CW's Supergirl - Season 6, Part 3

Supergirl, Season 6

The final stretch of Supergirl's episodes, and... I wouldn't say it 'stuck the landing' and was anywhere as good as the series was in its golden ages (which would be season 2-3, I would say?) but I did enjoy this last season, especially considering how much it was hampered in production due to scheduling conflicts. I'm unconvinced that all the characters got a nice chance to shine, or that all the plot threads are properly wrapped-up, but all in all I did find this season enjoyable. 

Again, as a note, these episodes were watched separately over the course of 2024-2025, and I did short notes and reviews that I turned into paragraphs, almost always not in the same writing session. It's more of a collection of 'reactions' than anything. 

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Episode 15: Hope For Tomorrow

I am actually a huge fan of this episode's non-superheroic plot, with the bulk of that side of the episode dealing with Alex adopting little girl Esme. It's your typical Supergirl sugary-sweet stuff, but I thought the usage of alien superpowers and the fear of rejection as a metaphor for the fears of being rejected for adoption is probably one of the better 'social drama' storylines we've had in the series. From Kara and J'onn being excited in the beginning of the episode, to Alex's fuck-ups when she defaults to 'drill sergeant' instead of being a mom, and the great acting of the child actor showing how frustrated and unable to communicate and how fearful she was at potentially losing another foster family and not even daring to hope... it's all well done, even if, again, it's a bit too feel-good-y. 

I enjoyed it much more than everything else to do with William last episode anyway, or the Totem plot. Which kind of merge together as Nyxly and Supergirl both hunt the Totem of Hope... which refuses to be moved, Mjolnir-style, until someone displays that they can inspire a huge amount of hope. Coincidentally (and apparently next-door to the museum) is a UN negotiations that went south between Kazina and Corto Maltese, amplified by the effects of the totem. And the conflict seems to be just forced to homage Superman IV: Quest for Peace, because Supergirl angsts a bit that she's 'forbidden to interfere in human history', and then decides that it's okay because the totem is affecting people's mind, so she and her allies pull off a, well, Quest for Peace by gathering all the nukes and launching it into the sun. There could've been some kind of an actual discussion about the degree of how much a superhero is allowed to interfere in geopolitics, but just like last episode's Lena angst, it's just handwaved.  

This, apparently, is a big enough of a 'hopeful gesture' that the Totem accepts Kara's solution, which is extremely rushed compared to the past couple of totems. The underwhelming hostage situation in CatCo was also very rushed and disappointing, and only serves to get our heroes to steal the totem in Nyxly's possession. And then they decide to just deny Nyxly the All-Stone altogether, and Supergirl chucks the Totem of Hope into the sun. Which I guess is an attempt to shake up the already iffy 'totem' formula. Nyxly gets pissed, but gets a LexCorp suit from her 'secret admirer', hinting at a Lex Luthor return. Again, this episode was a bit all-over-the-place with its plot developments. 

Episode 16: Nightmare in National City

We get a fair bit more progression in this episode, which focuses on the Dream Totem. As the chase for the plot coupons continue, the cast is neatly split into two with Nia and Nyxly going off to hunt for the Dream Totem, while Supergirl and the rest of the Super-Friends have to deal with a giant CGI whirling-metal dream monster unleashed upon the world. The former is a particularly strong bit of character-centric episode (and one that, as befitting a final season, wraps up some plot threads!) while the latter is... not the best.

In her attempt to figure out the specifics of the Dream Totem, Nia ends up bumping into her older sister Maeve, who is estranged from her from what we learned about Nia all the way back in season 4. Unlike the brand-new characters that I have no real attachment to, or the absurd shoehorning of Lena's magical background, I was a lot more invested with Nia's drama in this episode. The acting and writing between Nia and Maeve are a nice balance of the two being cautious while also hopeful, which fits the two sisters' heavy history... and the fact that it looks like things are going to get better between them makes Maeve's eventual betrayal even more hurtful. Yes, Nia showing off her dream powers and rescuing Maeve from Nyxly is enough for Maeve to get the episode-finale apologies, but I really do like that while Nia is willing to give Maeve a second (and last) chance, she's not going to forgive all the bullshit and grief her sister put her through. For a show that tends to lean towards optimistic, convenient solutions, this was a surprisingly satisfying one. 

Nyxly, meanwhile, follows the strange voice in the obviously-Lex-Luthor gauntlets given to her, which claims to be her from the future. It turns out to just be Lex, showing up at the end of the episode to finally participate in the last couple of episodes. 

The Kara stuff... is all right. It's the cumulative build-up of all of the anxiety of Kara Danvers' double life, which we've been building up throughout various episode sin the season. It's some nice acting as Supergirl has to struggle with the ever-anxiety-inducing time management as she zips back and forth in attending her duties as Supergirl and participating as a reporter to mediate the peace treaty... but it's also a bit tiresome to see, since neither the reporter stuff nor the superheroing stuff are particularly exciting. (The CGI monster was cool, but it also spends 80% of its screentime invisible). I also think that the episode doesn't do a particularly good job at showing why the Super-Friends need Supergirl since J'onn and the others seem to have things down pat. Ultimately while I like the concept of having a relatable protagonist pulled in all directions, it's also nothing particularly new and I felt like the conclusion of Kara quitting CatCo feels extremely muted.

Episode 17: I Believe in a Thing Called Love

We now get the Love Totem episode, and... I have rather strong opinions about this. At this point we're essentially racing towards the finale of the season and the series, and episode 17 pushes a narrative about our two primary villains -- season-long threat Nyxly and series-long threat Lex Luthor -- that I'm not the biggest fan of. The acting for both actors are pretty great, in particular Jon Cryer, but the huge twist to make these two villains work together? "True love". Apparently, Luthor is in love with Nyxly, except this Luthor that showed up is actually a Lex Luthor from the future... because Luthor time-traveled earlier this season. I kind of... forgot about it, since it wasn't properly mentioned or built up. It's a bamboozling plot twist that had minimal foreshadowing, but so much of the final batch of episodes hinge on this twist that honestly feels like it came out of nowhere. It is admittedly some nice streamlining, and I'm not saying that a character like Lex Luthor shouldn't be explored in a way where he genuinely feels love. But it feels cheap, sudden and frankly other than streamlining the season's two Big Bads, I felt like it was not handled particularly well.

Speaking of love overtaking everything, our good guys plot focus on Alex and Kelly's mutual attempt at trying to do a surprise engagement party for each other. Which... it's a pretty neat fluff scene in a vacuum, but it is quite grating that after six seasons of liking Alex as a character, every scene she's in this season is just romance-related. It's similar to the confusing manner they're handling Lena, who gets saddled with this 'controlling magic' stuff that really doesn't go anywhere. (Oh, and Andrea dons her Acrata costume for some misguided villainy related to CatCo and William, which is... inoffensive.) 

This is in stark contrast to Nia and Brainy, both of whom get storylines that tie in to their history as characters in the show. J'onn, too, gets a great episode here as we remember that he's more than just Team Dad but actually the Martian Manhunter, and he goes through the Courage Totem's gauntlet and faces his tragic backstory where he sees his family killed. The moral of the episode -- true strength comes from facing your fears with your family and friends -- is simple but effectively done with both J'onn and Kara's respective traumas. 

Episode 18: Truth and Consequences

So we get a death. It's a final season, and even with Supergirl as a show being relatively happy-go-lucky, it is a good narrative tool that there are actual stakes with people dying and stuff. It's just that... you can't really kill a major character like Nia or J'onn or Alex without the series ending in a downer, so the solution is William Dey. Who, admittedly, did get a bit more screentime in this episode and the last couple. It's just... not handled the best. William still feels cookie-cutter as a 'nice guy', and even feels shoehorned in as part of the engagement friend group in the previous episode. But despite my negativity about William's character throughout the season, this is a very effective episode for what it does.

Andrea's Acrata-ing last episode ends up with her using William's byline to expose Lex Luthor's love diary (??????) to "prove" that Luthor is back and working with Nyxly. It does tie into some nice themes about Andrea's function throughout a season as a 'sensionalism-first' journalist, which... hasn't been the most interesting thing to watch, but it's at least building up towards something. While not exactly driven out of spite, it is definitely done well that someone as spiteful as Luthor would take the extra time to murder William in the midst of doing his "I've been two steps ahead of you, mwahaha" plans. It is an actual bit of a shocker to have William basically succeed in his recording of Luthor's plans, for Luthor to stroll out... and then come back in and shoot William in the gut. 

