Supergirl S05E01 Review: Pants!

Supergirl, Season 5, Episode 1: Event Horizon

A new season for Supergirl, and... one that's pretty interesting? The season premiere for season five seemed to also double as a bit of an epilogue over some of the storylines of the previous season, and... it's sort of kind of... just there. We get some build-up of what I assume is going to be our main villain for the week, Ma'alefa'ak, released/summoned by the Monitor in one of the post-finale teasers at the end of season four, although Ma'alefa'ak spends a good chunk of this episode disguised as a creepy little girl, and for the most part just hides in the background and unleashes an old enemy of J'onn, a bland superpowered alien called Midnight, to serve as the villain of the week. The action scenes are... all right, if kind of samey. Midnight has nearly no personality, her powers are vaguely defined (and mostly involves a bizarre black hole CGI sequence that felt so much less impressive in comparison to this year's Flash's season premiere's CGI black hole) and she just mostly exists to make sure there's some action in this episode.

Oh, and also, we get a fun series of sequence as Supergirl's cape gets fucked-up in the first half of the episode, leading to Brainiac making a brand-new suit for Kara, activated by her taking off her glasses, and the sheer glee of Melissa Benoist going "pants!" is hilarious. Personally I vastly prefer the older suit -- but apparently the real reason they made this change is that it's more easier to film and it's a lot less colder for Meliisa Benoist to act in? I'm not going to really comment to much about it.

The two main focus of this season premiere, however, are Lena Luthor and her angry feelings of betrayal after finding out that Kara Danvers is Supergirl, and seemingly planning to retaliate. Also, CatCo is being taken over by "CLICKBAIT IS THE FUTURE OF MEDIA" bad boss Andrea Rojas. I've never been the biggest fan of the CatCo side of Supergirl, and... I dunno. I'm not overly enthused by this development. Andrea Rojas has a wonderful, hammy actress, and her relation to Lena Luthor is an interesting little tidbit... she doesn't really grab me. And honestly, the thought of spending huge chunks of this season's episodes with Kara 'fighting for every article' seems like it's going to be more melodramatic and tedious more than exciting. We'll see. Likewise, I'm not super-excited about the whole Obsidian North VR tech (very Young Justice season 3, huh?) or whatever, and I get that we kind of needed a bit of a break from the American-political charged last season, but going away into "technology is bad!" seems a bit odd.


Oh, also James quit, and apparently this means he's... barred from journalism forever? Can companies do that? I dunno. I must say that I really don't find myself caring much about this leg of the season premiere.

The other focus of the episode is Lena Luthor, who's gone a bit obsessed with Kara's betrayal, and between seasons, have created an AI she named Hope that questions her every move. Like, uh, why is she going through VR sessions of beating up Supergirl, instead of just doing it live? I absolutely love just how passive-aggressively Lena acts throughout her episode, particularly in her mid-episode meeting with Kara, heaping praise about how kind and nice of a person and oh-how-trustworthy Kara Danvers is. Turns out, though, that Lena's setting up a plan that stretches throughout the episode, seemingly about to reveal Kara's secret identity to the world when she accepts her Pulitzer prize, in conjunction with placing Andrea Rojas as the new head of CatCo... but during the award ceremony, Kara gets overwhelmed and just breaks down, blubbering to Lena about how she is Supergirl and she tried to tell her but she is so scared of losing her friend and all that jazz.

Y'know, I really don't buy that the apology alone was enough to make angry-angry Lena Luthor change her mind... but on the other hand, Melissa Benoist's acting was amazing in that scene, that you really believe that the character has been so conflicted and trying to avoid this heavy conversation for so long and is feeling guilty about holding it in at the same time. Of course, the reason that Kara chose now to tell Lena as opposed to so many moments she could've done so in the previous season is because the writers demanded it to be so, but, again, Supergirl's blessed with a pretty great lead actress to really sell this scene.


Interestingly, though, Lena doesn't seem to actually forgive Kara, at least not just yet. Sure, she doesn't reveal Kara's identity to the public (yet), but ends up going through a different way to maintain the upper hand by worming into Supergirl's life as someone she trusts. Lena Luthor has always been one of the more fascinating characters on this show, straddling the line between morally-trying-to-be-good and so-pragmatic-it-could-be-counted-as-evil, and it seems that this season we're exploring a version of Lena that's a bit less squeaky-clean.

Ultimately, while the Lena stuff is undoubtedly interesting, and the cast is still as bubbly and enjoyable as ever, the season premiere is kind of marred by a very uninteresting antagonist in Midnight, and I must confess that I really don't find the journalism sub-plot to really deserve the massive amount of screentime it got.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Phantom Zone projector makes its appearance! While it's built by Ma'alefa'ak, the appearance of the projector is essentially identical to how it looks in the older comics. 
• Andrea Rojas is more recognizable to DC comic book readers by the name Acrata, a Mexican superhero who has the ability to channel Mayan magic to teleport from shadow to shadow, and ended up becoming a vigilante that fights crime alongside fellow Mexican superheroes El Muerto and Iman, working alongside Superman to crack down on a bio-terrorist group. Andrea Rojas' more famous appearance is perhaps in the TV show Smallville, where she ended up becoming a bit of the show's stand-in as a superpowered Batman, which the show was not able to use.  
• There have been several different characters with the name "Midnight" in DC comics, but the one that fits the profile of our villain of the week the most is M1DN1GHT, a minor enemy of Superwoman.
• As far as I know, William Day, Hope the A.I. and the Obsidian North company are all original to Supergirl.