Supergirl S03E07 Review: The Language of Saturn

Supergirl, Season 3, Episode 7: Wake Up

This episode of Supergirl was one that started on a pretty slow burn. Oh, Mon-El returns! But he has a beard, and is maybe evil, except he's not, he's just acting suspiciously and not explaining the whole truth to Supergirl and the others... just because. And right there would be a formula for a pretty shitty episode. But a combination of strong acting from both Kara and Mon-El, some great B-plots and a particularly awesome revelation at the end that caught me off-guard caused me to like this episode more than I should.

Really should've realized what was coming when they keep talking about the Saturnian language.

So yeah. The B-plots were great. J'onn and M'yrnn's scenes were amazing. M'yrnn points out just how businesslike J'onn has been in his 30+ years on Earth, and how his father has even turned out to just be 'another mission'. It's really great acting from both Harewood and Lumbly, and that final scene with J'onn showing his bare-bones apartment to M'yrnn and offering that they could live there is so fucking touching.

Meanwhile, Samantha Arias, who has been revealed to be the CW-verse incarnation of Reign the World-Killer (not a DC supervillain I'm super-duper aware of, beyond her existence), goes through a sick version of Superman's journey of self-discovery. Her mother (a detached woman that's far from the loving mothers that Martha Kent or Elisa Danvers are) reveals the spaceship Samantha crashes in, she finds a crystal, which leads her to an alien fortress that sprouts up all awesome-like in the middle of the desert, and as she enters it... instead of being told that this is her destiny, the hooded acolyte computer-voice tells her that she is nothing but a weapon, and soon she will return to what she truly is. Samantha's anguished screams of how 'this isn't supposed to be!' is well-done as she ends up losing herself to the Reign program. 

The Mon-El storyline was definitely the weaker material, due to how sloppily it's written, and how really none of the characters really do have the excuse to act as they do. But the revelation that Mon-El's been sent to the 30th century for 7 years, and basically gone through what Superman goes through in Legion of Super-Heroes stories (and considering Mon-El himself is a Legion character in the first place, it's appropriate). And in those seven years... Mon-El got married to a girl from Saturn, Imra Ardeen. Also known as, er, Saturn Girl.

It's a nice, if dangerous, cliffhanger we're left upon. On one hand, I'm glad that Mon-El's loss at the end of last season isn't just glossed over and thus making last season's Mon-El story feel cheapened, but if this goes to a bog-standard love-triangle bullshit Supergirl's third season may end up feeling worse than its second.

So yeah. While it's on paper a weak episode, really strong performances from Kara, Mon-El, J'onn, M'yrnn, Samantha and even Winn in his brief scene all serve to make this episode somewhat better than it should. I dunno. I'm not the biggest fan of the Legion of Super-Heroes, but the combination of the Reign and Legion storylines makes me really like this episode more than I probably should.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Irma Ardeen, a.k.a. Saturn Girl, is one of the founding members of the Legion of Super-Heroes. I'm not really up to talking about the Legion at this point, but they're basically a group of aliens that serve as super-heroes of the 30th century. Most famously, to boost popularity ratings, a teenaged Superboy would show up and be one of the main characters of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Here, things are somewhat swapped around a little in that it's Mon-El instead that gets sent to the future.
• Mon-El mentions a 'Querl' as he talks about what the time wormhole thing might be, which is a clear reference to Querl Dox, real name of Brainiac 5, another central member of the Legion. 
• Kara about to drill a hole into the ground is, of course, a likely reference to a move that iconically utilized in the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie.