Supergirl S03E20 Review: Unexpected Plot Twist

Supergirl, Season 3, Episode 20: Dark Side of the Moon

Huh, that is... a very unexpected and honestly quite random plot twist. Apparently, without much in lieu of foreshadowing, Supergirl and Mon-El discover an entire city of Krypton floating on an astroid in space! And it's the exact same city where Supergirl's mom Alura is in, allowing for a tearful and happy reunion. It's... it's honestly not quite as emotional as I expected this series to be, and honestly considering the amount of emotion Supergirl's previous episodes have devoted to her and her family legacy, it's a bit of a shame that we don't get a longer focus on Supergirl's reunion with her mother. Alura herself is treated like any sort of helpful guest star that I honestly think Kara's shown far more emotion to the holographic Alura in season one.

And that's not to mention how honestly bland Argo is. Other than the "surprise" plot twist that one of the members of the Argo council is also the evil cultist priestess that's been calling Reign's shots, there's really not much to distinguish Argo City from any generic alien race that Supergirl beseeches to help. Supergirl and Mon-El need to get a chunk of the Black Rock of Yuda Kal in order to synthesize something to defeat Reign, and Supergirl appeals to how the Worldkillers are Krypton's past sins, but the long and elaborate speech never feels like it lands properly. It's just so underwhelming and not a huge deal is made about the point that a freaking city from Krypton has survived.

The B-plot in this episode is Alex being hounded by a mysterious assassin and she looks to her past to sift through her own personal rogues' gallery, including a return of her first arrest, Sheriff Collins, who she interrogates in a pub... only to find that the one hunting her is, of course, some random brother of an alien she's arrested before. It's a neat little diversion but ultimately feels pretty unnecessary, although the conversation between Alex an J'onn about how she's afraid of being a mom (and she's basically treated Ruby as a surrogate daughter at this point) will put her family in danger. We've got a bunch of B-plots like Winn and Ruby being buddies, Mon-El helping a random kid and Lena and Reign taunting each other. None of these are bad scenes, but again, they feel extremely unnecessary and padding in an already underwhelming episode.

Ultimately, though, while in theory this episode would be a huge, huge shakeup to the status quo of Supergirl, the way both the show and Kara herself treats this reveal feels more like a "cool, allies of the week!" more than "holy shit, my mom and an entire city from my long-lost society has survived, this changes everything" that it really should be. What could've been a great twist ends up feeling underwhelming, random and honestly nowhere as impactful as it really should've been. Argo City being alive would've been easily a huge season-ending or season premiere game changer, but the way it's treated here is done with such a lack of passion and pizzazz that I end up not really caring at the end of this episode.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Selena, the Kryptonian priestess that turned Sam into Reign, shares her name with the main villain of the oft-forgotten 1984 Supergirl film, albeit here she's a Kryptonian instead of a human witch. 
• Among the villains that Alex considers is targeting her are the Hellgramite (from season 1), the alien bounty hunter Hannibal (from season 2), Sheriff Ronald Collins (from earlier this season; he also appears in the flesh) and someone called "Griggs" that I don't remember and can't find mention of anywhere?
• Supergirl finding a city of Kryptonians having survived in space (albeit it's Kandor instead of Argo) is reminiscent of an arc from her solo title in the 2008-2009 "New Krypton" arc. Like in that arc, Zor-El and Alura are found to be still alive in the city, although Zor-El perishes in combat against the villain Reactron shortly after Superman and Supergirl discovers Kandor. In this continuity, Zor-El has already died prior to the events of this episode. 
• The Black Rock of Yuda Kal is a reference to the obscure Kryptonian deity Yuda, one of the minor goddesses of Krypton whose worship was abandoned when Krypton began worshiping Rao as a sole deity.