The episode really does try to push the Luthor/Nyxly love story with some genuinely well-acted scenes. And it's basically as good as it can get with the rushed amount of screentime we have. We also have some nice action scenes with Luthor, Nyxly, Otis and alien henchman guy dressing up in LexCorp space-suits. I particularly like the scene where the Martian Manhunter shows off his badass phasing powers. 

Some of the other scenes with the main characters of the show, at least, are a lot more relevant. Kara and Alex have an argument about how to raise Esme, with Kara noting that Esme could use 'power suppressors' like her own experience in the past, while Alex is projecting a bit about having to repress who she is. The argument of two well-meaning sisters, and Alex putting her foot down as a mom, is well-done, and sneakily ties into Esme's role as the damsel in distress this episode. The Love Totem migrated to her, and Luthor and Nyxly manage to kidnap her at the end of the episode. 

Another great sub-plot is the surprising addition of an extra wrinkle to Brainy and Nia's storyline. Brainy being also from the 31st century is kind of a handwaved thing throughout the series. We get a surprise cameo from Winn (who I completely forgot went to the future to join the Legion!) who informs Brainy that the entire fate of the Coluan race hinges on him returning and merging with the hivemind of their technological race. It's a nice bit of drama, and both Jesse Rath and Nicole Maines play this story arc well -- a far more weighty romantic storyline than the Luthor/Nyxly one for sure. 

Episode 19: The Last Gauntlet

The bulk of the climax happens in this episode, 'The Last Gauntlet', and... it feels surprisingly... episodic? For a series finale fight, at least? A good chunk of my problem is simply the lack of buildup for almost anything other than the fact that we need to protect the little girl. The action scene on the field itself is perfectly serviceable CW superhero stuff, with our heroes all getting a chance to shine, with the later episodes of the season being particularly generous with green makeup for J'onn J'onnz and Brainiac.

Unfortunately, I really do feel like two huge plotlines in this episode really do fall flat for me. Supergirl and friends utilizing some super-powered solar satellite which no one has ever mentioned before, but coincidentally can give Kara the power to fight fifth-dimensional magic, is a gigantic and frankly clumsy deus ex machina that comes out of nowhere. Sure, the Super Friends end up chickening out at the last minute because using screwing up the sun is not a very superhero-thing to do, but the choice feels like it comes out of nowhere and doesn't really fit with the rest of the season. Isn't the vague throughline supposed to be accountability or transparency or something? This doesn't really jive with it, no.

What's much worse is the handling of the Luthor/Nyxly storyline. It's already hard enough to have to take at face value the fact that Luthor is doing everything 'for love', but it could lead to some interesting characterization for him. But surely there has to be a better way to drive a wedge between the two villains than to have Mama Lilian (who's barely a presence in this season) show up and do some in-law trash talk in front of Nyxly? It feels so banal and poorly done, and at this point I really did wish Luthor was planning to backstab Nyxly all the while. All of the Fifth-Dimensional worldbuilding we had to endure in the middle part of the season? None of that comes to fruition, by the way -- we don't even get to see Mxyzptlk back, let alone Nyxly's dad and brother, who keeps being brought up but end up being completely irrelevant. The two villains are reduced to just angry spiteful hateful strawman villains, which is kind of makes me wonder what the effort of building them up over the past season is.

Episode 20: Kara

And the first half of the final episode is to very quickly and unceremoniously wrap up the two-part climax. I do think it's appropriate that Supergirl finishes its final season with another motivational speech. Is that the reason for this season's muddled Lena Luthor the Teenage Witch storyline? For Lena to help broadcast Supegirl's speech to everyone in the world? Because that sure happens in order for the world to generate positive emotions. 

We get a final fight as Luthor and Nyxly summon quite literally Supergirl's stable of available CGI villain models, including Red Tornado and Metallo, while the Super Friends summon their own stable of guest stars. Mon-El, Jimmy Olsen, Winn Schott, Acrata, even Eliza Danvers show up to help blast the CGI monsters. (No Zor-El, making that whole storyline in the beginning of this season even more pointless) And then Luthor and Nyxly try to summon the creepy Phantoms from the Phantom Zone, only for the power of good emotions to overwhelm them and the phantoms very anticlimactically just drag the two villains back to the Phantom Zone. The cameos are cool. The exit of the villains is, how do we say? Bad. Very very, very bad. Not even for not having any payoff for the Fifth Dimension Civil War thing, or even the death of William Dey, but the way they are dispatched -- especially for Lex Luthor, who's been quite a long running villain? Yeah. It's particularly disappointing that neither Kara nor Lena had a proper face-off with Lex that doesn't feel generic. 

And we have the second half of the episode, which is mostly centered around Alex and Kelly's wedding. Some moments are there. We get the original CatCo power trio of Kara, Jimmy and Winn. Lena and Andrea get some closure. Lena and Kara get a cute moment. We get Jimmy bonding with Kelly. We get the five-second farewell between Brainy and Nia, which... at least was an okay if predictable and seemingly no-stakes payoff (even if it's obvious Brainy's going to come back, I felt that just handwaving the stakes they set up feels anticlimactic). We get a nice Eliza/Kara/Alex family moment. 

I do like the final arc for Kara Danvers/Supergirl. In a world where everyone is empowered by her Big Speech, she's a bit lost on what to do especially since she now realizes that people don't quite need her to be their babysitting guardian 24/7. The answer comes in a much more welcome cameo by Cat Grant, who has her typical devil-may-care mentor attitude, giving Kara an advice to stop trying to hide who she is and very casually dropping the bombshell that she knew Kara is Supegirl all along. Which, by the way, makes 100% sense, and it's a powerful moment as Kara takes off her glasses and places it on a table and walks away. The episode, season and series finally end with a broadcast revealing Kara Danvers' identity as Supergirl. A nice, open-ended 'the adventure continues' ending. 

And... that's it. Again, not the best ending to the show with a great potential and a great cast. I understand the problems that a lot of the CW/DC shows are facing during the year this show was filmed and released, with COVID and mass cancellation of shows, but I really did feel like grading this season as its own thing, they were building up multiple things and then reneging on it in favour for things that are hastily built up and discarded within single episodes. It's a bit maddening, really, because I could really see Supergirl ending the way that it should -- like Arrow did, where Arrow perhaps didn't have the best ending based on the potential of the show, but its final season was one that was good. I like the emotional parts of this show, which admittedly is what Supergirl tends to focus on. It's just a shame we didn't get a tidier ending. 

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And speaking of which, as I close the book on Supergirl, I'll continue with the rest of the CW/DC material. Some of them I have these 'episode-by-episode' seasonal stuff partly done, but depending on how much I have to say about any given season I might do just a big, short review of the whole season. Not sure what I'll go with next. Black Lightning or Stargirl seem likely, though. 

CW's Supergirl - Season 6, Part 2

Supergirl, Season 6

So yeah, continuing on with our coverage of the final season of Supergirl. I'm not sure how regular these reviews will be, I'm just doing them as the drafts are ready to be edited. We've finished the first batch of Supergirl season 6 episodes a bit earlier and that batch was a bit messy due to main actress Melissa Benoist's scheduling conflicts for the first seven episodes. Now that the cast are reunited, let's see how they handle the final season!

Episode 9: Dream Weaver

"Dream Weaver" is a standalone episode that's more or less self-contained. The titular 'Dream Weaving' plot barely takes up much screentime as Nia tries to figure out the prophetic dreams she's been having, which gets continually interrupted by Nyxly -- who wants Nia's help in bringing her to the 'real world' in exchange for 24 hours with her mother. It's really the bare minimum you'd expect from a temptation-themed storyline like this, and I don't have much to say here. 

