Supergirl S05E11-12 Review: A Two-Parter

Supergirl, Season 5, Episode 11-12: Back From the Future, Parts 1-2

This is kind of an interesting two-parter, and I still kind of am scratching my head just why Supergirl decided to basically soft-reboot the whole Leviathan storyline. Like, okay, all of the characters have basically been reset to essentially a situation that's similar-to-but-not-quite-the-same as the beginning of season five, where apparently (and I could be reading this wrong) Leviathan hasn't revealed themselves to the world in the form of Rama Khan's doomsday plot, and neither has Lena launched Non Nocere and whatnot... but all of our main characters, and us, the audience, knew what happened in this strange, pruned timeline that is Supergirl season 5, episodes 1-8, but at the same time it doesn't actually happen, so it's like, a weird 'bad future' that's reset by the reboot? Which, all things considered, really ends up with me wishing they did more, y'know? Actually shake things up a bit more in this first throwaway arc instead of just introducing characters and concepts that, hey, you're going to re-introduce down the line. It's kind of bizarre.

Of course, "Back From The Future" thankfully doesn't really try to explore the Leviathan storyline, at least not as the main focus of the two-parter. The ultimate goal of Lex and Brainiac 5's huge, convoluted plan involving an alternate-universe Winslow Schott plucked from another universe (isn't the whole point of Crisis to, like, merge the multi-verse or something?) and sending him to cause a lot of havoc in order to get our Winslow Schott to arrive from the 31st century and thus bring the Legion Ship and the information stored within so that Lex and Brainy can access them.

Which is such a ridiculously over-the-top stupidly convoluted plot that is totally on par with the tone of Supergirl as a show, but think a bit too hard about this and you realize that Lex and Brainy are both kind of being dummies. But hey, any excuse to get Jeremy Jordan back, right? And having two versions of him running around is pretty fun. And that, for the most part, is what I feel about these two episodes -- it's just good ol' superhero fun, and at the point that I'm watching these episodes, I care far, far more about these characters more than I do about the silly convoluted Leviathan or Andrea Rojas plotline.

So basically, this alternate-universe Winslow Schott goes around parading himself as Toyman, and this is a Winn from a universe where he did become a crazy toy-themed villain, and he goes around doing crazy Toyman stuff as a distraction in order to cause the real Winn Schott (a.k.a. "Computer Lad") to arrive from the 31st century to help save the day. There is a painfully eye-rolling attempt to try and be relevant with toxic online culture and whatnot, with Toyman basically trying to get everyone in the internet to basically like his psychotic videos or whatever, but it isn't as ham-fisted as it could be. Our Winn, meanwhile, is a gloriously nice little addition to the main cast. I wouldn't say that the show really lost a lot when Winn left the show at the end of season 3 (he's easily the most under-utilized member of the cast) but getting him back as a mature superhero interacting and reminiscing with Kara and stuff is well done. Winn being a bit of a mentor to a frustrated Nia, and eventually using some future cheats to help her figure out how to unlock her whip powers (because 'dream energy' totally works like that?) is pretty neat.

Ultimately, "Back From the Future, Part 1" ends up how you expect it to. Toyman does this massive crazy elaborate death-trap involving robotic tigers attacking Andrea Rojas's public speech, Supergirl fights the knockoff Liger-Zero's while Winn faces off against Evil Winn, which culminates in Evil Winn blowing himself up (but he survives as a digital copy to menace the Superfriends next episode). While all of this is going on, Lex ends up getting what he wants from the Legion ship, and Brainy is frustrated that Lex's plan ends up being far, far more dangerous than they originally planned, and being even more frustrated that Lex is just brushing it off as "part of the job" and how Supergirl will always save the day and whatnot. Also, since we're talking about Lex, his gloriously fun scene in the Toy-Con with his toys and the bit of sniping with Kara is pretty fun, too.

Lex also gets a B-plot with Lena, basically convincing her to use her friendship with Andrea in order to get one foot in with Obsidian. Which... is bizarre, again, because we've seen this story play out earlier this season, and it just feels repetitive. Thankfully, Lena and Andrea's actresses are pretty great in their scenes, but it's hard for me to get invested. Speaking of B-pots, William Dey is basically rebooted as well, keeping much of his history and trying to do a "Lexpose" but... I dunno, he's just kinda there is my big problem, just so shoehorned into the story and obviously trying to be relevant as both a love interest for Kara and as someone tangentially tangled in this whole Leviathan storyline, but he's just so freaking boring that I don't care about him.

And then Brainy breaks down and tells Winn everything, because he's having a real hard time keeping it in and pretending that everything is fine when he barely has a grasp on things. Winn shrugs it off, because at least no one got hurt, but ends up keeping Brainy's whole deal with the devil under wraps.

