Krypton S01E10 Review: KNEEL BEFORE ZOD

Krypton, Season 1, Episode 10: The Phantom Zone

Huh, that was a season finale. Krypton's final episode is thankfully a lot more solid compared to the previous setup episode, which was extremely messy. In a sense, the tenth episode of Krypton doesn't really fix a lot of the problems I already have with it -- namely, the fact that Seg-El is honestly a character that I don't really care about even after spending an entire season with him -- but Zod, Brainiac, Nyssa, Lyta and Val-El all deliver compelling enough performances to entertain me throughout this final episode of Krypton's first season.

Visually, Krypton manages to deliver a pretty neat showcase as Brainiac's giant skullship descend upon Kandor and use giant tentacles to ram down all over the city, promising apocalypse. Of course, this being a TV show, the main focus is still dealing with Brainiac in the flesh, who has landed upon Kandor and is surveying his victory. Sure, there was a brief moment of neat CGI spaceship battle with the doomed Sagittari, but ultimately most of the conflict happens on the ground.

Most of our heroes end up running around trying to figure out how to stop Brainiac. Seg doesn't really give any sort of a plan beyond shouting really hard that NO HE MUST SAVE EVERYONE HERE AND NOW. Thankfully, General Zod has a better plan in tow, which is to pluck Val-El out from the Phantom Zone. It's a bit of a weird ass-pull, admittedly, to have Val-El apparently disappear into the Phantom Zone while faking his death in episode one, and that the Phantom Zone's weird "beyond space and time" bit causes Zod and Val-El to basically hang out together while imprisoned together. It's a bit of a wonkiness to it all, but I can let it slide. And then... Val-El turns out to be as clueless as Seg is in taking Brainiac down. Okay?

Then Zod decides to just trade Val-El and his knowledge of the future to Brainiac. Knowledge of the future which Val has, but Zod doesn't? How does this Phantom Zone really work? All of these new plot points are just bombarded to us with no real explanation. I mean, it could be worse, I suppose, but it really feels like clumsy storytelling that only Colin Salmon and Ian McElhinney's earnest acting manages to sell. Zod's confrontation with Brainiac is neat enough, but I'm not sure how much of it is planned, because Zod tricks Brainiac into standing on the platform that causes him to get sucked into the Phantom Zone, disabling his master ship.

Oh, and Brainiac pulls Seg-El with his tentacles into the Phantom Zone with him. It's kinda sad, I suppose, but if I had to be honest... I don't really care that much, considering Seg has been sort of a non-character all season long, mostly happening to be a storytelling device as a point of view instead of really working out as a proper character. It's a bold move, for sure, ending the first season with the possible death (undeath?) of the main lead, but if I'm being honest I don't really care.

The B-plots in this episode involve Lyta giving a big speech to drive Dev-Em and his shiny metal arm and the rest of the Sagittari to fight back, and then angsting over sending them to their deaths. Nyssa also goes to save her baby from the gestation chamber with a huge streak of motherly instinct which I don't think has ever been foreshadowed in any shape or form. Jax-Ur shows up and tells Nyssa that she's apparently one of the clones from the Vara Protocol, activated after the original Nyssa-Vex died. Okay? This ends up with Jax-Ur and Nyssa sort of starting a brand new alliance with Val-El to resist the reign of Zod.

Because stopping Brainiac ends up basically stopping the bottling of Kandor and the subsequent destruction of Krypton, and Superman's cape gets transformed into a Zod-insignia cape. Thanks to their victory over Brainiac, the Kryptonians have changed the timeline, forming a timeline where General Dru-Zod gives this huge speech about how all of Krypton and the rest of the universe will KNEEL BEFORE ZOD. I'm not actually being sarcastic here -- Zod's speech is actually pretty goddamn awesome.

There's a lot of random plotlines introduced in this first season that end up honestly being thrown out of the window or saved for season two, though. We've got Doomsday being a complete non-entity throughout the entire finale, while I was waiting for the inevitable breakout... which only really happens in the final scene. Why even introduce Doomsday as a huge plot point if he's not going to factor into the story? Likewise, Jayna has disappeared off stage left, not seen at all in the entire episode. We also get weird ominous scenes of Adam Strange apparently being teleported into a frozen Earth city in Brainiac's collection? It's weird.

Overall, Krypton ends its first season with an okay finale, all things considered. It's just that the entire season, while clearly the burden of a lot of distilled stories from DC comics that are relatively faithfully adapted, still ends up feeling entirely lukewarm. Maybe it's the fact that Seg-El and Adam Strange, who we spend a fair chunk of the screentime around, are both pretty bland and uninteresting characters. Maybe it's the fact that the finale randomly discards a bunch of plot points to focus on a bunch of new ones. There's definitely a pacing problem, for sure. Ultimately, while Krypton isn't unwatcheable, it feels dreary and dry. What it did right are the visuals, though, and as much as I decry the introdumps, it does the world-building (plot holes notwithstanding) pretty well. Overall, I can't say that I'm super excited for season two, though.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• "Kneel before Zod", as mentioned before is, of course, the iconic catchphrase of General Zod's first live-action adaptation in Superman II.
• Cygnus 4019 is Planet Salvation, the mysterious planet that the Earth government sends all impounded prisoners to during the Salvation Run storyline, which happened around the Infinite Crisis era. As Zod alludes to here, the comic book version of Cygnus 4019 is filled with strangely advanced Apokoliptan technology despite supposedly being a deserted planet. 
• Doomsday hammering at the edge of his pod seems to be somewhat inspired by the lead-up in the comics to the Death of Superman story arc, where for the four or five issues preceding Doomsday being unleashed, each issue would end with a page of Doomsday's fist hammering onto the walls of his prison.