The main storyline, such as it is, tries to tell a story that once more relates to the CatCo storyline. I'm still not very excited about it, although it is quite clear where it's going to conclude. Andrea and William are just kind of flat characters who I find hard to really get invested in. The main storyline has Kara and Kelly separately investigate different corrupt parts of the system, which ties in with some of the allegories of aliens being minorities that are often treated poorly due to biases. The action scenes and powers are on the very back seat, where our heroes discover that the prison staff has been forcing the superpowered prisoners to do robberies for them, while the social services system taking care of the children related to them is abusing them. It ties in to an Intergang plot, so we still have some traditional Superman/Supergirl plot going on, but it's otherwise about Kara and friends exposing the hypocrisy within this organization that's supposed to represent and help these oppressed people. It's an all right standalone story, if a bit strawman-ned.

Episode 10: Still, I Rise

Kind of forming a follow-up to the previous episode is "Still I Rise", which isn't quite a two-parter in the traditional sense... but we follow the storyline of Orlando, who is freed from the evil prison warden that makes him rob stuff, but ends up now having to contend with another social system that shuts down an affordable housing system. It's something that more or less resolved by the end of the episode (at least until named villains show up) and while the nasty councilwoman is still very classist/racist at the end of it, "Still I Rise" is, again, a pretty nice, standalone episode as Supergirl tries to figure out how the best way to interact with her public is and how to utilize her voice. It's a bit of an odd topic to tackle six seasons into this show, and the broccoli PSA's that Supergirl and Brainy recorded in this episode kind of is comparable to how these episodes have been sounding. 

There is somewhat more action in this episode, with the return of Mitch, one of the aliens from the time travel two-parter who ends up kidnapping a depowered Nyxly. Nyxly tricks Mitch and then does something with a freeze bomb to threaten Supergirl and end up absorbing the energies to restore her magic... somehow. It gives the Super Friends some tension and some superheroing moments, including a rather interesting kick-the-dog moment as Nyxly blows up the building that Kara has been fighting for all throughout the episode. 

Oh, and Nyxly is out and about to cause some havoc, because Nia let her out. I really did think that the previous episode could've used a bit more of this, because as the dream-spirit of Nia's mother pointed out, she was kind of stupid in the previous episode. Her mother gives Nia a whole pep-talk about not running away from her problems. While the setup was unconvincing, the moments she has this episode is pretty well-done.  

Episode 11: Mxy In The Middle

The Nyxly storyline finally goes on in full swing as after two relatively social commentary heavy episodes, we go into something more superhero-y. Mr. Mxyzptlk gets summoned to the third dimension by Supergirl, and after escaping Nyxly, ends up delivering a literal exposition dump via a random musical cover of "I Will Survive". Compared to CW's previous attempts at musicals, this one... isn't the best, which I think was on purpose. But Mxy tells us that Nyxly has apparently been betrayed by the patriarchy, particularly her brother and father... and she also needs both Mxy (who's descended from some important Imp) and seven magical Infinity Stones Totems to take over the Fifth Dimension. Which... okay. That honestly feels quite random, and I really did wish that Nyxly's story was better communicated in her many previous scenes, particularly the Phantom Zone episodes. The Totem stuff is obviously just there to fill up more episodes, and the Forces from The Flash still give me pretty bad PTSD on how badly they can be handled. 

This episode is fun, though. Nyxly rampages around with a giant magic cat (Kara uses her heat vision as a laser pointer!) and later on a hostage situation (she can't track Mxy unless he uses his magic), promising to make good on her desire to get vengeance on everyone who wronged her. This leads into a confrontation with Mxy, who betrayed Nyxly when giving testimony in the past. However, with the power of friendship, Mxy ends up teleporting and surrendering himself to Nyxly in exchange for his friends' lives. Nyxly seems a bit conflicted by this, particularly since Kara is at least trying to empathize with the wrongful imprisonment that Nyxly was faced with. 

This episode is extremely busy and I wonder if some of it could've been transplanted to one of the two previous episodes. Lena goes to her mother's village, and, in another random revelation, finds out that her mother is a witch? With a bad reputation, but turns out she's actually nice and the murder she did was an accident? The acting is nice but it also feels super-random. Nia gets a bit of a character arc trying to keep the secret and guilt of releasing Nyxly; while Mxy also has a mini-arc of realizing how useless he is without his magic. There is also a C-plot about a kidnapped alien scientist which just adds to the clutter of this episode, which I didn't even remember. Another C-plot is Mitch the alien kind of trying to get into Nyxly's good graces. Bit of a packed episode, and I do wish that some of the content bled into the previous, slower episodes.

Episode 12: Blind Spots

And just like that, we decompress almost immediately. 'Big Bad' Nyxly spends this episode off-grid while she waits for her powers to recover, while the main bulk of this story has Kelly Olsen finally do something a bit more superhero-related. It is honestly quite heavy-handed in its treatment of systemic racism and how certain races are seen as a bit invisible in times of crisis. Kelly, J'onn and surprise guest star John Diggle (from Arrow) all give very impassioned speeches to explore the topic. And I really do like J'onn's speech in particular, especially since he comes from a shapeshifting race. I'm also a bit happy that minor recurring character Orlando has a bit of a character arc that ends here, and that Nyxly's petty destruction of the building is addressed. The episodes work the best whenever it portrays Kelly's frustration about her problems constantly being brushed aside by her allies. And that's a very strong, emotional part of this episode. 

It's just that the execution and the framing of the episode isn't the best. Trying to insist that the Fifth-Dimensional Imp that could just as easily snap her fingers and do the same thing a millionfold is less of a priority feels insanely short-sighted, regardless of what Kelly insists. The Super-Friends ignoring her a bit is a valid argument, but I do find it hard to see what the Super Friends could've done really differently... especially since the episode also frames Brainiac and Kelly taking time to doll up her Guardian costume in gold to be a good thing. But hey, nice outfit, right? 

We also have a super straw-woman villain in the evil councilwoman from the past couple of episodes being somehow magically empowered with fifth-dimensional debris that drains the strength of the sick people of colour in the hospital, which also just feels a bit too heavy-handed even by the standards of this show. Ultimately, Kara and Alex realize a bit about how they've been ignoring Kelly throughout the episode and apologize, while the Super Friends very quickly and easily defeat the evil councilwoman. John Diggle's cameo in this episode... is a bit weird, and I guess was just a way to have a cameo while David Ramsey directs the episode. I felt like the episode was setting up more for a James Olsen cameo that didn't materialize, but I'm a huge Diggle fan so I'm never going to be unhappy to see him. 

Episode 13: The Gauntlet

So yeah, this episode kick-starts what seems to be the theme for the final stretch of this season... the hunt for the plot coupons. In this case, our theme of the week is the Totem of Courage. What initially seemed like a groan-worthy exposition about fifth-dimensional magic and totem doodads end up becoming a surprisingly good episode for both Supergirl and Nyxly, which more than makes up for the weaker aspects of this episode. After a string of heavy, borderline-PSA plots, the Totem of Courage gives us a neatly simple superhero plot -- the Totem of Courage causes a lot of people to become abnormally courageous... and also risk-taking, leading to a scientist guest star, Dr. Lahr, unleashing a lightning storm machine upon National City. Seeing characters like Alex and J'onn in particular showcase just how dangerous suicidal courage could be are also fun. I'm not too big on the very dragged-out "Lena is a skeptic and refuses to acknowledge her random magic heritage" subplot, or the cameo of one of the Kryptonian witches who I don't even remember (the actress is fun, though). I also really don't care about William as a character. 

The Totem of Courage, in addition to giving us its excuse plot, also forces Supergirl and Nyxly to confront moments in their life where they should've showed courage, but didn't. In Supergirl's case, she goes back to the very first episode of the show where she rescued that plane, and the 'trial' given by the Totem asks her to do something courageous that she didn't do back then. Which she fails... while Nyxly passes her trial, eventually, after some pep-talk from her bounty hunter minion. Nyxly has been such a cipher throughout the previous batch of episodes, and seeing the rebellion play out from her side does help to ground the otherwise nonsensical 5th-Dimensional royalty plot in actual characters. Turns out, though, the courage that the Totem is looking out of Nyxly isn't the courage to murder or confront her treacherous relatives, but to admit her vulnerability. After her terrible first episode in the Phantom Zone and her streak in the past couple of episodes being not the most complex, I like seeing her confronted with how she views her brother's betrayal as being more damaging than anything that her father could do. Also like the conclusion, which is very Superman/Supergirl-y by having Kara prioritize stopping the storm instead of getting the Totem, which IMO is a much better "focus on who you can save" story than what we got in the previous episode. 