Anyway, this is a very swell episode, y'know? It's very pleasant to watch, Winn's conversation with Kara, Alex and J'onn is a great highlight; the running theme of legacy (both Winns as well as Brainy) is relatively well-developed without hammering it home too much; the Leviathan plotline (or, well, the Luthor-Brainiac team-up plotline) is handled well in the background; and ultimately it's just a pleasant episode to watch.
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The next episode, "Back From the Future, Part 2", is also Toyman centric, and this time around the evil Toyman has basically digitized himself and turned himself into a scary living A.I. monster that spends the episode taking over the D.E.O. base's technology and our heroes have to fight to keep him contained while our Winn tries to boot the evil Toyman out. It's fun superhero stuff, and while the reappearance of Winslow Schott Senior does kind of appear out of nowhere, it does lead to a pretty heartwarming moment where the digital ghost of Winn's dad helps him fight against his alternate-universe doppelganger. It's a neat sense of moving on, I suppose, even if it is admittedly a bit too convenient for the huge revelation that, hey, turns out that Winn's evil dad ends up redeeming himself at the end because he's totally proud of what his son did as a hero. It felt cheap, extremely easy... and I dunno, at least Winn isn't dumb enough to take his evil supervillain dad at face value, and didn't let him out until the very last second, y'know?

Jeremy Jordan's easily the star of this episode, and while I do feel like his moments in Part 1 was a lot better and he plays off the rest of the cast better, he does get a lot of great moments in this one as he's forced to confront the legacy of Toyman. I'm not sure if it's quite enough for him to decide to ditch his lame Computer Lad sobriquet and take up "Toyman" formally, but okay, sure, why not.

There's a lot of technobabble in this episode, and more than any other episode, I feel like this one had a lot of handwaves with just how conveniently everyone is able to enter cyberspace and go all Sword Art Online on stuff, with both the Legion ship and the Obsidian contact lenses both apparently being able to let the Winns do whatever they want and enter cyber-space, and of course things are so conveniently laid out that a digital copy of Winn's dad also made it into cyber-space, and also the CPU of the DEO's computers are exactly over a nuclear reactor. Sure, sure. It did lead to the pretty cool action scene with the Lex-o-suits bursting out and fighting against Supergirl, Alex and Brainy... and while that Leeroy Jenkins joke was cringey as all hell (only Cisco Ramon can pull that joke off without feeling forced), the scene where a Lexosuit breaks apart to avoid a bullet is pretty cool. 

Lex, meanwhile, spends a good chunk of the episode basically offering Lena his help (but nicely; he waits until she asks for his help) and while Andrea rejects Lena's help with the problems with Obsidian Platinum or whatever, Lex ends up buddying up with Gemma Cooper and ends up brokering an alliance between Obsidian and Lexcorp. And turns out the problems that Obsidian has in the first place are part of Lena's machinations, so the Luthor siblings are bonding over their mutual manipulation. Also, of course Lex planned for Toyman to become a digitized being and everything, he wants Brainy to get the tehnobabble how-to in order to become a digital being himself and become immortal. Which is only vaguely tangentially related to fighting Leviathan, and I'm surprised Brainy doesn't even try and call this blatant attempt for Lex to become immortal out.

There are a couple of B-plots that I felt... are perfunctory? They are executed well, and I didn't mind them, but they also got nothing more than a shrug from me. There's the bit with Brainy's conflicting loyalties and shutting down the bug that Alex planted on Lex, and the Brainy/Lex team-up doesn't quite work in this episode. Alex also ends up quitting the DEO, which I think is meant to feel like a Big Moment, but it felt so kind of underwhelming, particularly with the fact that J'onn basically immediately welcomes her into their new Superfriends base ("The Tower"). There's also Kara's genuinely random newfound interest in William but she's conflicted because of superheroing secret identity angst, and... again, I don't care about it. I know this episode apparently caused a helluva huge reaction among the fandom about William... and I certainly don't have as huge of a reaction to it (mostly because I don't give two shits about most of CW/DC's attempts at romance) but William Dey is a pretty boring character, and no, that bit with karaoke in the beginning certainly isn't fixing that. So.

Anyway, it's a pretty decent episode. I prefer the first part of this Winn two-parter a lot (well, it's less of a two-parter and more of two episodes that feature Winn back-to-back) but this one is still a pretty decent one.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Despite hints about it from Nia's first meeting with Brainy from way back in season 4, Winn is clearly far less worried about telling her about the future, being all too happy to tell Nia that her descendant in the future is Nura Nal, a.k.a. Dream Girl, a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes. 
• Winn is married to a woman called "Ayla", which is very likely to be Ayla Ranzz, better known as Lightning Lass, sister to Legion founding member Lightning Lad. 
• "Computer Lad", as far as I can tell, isn't an actual canon Legion character, but it does fit with the Lad/Lass naming scheme of many Legion characters. 
• Chester Dunholtz last appeared in season 1's "Childish Thinks", where he's Winslow Schott Senior's target in that episode.