Supergirl S04E11 Review: Penchant To Dream

Supergirl, Season 4, Episode 11: Blood Memory

It's an interesting episode for sure. On one hand, the Nia Nal stuff ends up sort of being the focus of the episode somewhat. On the other hand, pretty much everything else that goes on in this episode is just being met by me with a huge shrug. I'm not sure why I'm so negative lately, because I'm pretty sure Supergirl's been in worse places than this. But I genuinely do think that all the other plotlines going on in this episode aren't as entertaining as they could've been.

The Nia Nal stuff is kind of a typical superhero tragedy/self-discovery origin story, and it's... it's done a lot better than most of Supergirl's secondary cast, I guess? Nia's powers and backstory have been drip-fed to us over this season, and I guess it's done reasonably decently. In this episode, Kara and Nia take a ride back to Nia's hometown where we discover that the Naltorians have this prophecy that a woman every generation carries the Dreamer powers. Only in this case, the power manifests in the male-to-female transexual Nia Nal, when the rest of the family basically expects it to manifest in her sister Maeve. It's... it's actually an interesting wrinkle in Nia's backstory that incorporates the character's transexuality without being preachy or stereotypical.

While there is definitely some attempt to shoehorn some parallel with the Kara/Alex sister situation, I do think that Nia's story ends up holding water on its own. She has this creepy-ass dream of her mother exploding into a swarm of crows during her car ride, and because she wasn't prepared for more symbolic dreams, she didn't realize that it's a poisonous spider that's going to be the cause of her mother's death, but thinks that it's a poisoned cup that dramatically smashes on the ground, causing Nia to 'accidentally' knock down a similar-looking ink cup.

Nia doesn't want her powers, in no small part due to Maeve being so up-front about how she's just waiting for her supposedly 'destined' powers to manifest, and Nia wants nothing more than to make her sister happy, trying to find a way to deny her gift or to transfer it to her sister. Of course, this ends up being too late, with Nia's mother dying to the spider-bite (although, seriously, that spider bite really came without any sort of foreshadowing) before naming her the "Dreamer" during her final moments.

And during the funeral, they got attacked by Sons of Liberty goons, and Nia uses her dream-prophecy powers to push her sister out of the way. With the cat out of the bag, Maeve basically acts like a total bitch to Nia, even insulting that she's "not a real woman". It's petty, and honestly part of it might be the grief of losing her mother, but it is a pretty petty thing to say to Nia. I'm definitely interested to see how this develops. That scene at the end where Supergirl finally decides to stop the car and reveal her secret identity to Nia is pretty inspiring, telling Nia that, yes, she knows how to be "the sister with alien superpowers". The moment was sort of lost to me personally because I genuinely forgot Nia didn't know that Kara is Supergirl.

The Kara/Alex plot, though? I don't like it. I mean, the actors involved do a reasonably decent job, but partly because the previous episode was insanely convoluted, this episode does jack-all to really follow up on that beyond some vague lines about how the investigation is still ongoing, and that Alex has some bruises from the Truth Seeker. Again, the whole Haley thing was just a plot device to get from Point A to Point B, evidenced most, perhaps, by the fact that Haley doesn't even show up in flesh in this episode, and the whole point of the buildup -- hunting Supergirl's secret identity -- isn't even brought up. And, honestly, I still think the fact that Alex chose to be willingly mind-wiped instead of quitting the DEO until they can depose of the alien-torturing Haley to be an utterly insipid and stupid decision in-universe. I mean, I can buy the short-sighted Barry Allen to run back in time and fuck up the timeline in a moment of emotional passion. I can buy that Oliver Queen has enough of a self-sacrificing Messiah complex to willingly be imprisoned for half a season. But Alex, Kara and J'onn all agreeing that this is a good idea? Still not buying it. Especially the fact that Kara doesn't run around waving a flag with 'Change Alex Back' throughout this episode. I honestly wouldn't minded this plotline if it was actually executed well, but it's not.

And this episode basically has Alex be kinda mean to Kara a bit, and also lose her edge in basically being the DEO director, which sort of defeats the whole point of her staying in the DEO in the first place. Sure, she can still enjoy game night and Terminator 2 with her 'family', but this honestly feels worse than, say, keeping Iris West in the dark from Flash's identity in season one or whatever. Honestly, you'd think that by the point that Alex is asking J'onn to mind-scan her, they would've thought of just restoring her to normal and pulling her out. But no, we're going to milk this farce of a storyline for what it's worth, I guess.

The plot-of-the-week is... it's sort of new, I guess, with the Kasnian Red Daughter Supergirl apparently causing random thunderbolts to fuck up some drugs, leading to random teenagers (and later Children of Liberty) getting temporary super-strength. We did get that random little sister of one of the drug addicts who's kinda neat, I guess. But ultimately, it's a pretty standard villain of the week.

What else is there to say? Nia gets a super-suit from her now late mother, which is neat. Brainiac pretending to be a frat bro is hilarious. We've got this subplot between James and Lena where James realizes that Lena's doing some illegal funds-funneling, but when he shows up to see Lena trying to master game night and being precious and shit, he ends up killing the story... which honestly is not something I'm going to shit on. I still don't really honestly care about anything involving James and Lena at this point, but this is a genuinely potentially interesting storyline, so I'm tentatively interested. Also, we've got more Kasnian Supergirl Clone fighting missiles, going into a coma, and causing the Kasnians to call for some sort of American 'expert' or something. I dunno.

Overall, I like the Nia Nal/Kara stuff. Everything else in this episode just earns a shrug from me that go "at least the actors seem to be giving their all".

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• It is very silly, admittedly, but having a lightning bolt pass through a Kryptonian's body and triggering superpowers is basically the original origin story for Livewire. Only instead of a lightning bolt, this is the electricity from a defibrillator machine that gets launched halfway across the earth, making it a whole lot more ridiculous even by the standards of this franchise.
• Nia finally gets a superhero name, "Dreamer". While her comic-book inspiration, Nura Nal, went by the name "Dream Girl" almost exclusively, there was a brief period of time where she used "Dreamer" as a cryptonym instead.