Episode 14: Magical Thinking

"Magical Thinking" goes into a focus on William Dey, which... again, isn't a character or a plotline I'm particularly enthused about. Neither am I about Andrea Rojas, who has none of the personality that she had before. Admittedly she was never the most exciting character in the older seasons, but being reduced to the most basic 'reporter boss that's only as obstructive as the plot needs' isn't a particularly flattering look. But William finally gets his wish of a closer look into the inner workings of the Super Friends, and rather predictably, we get a story that's been told a million times in Supergirl -- the superheroes bring hope, free press is good, but not so free that secret identities are revealed. Supergirl has done it several times in its run, and I just came out of this episode shrugging -- I think I would've had a bigger response if it was Kara or Nia, someone I actually care about in the show, being in the spotlight... but William's a rather flatly written character and I find it hard to really care about this plot. The explanation of why the news are good for the public in this specific case and why Lena agrees also doesn't make sense to me either. 

The Totem plot this episode is also a rehash of the previous one, swapping in 'Humanity' (or, rather, empathy) in the place of Courage. The population, once more, now goes through a lack of empathy and starts to fight each other. Nyxly and Kara are still emotionally linked, and this allows for some fun overacting on both actresses. Nyxly ends up feeling so much empathy for the rest of the world that her alien goon had to step in. Lena struggles a bit with her newfound magical abilities (still IMO a really weird and random direction to take the character) and is frustrated when her spellcasting seems to only able to help by hurting people even more. And, as I mentioned before, I am very unconvinced that throwing in 'but we let the press cover it' is an actual justification for Lena to use her magic to amplify the Totem of Humanity. 

That said, after several episodes of not having it (and a notable weak part from my end for later Supergirl seasons) is that Supergirl actually does some Supergirl-ing and the team zips around the city stopping all the crimes, with a pretty great sequence of Supergirl stopping bullets. There's also a rather nice, if short, C-plot of Alex and Kelly adopting a young alien girl from a foster home. It's a variation of the Orlando storyline, but seeing the little girl's original foster parents basically pushing her our of their house and treating her as a human (or, well, alien) flamethrower was actually quite horrifying. 

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That's all the time we have in this article! I know -- and can guess -- that these CW reviews are not going to get the most views. It wouldn't be, even if I had done them when it was timely. But I really did respect these shows enough to want to talk about them, and I'm happy for any of you who stuck around and read it to the end. 

CW's Supergirl - Season 6, Part 1

Supergirl, Season 6

So a couple years back, the CW's DC comics superhero shows made up the bulk of the reviews on this blog. During the huge pandemic thing, however, a lot of those shows went on hiatus, before half of them got either cancelled or turned into their last seasons. And... I think it's quite fair to say that a lot of them have essentially 'jumped the shark', so to speak. 

It's just that I never got to really watching any of them when the TV shows came back due to real life and other interests getting in the way. I did, eventually, watch some of the shows, but it was pretty slow going. For your reference, the first of these was done in early 2024... and was left in incomplete limbo for almost two years now. Since I'm going to disappear for a couple of months, I guess it's about time that these articles see the light of day. I'm not sure how much interest that these CW superhero shows -- particularly the later seasons -- will get. But since I'm not writing anything new for May/June of this year, you guys get to see what I wrote and shelved a while back. 

I guess it is somewhat appropriate timing, because there's a live-action Supergirl movie coming up this year? I don't think I've even reviewed the new Superman movie. Very behind on these things! 

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I decided to go with Supergirl first, with its final season. I really don't think there's much content to really deep-dive in a lot of these episodes, so I'm going to do what I did with the last Legends of Tomorrow season I watched, and do a 'partial season' review like this.

And... I'll probably have to explain how I do these reviews; I didn't write all of this article in one go, but rather watched an episode and wrote a couple of paragraphs for each episode, so on and so forth. I don't think I had the encyclopedic knowledge of the CW-verse that I used to have, nor do I want the pressure of having to maintain that standard, and honestly, nor did I have the time or interest to do so again. But if you see some minor inconsistencies in the reviews, that is what to blame. These TV episode reviews are also tricky to write because sometimes there's a natural mid-season cutoff point, but sometimes I just talk more in certain episodes compared to others. 

But I still do want to talk about these shows. So while it will probably take some time, you'll probably see me do The Flash, Black Lightning, Legends of Tomorrow, Stargirl and Batwoman. At the very least, the TV shows that I have covered here. I know there are a lot of other DC TV shows -- Pennyworth, Peacemaker, the Penguin, Lois and Clark... those, I think, I'll reserve for much later, and I'll have to see if I like them enough to talk episode-per-episode. (I'd much rather talk about the new Batman or Superman cartoons). This has nothing to do with the soon-to-be-released Superman movie, since I've been doing this rewatch since early last year, but it's a nice little coincidence that I could post the first of these close to the release date of that movie.

Anyway, Supergirl time! Last we left off, we had some storyline about Lex Luthor finally becoming a villain with the power of a VR Metaverse, Lena and Kara have a bit of a BFF spat, and also Brainiac was pretending to be evil and ended up getting caught up in the whole thing...

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Episode 1: Rebirth

And, well, 'Rebirth'... it's less of a season six premiere, but the final episode of the previous season. And I really can't be too mean to the previous season since it was haphazardly put together during the zenith of the COVID-19 restrictions. And... it's a okay ending, I suppose, with the caveat that I really have no memory of a lot of the supporting characters when I watched this episode. I know the big names like J'onn, Alex, Lena, Lex, Lilian, Nia and Brainy well enough, but I really find myself having to look up a lot of the other characters (particularly the CatCo plot). And since we jump from one character to the next a lot as we establish the sheer scope of Lex Luthor's latest ego-driven plot, we then go straight into dismantling it. It doesn't help that the whole Leviathan / Obsidian North / Lex plot is kind of convoluted, although I do think that around 10 minutes in, the show does the rather understandable decision of just focusing entirely on Lex. The, uh, robot lady from Leviathan ends up getting blown up in the opening act, and then we focus on Lex's plan to make everyone uploaded to the VR-world agree with him, and then kill everyone else with satellites.

And then the episode just... barrels through moments that's probably meant to be a bit more emotional, but everything just kind of feels perfunctory even among CW standards. J'onn and M'gann have this whole talk about the significance of the mind-meld, which... leads to zero payoff other than a big CGI explosion scene. Brainy trying to be evil because of logic, which was one of the few plot points that I remember from the previous season (certainly not because it's good) is just handwaved aside with a uwu-I-love-you handwave. Lena and Kara also just basically kind of shrug and return to being good friends with an apology. I'm also not entirely sure why Supergirl went through all the grandiosity of having to record some memoirs of her time on Earth, was it something I missed in season 5?

Anyway, Lex shows up with his hypocritical 'humans shouldn't be forced to bow down to alien ideals' while being perfectly happy to enforce his own ideals on him. We get a rather bland fight, Supergirl dies for five seconds before some deus ex machina brings her back to life. Lex... very randomly dances in the Fortress which is quite cringey, before the rather haphazard editing of the climax leads to Lex losing his powers, Supergirl shunted away to the Phantom Zone, and also Lena uses Myriad to wipe Lex and Lilian's memories of Kara's identity. Ultimately the whole episode feels like it's just really trying to clean slate in the neatest possible way while also dealing with all the scheduling issues. It is... functional, but I can't say it's a particularly good watch regardless. 

Episode 2: A Few Good Women

So this kickstarts the first half of Supergirl's sixth season, where... thanks to the lead actress being on maternity leave, the titular Supergirl had to film all of her scenes separately from the rest of the cast, leading to her showing up only in Phantom Zone sequences separate from the rest of the regular cast. Which, under better writers, might perhaps lead to something poignant about how the world is coping without Supergirl. Which is a nice thread to pull! Under CW, it's just a lot of angst. In other words, we're back to normalcy for these shows. 

