Krypton S01E08 Review: Adam's Delusions of Grandeur

Krypton, Season 1, Episode 8: Savage Night

I really think that if Adam Strange showed some real personality or some real capabilities at being a  hero, I'd be more invested in his character journey throughout this episode. As an avid comic-book reader, I'm already familiar with the character of Adam Strange, and I root for him thanks to that vague association. But Krypton's Adam Strange have been shown, time and time again, that he's... honestly not that good. He's nice, sure, but when he was blinked back to the present day (or the future, I guess) he gives this long, long speech about how saving space-time is his destiny, even though he stole the Zeta Beam Device and insists on going on it alone despite there being the potential of them sending someone more capable. Add that to how he's clearly making things up on the fly and has no real solutions to offer Seg-El and his Kryptonian buddies, and I find it honestly hard to root for Adam Strange and his delusions of grandeur, if we're taking Adam as a character solely based on his appearances in Krypton. Add that to Kem's not-wrong "stop talking about imaginary grandsons in the future" roaring speech, and honestly it's really hard to like Adam.

And that's without going about Adam's plan, which is to go to Daron-Vex with some sort of nebulous, ill-defined plan to get him and Brainiac to succeed as long as Seg-El is outside of Kandor when it happens, a plan that doesn't seem to work as the episode ends with Daron-Vex carted off by Black Zero.

At least he sort of redeemed himself at the end of the episode, right? The dual gut-punch of Adam jumping in the way to finally do something heroic instead of just stand around and drop Easter Eggs, as well as little Ona being used as a living bomb by Brainiac is a pretty powerful shot. Yes, it's a very cheap way for us to get a 'the stakes are HIGH!' moment by killing a little innocent child, but it's still pretty effective. I'm not quite sure just why the Voice of Brainiac chose Ona to do it in spite of showing an interest in her... is it because Ona asked one too many questions?

Meanwhile, the Kandorian Resistance (tm) is divided up into two groups in this episode as they go to take down the Voice of Brainiac, who, according to one of the scripture-tattooed priest ladies, is eating babies and turning the embryos into energy that he can feed on, Matrix style. Which genuinely feels like it came out of nowhere. Seg, Lyta and Nyssa go off to recover the body of Dev-Em and then use the Fortress of Solitude to cure him and use him as an entry-way to hack into Brainiac, while Jayna and Dru-Zod go off to talk to the leader of Black Zero, Jax-Ur (who is a woman). Jax-Ur's price for Black Zero's help? Dev-Em, which honestly no one, not even his own daughter, is going to contest.

And the Black Zero would really felt like it mattered a lot more if we actually see them doing... anything at all? I guess they were all sort of off-screen. Anyway, Val manages to free Dev-Em from Brainiac's control, and judging by the scenes, might start up a (sigh) love triangle sub-plot. Can I just say how utterly silly it is for them to leave Lyta, one of their strongest fighters and a soldier that has been assigned to the city not a couple of days ago, behind, just in service of a teary-eyed "yay Dev is alive" scene? Jayna gets to utterly be a badass in that corridor scene, while Seg and Zod ends up confronting the Voice of Rao and dropping him down the Genesis Chamber. It seems like an awful stupid thing for them (other than Zod) to just write him off as dead, though.

In other news, Jayna decides that Zod wants to rule Krypton because... Zod was honest to her about being imprisoned in the Phantom Zone? It's a great scene for Jayna to notice that Zod is suspicious, and might not be completely altruistic. It's another to make the leap from "I was in prison for a coup because of shitty leaders, the very same thing we are doing now" to "he is trying to rule us!" Overall, it's a pretty episode, one with a lot of action scenes and some decently-acted scenes, but all the Adam Strange stuff and just how all over the place Brainiac makes this a bit more of an iffier episode than I would've liked.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• While they are unseen and remain as disembodied voices, Adam identifies the people he's talking to in the present-day as Sardath and Alana. The two of them, in the comics, are Adam's closest allies in the planet Rann, with the cantankerous Sardath being sort of a mentor figure and Alana being his eventual love interest.