact that Luthor is doing everything 'for love', but it could lead to some interesting characterization for him. But surely there has to be a better way to drive a wedge between the two villains than to have Mama Lilian (who's barely a presence in this season) show up and do some in-law trash talk in front of Nyxly? It feels so banal and poorly done, and at this point I really did wish Luthor was planning to backstab Nyxly all the while. All of the Fifth-Dimensional worldbuilding we had to endure in the middle part of the season? None of that comes to fruition, by the way -- we don't even get to see Mxyzptlk back, let alone Nyxly's dad and brother, who keeps being brought up but end up being completely irrelevant. The two villains are reduced to just angry spiteful hateful strawman villains, which is kind of makes me wonder what the effort of building them up over the past season is.
Episode 20: Kara
And the first half of the final episode is to very quickly and unceremoniously wrap up the two-part climax. I do think it's appropriate that Supergirl finishes its final season with another motivational speech. Is that the reason for this season's muddled Lena Luthor the Teenage Witch storyline? For Lena to help broadcast Supegirl's speech to everyone in the world? Because that sure happens in order for the world to generate positive emotions.
We get a final fight as Luthor and Nyxly summon quite literally Supergirl's stable of available CGI villain models, including Red Tornado and Metallo, while the Super Friends summon their own stable of guest stars. Mon-El, Jimmy Olsen, Winn Schott, Acrata, even Eliza Danvers show up to help blast the CGI monsters. (No Zor-El, making that whole storyline in the beginning of this season even more pointless) And then Luthor and Nyxly try to summon the creepy Phantoms from the Phantom Zone, only for the power of good emotions to overwhelm them and the phantoms very anticlimactically just drag the two villains back to the Phantom Zone. The cameos are cool. The exit of the villains is, how do we say? Bad. Very very, very bad. Not even for not having any payoff for the Fifth Dimension Civil War thing, or even the death of William Dey, but the way they are dispatched -- especially for Lex Luthor, who's been quite a long running villain? Yeah. It's particularly disappointing that neither Kara nor Lena had a proper face-off with Lex that doesn't feel generic.
And we have the second half of the episode, which is mostly centered around Alex and Kelly's wedding. Some moments are there. We get the original CatCo power trio of Kara, Jimmy and Winn. Lena and Andrea get some closure. Lena and Kara get a cute moment. We get Jimmy bonding with Kelly. We get the five-second farewell between Brainy and Nia, which... at least was an okay if predictable and seemingly no-stakes payoff (even if it's obvious Brainy's going to come back, I felt that just handwaving the stakes they set up feels anticlimactic). We get a nice Eliza/Kara/Alex family moment.
I do like the final arc for Kara Danvers/Supergirl. In a world where everyone is empowered by her Big Speech, she's a bit lost on what to do especially since she now realizes that people don't quite need her to be their babysitting guardian 24/7. The answer comes in a much more welcome cameo by Cat Grant, who has her typical devil-may-care mentor attitude, giving Kara an advice to stop trying to hide who she is and very casually dropping the bombshell that she knew Kara is Supegirl all along. Which, by the way, makes 100% sense, and it's a powerful moment as Kara takes off her glasses and places it on a table and walks away. The episode, season and series finally end with a broadcast revealing Kara Danvers' identity as Supergirl. A nice, open-ended 'the adventure continues' ending.
And... that's it. Again, not the best ending to the show with a great potential and a great cast. I understand the problems that a lot of the CW/DC shows are facing during the year this show was filmed and released, with COVID and mass cancellation of shows, but I really did feel like grading this season as its own thing, they were building up multiple things and then reneging on it in favour for things that are hastily built up and discarded within single episodes. It's a bit maddening, really, because I could really see Supergirl ending the way that it should -- like Arrow did, where Arrow perhaps didn't have the best ending based on the potential of the show, but its final season was one that was good. I like the emotional parts of this show, which admittedly is what Supergirl tends to focus on. It's just a shame we didn't get a tidier ending.
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And speaking of which, as I close the book on Supergirl, I'll continue with the rest of the CW/DC material. Some of them I have these 'episode-by-episode' seasonal stuff partly done, but depending on how much I have to say about any given season I might do just a big, short review of the whole season. Not sure what I'll go with next. Black Lightning or Stargirl seem likely, though.