The Earth storyline has our heroes deal with the fallout of the season premiere, with Lex Luthor being put to stand on trial. It's... it's okay. Jon Cryer is entertaining enough to hold his own in the proceedings, particularly when he pulls off the 'arrogant self-assured politician' card that ends up getting to charm the faceless jury, and his genuine surprise at the fact that he won the trial by being honest. Lex re-framing Eve and Lena as being jilted or hysterical women is probably one of the actually well-done Supergirl takes at feminism in that it's not shoved in our face so much but it just... plays out. 

Our heroes attempt to rescue Kara from the Phantom Zone, and we get a decent discussion between J'onn and M'gann, as well as Alex, about whether to put on the 'soldier mode' or 'empathy mode', which... really isn't that black-and-white in real life, but I appreciate them showing our heroes -- the two that view Kara as family instead of having a hero-worship of her like Nia and Brainiac -- being super-stressed in response to Kara's disappearance. There is some technobabble about why they can't access the Phantom Zone properly (something about the Crisis breaking it up) and some of the Game of Thrones wight-cosplayer Phantoms broke out, but the action scenes are clearly playing second-fiddle in this season. 

The Phantom Zone plot is... it's there, and probably the weakest part of the episode. (Second-weakest, I guess, since I have no investment at all with the the Z-list CatCo plot) Supergirl wakes up and fights the Phantoms on her end, and meets... her dad, Zor-El! I really do think they burned this 'the parent is actually alive' plot point to the death with Kara's mom, though, and I really didn't care about Zor-El showing up here. Again, it's obviously just there to have Supergirl have a plot in a Supergirl show, but it feels like some of Arrow's more uninspired island outings. 

Episode 3: Phantom Menaces

This episode feels very much like a 'connective tissue' episode, going through the same ground as the previous episode without the novelty of being the episode that introduces these concepts to us. The Supergirl-in-Phantom-Zone plot has Zor-El be abducted and Supergirl meet a brand-new characer, the banished fifth-dimensional imp princess Nyxlygsptlnz, based on Mxy's girlfriend in the original comics. She's lost her powers after being banished by her dad, but she gets them back by a literal motivational speech from Supergirl, which does feel kind of unearned? The Phantom Zone scenes generally happen so fast that it's a bit hard to feel emotionally invested. 

J'onn and Alex continue a bit of their storyline from the previous episode -- J'onn gets a nice scene with M'gann that puts into context the whole 'emotional bond' thing they did in the season premiere. The 'A-plot', such as it is, has our heroes del with the fact that the Phantoms that hitched a ride on the not-vampire alien last episode wreak some havoc, with M'gann being one of the victims. It's a pretty all right action scene, for what it is. 

But it's Brainy and Lena that ends up having the best emotional moment here. There's a very great scene where Brainiac, who has activated his emotional circuits or whatever, gets very excited at the suggestion of killing Lex Luthor and lists the many, many different ways that he could do it. This leads to a discussion with Lena where Jesse Rath delivers a great 'explosion of emotion' moment as Brainy just breaks stuff out of frustration. Lena, meanwhile, is all set on being cheeky and stealing funds from Lex to fund hospitals... until Lex does the rather darkly-hilarious "what did you expect was going to happen" thing and blows up the hospital. This is honestly the sort of thing that would make a harder stance like what Brainy is suggesting (or even Phantom Zoning him, no?) more palatable? But the show decides to spin it into a "cut off the toxic friends/family" with Lena deciding to step away from LexCorp and refuse to engage in the sibling rivalry that Lex has been stringing her along for her entire life. It's neat, for what it is. 

Episode 4: Lost Souls

And this episode very clearly splits the story into two parts -- the Phantom Zone part and the real-world part. I probably have the least to say about this, other than the fact that our heroes dealing with Kara and going through a "What Would Supergirl Do" mentality feel a bit more strongly shown in this episode. It's just that the plotline is not quite as interesting. The Prime Phantom or whatever starts reproducing more and more, there's something about M'gann having a sliver of a phantom's soul in her, and there's a huge, dramatic moment where Lena and Alex have to make a choice on whether to use the episode's MacGuffin (which can only work once!) to create a portal to save Supergirl, or to revert the psychic aliens back to their human forms. Oh, and random Ghostbusters ripoff machines are also utilized. There's a scene of the party dwindling as they charge into the Phantom lair in the sewers. 

It's all right stuff, and I felt like the arguments were a bit more genuine than the last two episodes. I felt like Lena's struggle about 'thinking differently' than the other heroes, and finding that it's okay, is a much better "real-world emotional problems translated into a superhero crimefighting setting" than the Lena/Lex sequence in the previous episode. 

The Phantom Zone stuff is... also a bit better, if predictable, mostly because Nyxly is a bit less of a cipher. I really didn't care about her introduction last week, but seeing her as a trickster that projects her own problems with her dad towards Kara is quite interesting, giving us an antagonist for that half of the story. Nyxly stabs Zor-El and tries to get her and Kara to go back to the third dimension, but when Kara rebuffs Nyxly's offer, she gets vengeful, forcing Kara to smash the portal back home. Nyxly appears to have been vaporized, but it's honestly rather obvious that it's one of those fake-out superhero deaths. The Kara/Nyxly stuff is all right, but one problem I still have is Zor-El. Who, despite being the father of our main character, feels less of a character and more of a plot device. 

Episode 5: Prom Night

As another cheeky way to get around Melissa Benoist's pregnancy, we now start off with a two-parter where our heroes time-travel to the past, so that Supergirl can still show up in the Supergirl show, but played by a different, younger actress. Admittedly, the handwave-y excuse to all of this is kind of bullshit. I highly doubt that the only Supergirl DNA that they have lying around requires them to travel back to 2009, and if time travel is required, why they didn't call on their sister-show time-travelers, the Legends of Tomorrow, for help. But hey, an excuse plot is an excuse plot.

The episode itself is just a bunch of fun. Brainy and Nia get to explore a bit more of their character arc this season, with Nia struggling with impostor syndrome and wanting to ask her mom (who's living in 2009) for advice, while Brainy is struggling to deal with his mission imploding around him and is stress-eating. Throw young Kara and young Alex into the mix -- Alex comes off as a control-freak but is also struggling with so much that her family's sacrificed for her sister; while Kara wants to prove herself but isn't as independent as she thinks she is. Oh, and thanks to Crisis retconning, Kenny Li is back alive again, though I had to wiki him to remember who Kara's old boyfriend is.

There's a fair amount of genre comedy here with Brainy being dragged into clubs and whatnot -- which I don't care for, but the actor sells the reaction so well that I don't mind. We have two antagonists -- a young Cat Grant (played by a different actress, which is genuinely impressive) trying to investigate the 'miracles' of this small town, while two generic alien bounty hunters called Mitch and Naxim Tork act as the obligatory threat that's preventing Brainy and Nia from doing a quick zip-in, zip-out mission. The excuse plot is just pretty hammy time travel shenanigans, but I do appreciate them trying to tie into the season's "who is Supergirl to you" overarching plot by having a young Kara and a young Alex be the ones to ask it. 

Episode 6: Prom, Again!

The second part of the prom two-parter is... it's there. I must admit that I wasn't particularly invested on any of the actual storylines. The zoo-menagerie aliens are such flat episodic villains that I didn't even bother to remember their names, and I ended up remembering why I found Cat Grant kind of insufferable in the first season of Supergirl. Even without the poorly-handled feminist rants in season one (this episode has a much better female-empowerment side with Kara, Nia and Cat), I really didn't find Cat's "fuck everyone, my career comes first" personality to be particularly endearing. Her origin story at the end is nice enough, but I found her to be quite irritating when her role is to wander around and break everyone's plans and extend the episode to fit its runtime... and the whole 'let's rewind time a couple of hours' solution was nowhere as engaging enough to be worth the screentime the episode dedicates to it.

Despite that, though, I did find that the actual emotional bits to be pretty well-acted, which is what the season seems to aim to do. Nia finding her confidence was kind of expected, although her conjuring a bad CGI pink cougar from her dreams is unexpected. I did find the short bits of resolution to young Kara and young Alex about Alex's control-freak big sister tendencies; as well as young Kara showing that she has bigger plans for her life to young Kenny to both be done well, but I also felt like all of these scenes could've been very easily integrated to the previous episode. (I felt like I would've given more of a shit about Kenny Li if he's an actual character instead of being just that one guy from an older flashback). There are some bits and bytes of your typical rom-com tropes, but not quite enough to justify all of it being stretched to a full episode, I feel. 

Episode 7: Fear Knot

The last episode in this initial batch of "Melissa Benoist is unavailable" batch is... an interesting one. I like it a bit better than the high school two-parter, although it does admittedly get a bit repetitive. After getting the plot device from the past to track down Kara's location in the Phantom Zone, J'onn reveals that their headquarters is actually a secret spaceship and they travel into the Phantom Zone. With one last hurrah for the whole 'phantom' concept, J'onn warns everyone that the Phantoms might cause hallucinations... and that's what the episode leads to. Admittedly, I wasn't paying full attention and was rolling my eyes at how utterly stupid-for-the-sake-of-being-stupid Alex Danvers was when she got into an argument with J'onn and locks him in a cage, but turns out that we keep zipping back to this time period two minutes ago and showing the hallucinations everyone is having. 

It all relates to their fears in some way -- Alex is afraid of being the reason that their situation is fucked up, Lena deals with a 'Kelpie' which also ties to her mother's death, Nia deals with a situation where the time she take to interpret her dreams is too long and leads to their doom (which is probably the one plot thread here that flows smoothly from previous episodes)... it's all nice and well and good, but it honestly is a bit too repetitive and I really do wonder if the ideas of these characters being subjected to fear visions wouldn't have been done better for the first five or so Supergirl-less episodes dealing with the Phantoms. As it is, by the time the third vision rolls in it just feels like we're burning screentime. The conclusion of this episode also feels rushed and leads to a bit of a 'so what' with the fear visions, as some of our heroes just... get over it. They beat the visions and manage to rescue Kara and Zor-El. Oh, and there's also a subplot of Zor-El giving Kara a whole hope speech... which is also a huge miss in my opinion because of the sheer lack of time that we've spent with Zor-El throughout the season.

Still, this is technically the 'midseason finale' of Supergirl's sixth season, with Supergirl and Zor-El rescued from the Phantom Zone and Nyxly hitching a ride. And... I don't think it's anywhere as messy as the previous season was, but it was definitely quite strangely structured.

Episode 8: Welcome Back, Kara

After the Phantom Zone plot and with Melissa Benoist finally rejoining the main cast, we get a bit of a breather episode to settle back in before Nyxly or Luthor comes back as a villainous force. And for a good part of this episode it deals with Kara's PTSD and a "it's okay not to be okay" moral, where she finally breaks down and admits that the Phantom Zone wasn't a nice fun trip and she's feeling a lot of weight from all the trouble that her disappearance has caused. Thus is mirrored, albeit less heavily, by a similar sentiment from Lena and Nia discussing their motherly woes.

Zor-El's return and introduction to human society becomes a bit of a catalyst of this episode's superheroic plot. There was a brief moment where he shows up as 'Uncle Archie' in CatCo which disappointingly does not lead to any actual hijinks. Zor-El tries to rush headlong into helping Earth -- in the way that he failed to help Krypton. Finding Earth's polluted seas to be the thing to obsess about, he reprograms the robot Kelex to clean the ocean. The plot is pretty standard 'good intentions marred by a lack of care', as Kelex gets infected by DEO alien trash, goes nuts, and morphs into a giant trash golem -- a far cooler CGI effort than the previous 7 episodes. They beat the robot with some teamwork, and we get a Superman IV: Quest for Peace homage with Supergirl chucking the giant trash golem into the sun.

Zor-El then decides to go to Argo City to meet his wife and confront his past, which... I honestly can say that while the events of this episode is nice enough for him, I really am uninvested with Zor-El as a character and I'm genuinely not sure what reviving him brings. Oh, there's also a CatCo subplot with them trying to make an expose about Luthor. Kara clashes with her boss, and her love interest (?) has moved on in the intervening time. I like the threads being built up that CatCo is going to matter to the Super Friends' legacy, but I also don't particularly find it delivered in a particularly interesting way.

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And I think that's a nice place to stop for now. Tune in next time for the next batch of episodes!

Supergirl S05E19 Review: Earth, Wind and Fire

Supergirl, Season 5, Episode 19: Immortal Kombat

That sure is an ending of the season. I don't think this season is the worst season of Supergirl... season one or three would probably be the biggest contenders for that, but this fifth season, despite having a lot of great moments, great performances and great story concepts, ultimately sort of felt like it wasn't laid out particularly well. Part of it, of course, could be laid to blame on the coronavirus outbreak forcing a hasty finale for the season, but even from the first half of the season I've already been commenting on how inconsistent things like Leviathan are and how the Kara/Lena storyline felt way too dragged-out. Still, I did enjoy this run of the fifth season, despite its weaknesses.

This finale does seem pretty rushed, though, and I still am kind of reluctant to be too harsh on this episode, considering that they had to adapt the script and scenes for the penultimate episode for this one. We still rushed pretty quickly into the mass of villains that take over the finale, with Lex's little cursory tour of the Leviathan base earning him a magic plot-device pin that would protect him from the anti-alien forcefield that they have erected around their ship. Rama Khan and his two goons -- Tezumak and Sela, each controlling a different The Last Airbender element -- prepare to absorb Kryptonite to murder Supergirl.

We get this moment where Lex shares all of this with Brainy... and there is this moment where Lex gloats about how he'll stop Leviathan after they kill Supergirl and deal with her once and for all. In front of Brainy, who is clearly already showing signs of not fully trusting Lex anymore. And for a while, it does seem like it's just Lex being his idiot and self-assured self, although I do like that it's sort of set up as Lex goading Brainy into doing things on his own? I don't fully buy it, but, again, the intent was there and maybe with more time and more scenes shot, this episode as it was originally conceived wouldn't have felt so jarring.

Supergirl and Lena end up basically sort of teaming up together, although there's still an icy undercurrent that basically amounts to 'don't bring up the past', although we did get a very well-delivered "I made one mistake, and as payback you hurt me in every way imaginable" speech at one point. Kara is at least willing to work together and Lena is chastised due to her overreaction, and, as always, the actresses sell their scenes, so at least it works relatively well. Being a superhero season finale we need our fighty-fighty, and while they buy time for Lena to build an Anti-Kryptonite suit, J'onn and M'gann use their martian powers to shapeshift into fake Supergirl decoys to draw out Leviathan's agents. Also, Alex got her own super-suit (it's something straight out of Mass Effect), and I absolutely love the hilarious scene of Kara screaming in delight and the martians thinking that there's an attack. We get some short confrontations as J'onn, M'gann, Nia and Alex face off against Rama Khan's own backup, with Tezumak controlling and turning into fire, and Sela turning into electricity. None of them really have any personality beyond being minibosses. There's also a B-plot at this point of Alex briefly sneaking into Obsidian North with Kelly's help to investigate Eve's kidnapping of William.

Eventually, after a couple of neat Kara/Lena scenes, Supergirl flies off to save William from a panicking Eve, who's just trying to protect her mother from Lex's assassins. It's an honestly pretty quickly-resolved situation of Supergirl saving William and sort-of befriending Eve. It's mostly interesting due to the interesting situation that episode 17 establishes Eve in, but ultimately this is another plotline that sort of just felt like it was ticked off of a checklist.

The Leviathan Last Airbender trio show up, and... to be fair, the special effects budget really ended up looking impressive particularly in the scene where Rama Khan and his goons show up in clouds of flame, sand and lightning. Kara's Kryptonite Armor is deployed, Iron Man 3 style, and we get a brief fight where she's backed up by M'gann and Nia, before Leviathan retreats again. Eve tells Kara that Leviathan plans to have the huge Obsidian Unity event as a springboard to kill everyone there because of evolutionary god-like reasons or something, and Supergirl ends up donning a set of VR goggles to give a hope speech to everyone there. It's... it's all right, as these Supergirl speeches go, but it does end up feeling kind of off thanks to recent real-world events that they probably didn't foresee happening, since a lot of the world is indeed seeking some solace and release in entertainment. Yeah, this whole 'technology is evil' bit really ended up not coming off particularly well thematically, but eh, Supergirl foils the evil villain's huge mass murder plan.

J'onn, meanwhile, draws out Rama Khan and his two goons by sending a particularly rude telepathic message and while Rama Khan is kind of a very flat villain, his actor Mitch Pileggi had a lot of fun hamming it up as an angry, short-tempered god. While the rest of the Super-Friends fight the Airbender Trio... Lex points out that Supergirl is foiling Gamemnae's plans, and, having figured out that these Leviathan goons answer to some sort of higher power (okaaay? This kind of came out of nowhere, I feel) Lex gets Gamemnae to unleash Andrea Rojas and her Acrata medallion, which feels really shoehorned in... but, hey, at least Andrea gets to participate in the season finale. The huge emotional point, of course, is Lena putting herself in harm's way to protect Supergirl's body from Andrea, giving her own friendship speech to talk Andrea down.

Meanwhile, while all of this is going on, we get Brainiac-5's storyline in the background, which has been another part of the season that alternates between frustratingly repetitive and interesting, and this episode seems to conclude this long-running sequence. We get a nice bit of Brainy talking to Female Brainy in a bar, basically deciding to take down Leviathan on his own by using the bottle-universe technology, being fine with the idea of sacrificing himself to take down Leviathan if that's what is needed. Again, just like the Kara/Lena storyline, it could've been done better with a lot of heavier focus and better pacing. Still, when Brainy does manage to sneak into the Leviathan base and starts to revert back to his original green-skinned form and has to work through the pain to hack the Leviathan computer, Jesse Rath portrays the scene very well. With Rama Khan and the two goons arriving back to recharge, they get instead sucked into the bottle. We get some cool scenes of Gamemnae starting to glitch and her true metallic-monster form appearing in screens behind her, which is a very cool visual.

Lex then arrives on the Leviathan base, seemingly initially distressed that Brainy has caused his plans to go haywire... until dropping the panicked facade and talking in his normal chessmaster tone, telling Brainy that this is, of course, part of the plan, he just didn't think that Brainy would be so stupid to actually die doing it. And Lex saunters off with the bottle, while Nia (who has been haunted by dreams of Brainy from the previous episode) breaks down from not trying to figure out the Brainy dreams properly. The episode ends with a couple of cliffhangers -- Brainy is seemingly dead, Lex and Lilian have the magic Coluan shrink-bottle, and Gamemnae transforms into her true, terrifying demon-metal-robot form.

Ultimately? Ultimately, this is kind of a mess. We move from plot point to plot point without really giving too many of them any sort of meaningful conclusion, and as I mentioned above, a lot of them feel more like checking off a checklist more than anything. Eve Teschmacher's storyline as a reluctant pawn, the Kryptonite and the Kryptonite armor, a repeat of Andrea being used as a Leviathan assassin, even the Obsidian Unity VR thing felt like it was quickly brought up and resolved rapidly. The focus of this episode is undoubtedly the Kara and Lena working together at last, repairing their relationship, as well as Brainy finally doing something and taking a stand. All framed with Lex Luthor going 'all as planned', of course. And... ultimately, it's a serviceable ending, I suppose. The Lena conflict is resolved in an actually believable manner (episode 18 notwithstanding), most of Leviathan is taken out, and the Obsidian VR murder plot is shut down. This actually serves as a decent season finale, albeit one that has a couple of larger cliffhangers than usual, plus the seeming death of Brainiac-5. The performances of Melissa Benoist, Katie McGrath, Jesse Rath and Jon Cryer do carry a huge chunk of this episode, making it feel at least as a decent closer to Supergirl for a while. It's still messy, though presumably the original intent was for the finale to involve Kara and Lena fighting and taking down Lex. This affirmation of alliance is a good enough end-point, though. Considering events, this is a decent effort.  

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• As noted way back when we talked about Gaememnae and Rama Khan, the Leviathan inner council is based on the ancient warriors in Grant Morrison's JLA run in the ancient nation of Jarnahpur, which the Justice League time-traveled to the past to fight. Tezumak was one of the members of this League of Ancients, a South American monk from a pre-Aztec Meso-American civilization who piloted a mighty ritual armour. enchanted by the gods of his people, which resembled a huge Iron Man suit. 
• Sela was also a member of the League of Ancients, a warrior-lady of unknown origin who lived only for the glory and enjoyment of battle. Alongside the rest of the League of Ancients, Tezumak and Sela would menace the Justice League until they were ultimately betrayed and absorbed by Gamemnae. 
• Eve Teschmacher's (I have apparently been mis-spelling her name for the better part of two seasons) arc in this episode is loosely based on the Eve Teschmacher in the 1978 Superman movie, where Superman also convinced Teschmacher to help him in exchange for him saving her mother. 

Supergirl S05E18 Review: Things Fall Apart

Supergirl, Season 5, Episode 18: The Missing Link

"The Missing Link" is the penultimate episode in Supergirl's fifth season, and it remains to be seen whether the season will be able to wrap up its storylines neatly come the next episode. This one does its best to do a lot of set-up, and I'm genuinely curious how much of this was subjected to some rewrites or if they're just working off of scripts when they thought they had an extra episode or two to wrap the season's plotlines up. Regardless of whatever the case is, I've... not really cared all that much about Leviathan throughout the season, finding it really odd that they were sort of introduced early on, we had a showdown with big bad Rama Khan, and then due to the Crisis reset it's like we're starting back on square one. Unlike the other CW shows that went through the Crisis, it's one of the clunkiest ways to use the new universe birthed from the Crisis. Nevermind the fact that Leviathan itself never really settles down on what sort of threat it wants to be. An Illuminati-style organization pulling strings from the shadows? A cabal of super-powerful god like aliens? Something about taking over people through VR? All of them are sort of forced together and it doesn't quite gel particularly well, I feel, and it's perhaps best illustrated by how this episode combined both a search for glyphs that show up in every culture and stuff, a global conspiracy that shuts down research... and yet you get aliens with god complexes hanging out in a gentleman's club with Avatar: The Last Airbender powers doing huge fights while mocking humans as insects. Both are very entertaining villain concepts, but to have them jump back and forth like this is pretty jarring.

And in this penultimate episode... Supergirl and her super-friends (M'gann hangs around, too, but unlike Winn's guest star opportunities she really doesn't do anything really important beyond being another superhero body) try and hunt down Rama Khan. Okay, then. The civilian team of Kelly and William do their own investigation into Obsidian, basically tracking down Eve in a B-plot that the episode frankly just doesn't really spend a whole lot of time on. Eve kidnaps William as part of this B-plot, but so many things happened that this barely registered to me. Building off the previous episode, Lex Luthor's recent actions cause a whole lot of doubt in his allies, namely Lena and Brainy. Brainy confronts Lex in the limousine of evil, and while, again, Lex's methods do garner results, the fact that he stole a weapon from the Fortress of Solitude as 'tribute' to Leviathan (we don't see what this is) and unleashed the Sun-Eater was a bit too much for Brainy.

Leviathan has their own game plan, with Rama Khan attacking the super-friends in a Loki/Joker-ploy, being captured just to find his way into DEO custody. Despite Brainy thinking that he's in control when he's talking to Rama Khan in his alien language (although he really should think better than to just blurt out 'Luthor' in front of his allies, silly Querl), turns out that Rama Khan wanted to be captured, to steal all of the Kryptonite stored in the DEO. Also, in a surprising move, Rama Khan causes a massive earthquake to completely shatter the DEO building, and it didn't register to me until the end of the episode that they're probably abandoning the DEO set and organization altogether. It sort of happened so quickly in the episode!

And while it's probably the huge emotional lynchpin of the episode, the fact that we're sort of juggling the Leviathan and Lena storylines does mean that both stories feel like we're sort of lacking something. Lena's Project Non Nocere sort of falls apart and the showcase of this -- how everyone ended up going into primal rage when they get accidentally hurt in a way that triggers their natural instincts -- was pretty cool. Hell, Lex even got a pretty badass action sequence by some teleporter abuse, getting the prisoners to run around a corridor while he nonchalantly teleports here and there. I would've thought that Lex isn't above just like, pulling out a death-beam or something, but this was a lot cooler.

Ultimately, I'm not 100% sure why this particular setback is what ended up causing Lena to declare Non Nocere a complete no-go, and I suspect this would've been done better if we had been following Lena's story in a better pace throughout the season. Or, well, at least devoted the A-plot of the episode to this? It also feels pretty jarring after last episode was such a huge stamp on how Lena has started distrusting Supergirl once more. Of course, one of the best part of Supergirl has been its actors, and both Lena and Lex really end up carrying me through the story and make me believe, at least while I was watching the episode, that, yeah, this is totally Lena in despair, and the whole Non Nocere was totally a sincere attempt at Lex to basically let Lena try with all the resources available and fail spectacularly. The performances work, and it's not until the end of the episode when I sat down to write this that I really realize that this part of the episode could've been paced a lot better.

Speaking of pacing things a lot better... Lex's subsequent speech about controlling the human race instead of fixing it, which he delivers immediately after Lena's huge failure moment. I'm inclined to forgive this, though, since this seems to be a deliberate in-character choice from the writers because Lex has had a weak spot for his sister, as last episode showed us. Ultimately, this combination of Lex telling her how Non Nocere has been doomed from the start and his immediate sales pitch ends up alienating Lena Luthor completely. As Lena leaves to try and get Kara to help stop Lex... Lex fucking blows up the entire prison, which is a surprisingly casual high-body-count action for this show, as Lena and Kara's reconciliation ends up being the big cliffhanger moment for the episode.

Again, I feel like this could have been done a lot better if it was paced over two episodes, because we just so wildly from all sides of the spectrum for Lena. It works, because the performances of McGrath, Cryer and Benoist are pretty emotional, but just barely. If the episode didn't have the excuse of the sudden hiatus, I would probably be complaining a bit more. I don't know... part of it is certainly because the Lena/Kara bit has been strung along a huge portion of this season, and if these larger moments are given more time to breathe, perhaps it would've worked a bit better.

Lex, for his part, actually does manage to enter Leviathan's base, walking into a basement where there's a force-field that will kill any alien species not allowed by the 'gods' of Leviathan to enter, as Rama Khan is delighted to showcase his superiority to Lex. Brainy, meanwhile, truly ostracized from the Super Friends thanks to his attempted interrogation of Rama Khan, end up basically having to listen to Lex, who, while clearly handwaving his more crazy schemes as "Supergirl will save the day", is also clearly not too heartbroken if he should let Supergirl and the Super-Friends die in the process.

So there's a lot to unpack. Leviathan's got the Kryptonite and whatever weapon Lex handed them (or is it just the Kryptonite?). Lena and Kara's at the cusp of reconciliation. Lex is doing whatever his master plan is. Eve kidnapped William Dey. Andrea Rojas is about to unleash Obsidian VR goggles to the world. Brainy is caught between the greater good and his moral heart. Nia is having prophetic dreams about evil Brainy. We're also not sure how much of these that we'll wrap up next episode,  either.

Random Notes:

• The random military advisor, Pete Andrews (played by Sean Astin) appeared earlier in this season as one of Ma'alefa'ak's disguises. This time we see the real deal. 

Supergirl S05E17 Review: What Happens in the Background

Supergirl, Season 5, Episode 17: Deus Lex Machina

Supergirl has three episodes left to its season, which, like its cousin shows The Flash and Batwoman, ended up being a truncated season. And it's kind of a shame, too, since a good chunk of the post-Crisis episodes of Supergirl have felt like mostly just filler and biding time until we reach the final couple of episodes before we actually explore the Lex/Lena/Leviathan trifecta. Still, we do get three episodes left and I am happy that, so far, they seem to be pretty solid ones. "Deus Lex Machina" is perhaps my favourite episode in this season, and is a contender for being one of my favourite episodes in the show. See, a story is really only as good as its villain, particularly stories set in the superhero genre. And throughout the various CW/DC projects, we've seen a lot of seasons fall apart and be regarded as unmemorable due to poor villain choices.

And Supergirl's Lex Luthor has been one of the most interesting characters to discuss. He was amazing in the fourth season when he showed up randomly halfway through the season and revealed himself to be behind the manipulation of everything, and that made a lot of sense, with what we've been told. A lot of people get tired of him because he's so smug and kind of a scumbag, but that's what exactly makes him so interesting. Lex Luthor is a very, very smart man, and I will buy that he manipulates everything and everyone to make them dance on his fingertips, but at the same time I also do love that his Achilles' Heel is his pride and his ego, which makes him do stupid things like, say, in this episode, snap at Lena after one too many (in his eyes) 'ungrateful' actions.

And while he's reduced to a generic card-carrying villain during the Crisis crossover, post-Crisis, Luthor has been so, so much more interesting than the vaguely ambiguously mysterious Leviathan. He doesn't really do much beyond making sinister deals with Brainy and acting as a corrupting mentor, and being kinda friendly with Lena, and all the while he's been interesting but with the potential of ending up as being lame if not handled well.

Thankfully, 'Deus Lex Machina' is not a disappointment. After a brief sequence showing Lex waking up after the Crisis, and realizing that, yes, his attempt to fuck with history to make him be remembered as a hero to all actually worked, Lex's first thought is, interestingly enough, his family. Lex goes first to Lilian, and I do find it fascinating how this scene really highlights Lex's weaknesses and why he isn't as effective of a supervillain as he could be. Lilian correctly points out that one of Lex's biggest downfalls is his obsession and inferiority complex with Kryptonians -- first Superman, and now Supergirl. But one could also make the argument that another one of Lex's weaknesses is his constant desire to prove himself better than members of his family. Lilian goading Lex with a 'so you can't do it?' ends up being what makes him play the long game with Lena and Supergirl, and a huge chunk of Lex's motivation this season also revolves around essentially turning Lena to be fully on his side. Whether it's a twisted desire for his sister's respect or love or affection, or just his ego to prove himself as the better Luthor, or his refusal to lose to a Kryptonian in anything -- including being Lena's BFF... I can't say, but I do find this part of Lex quite neat.

Anyway, after Lilian convinces Lex, he ends up playing the long game, playing the role of hero and basking in the adulation of the people, while also trying to turn Lena to his side and sponsoring her little pet project of Non Nocere. But when Lex finds out about Leviathan, an event that the audience saw, he actually had an enemy that he needs to crush -- and one that he can do in more obvious manners than crushing Supergirl or Superman. Of course, Lex's ultimate plan is to take out everyone -- Leviathan and Supergirl. It's just that which one is Lex's priority at the moment, and which one he'll double-cross, is the question.

The revelation that a central villain is behind everything all along needs to be planned a bit well to make it a surprise but also not feel like an ass-pull (Adrian Chase, anyone?) but this episode really does it well by showing us just what Lex is trying to do. It also fits with the events of the show as we know them, so when the show reveals that, hey, Lex is the one who sponsors random villains-of-the-week Richard Bates and Amy Sapphire, it makes sense. There's always something that's quite off about Sapphire, like there's a missing piece in her story, but since she's not very important you don't really think about her. And hoo boy, bartender Lex with hair talking to Richard Bates was hilarious.  We also learn about Lex's manipulations of poor Miss Tessmacher in this post-Crisis world, and while it's not super-noteworthy and sort of just showing what the audience already knows, it's still pretty neat to see Lex basically winning over Tessmacher (promising her vengeance against Leviathan for killing her dad) and using her as a way to get information in Obsidian. Of course, after the course of the episode's events, Lex very callously discards Tessmacher's attempted romantic advances by telling her how, well, he's the one that has her mother hostage now and he never even cared to figure out who killed her father. It's particularly cruel, and it seems that Lex was being particularly petty out of Tessmacher's betrayal of him pre-Crisis.

We also get the revelation that Lex told Tessmacher to kill poor Jeremiah Danvers, telling her that he's the man who killed her father. So there's yet another "Lex is behind it all" moment for you. I do like Lex's mask of self-confidence and supreme-chessmaster slipping, though, when he realizes that Lena gave Kara like a gift of a book and tried to make amends, and when he shows emotion and bursts out in anger in front of Lilian and later Lena, it humanizes Lex a lot and makes him a genuinely interesting villain to follow instead of just a generic super-smart-super-perfect villain.

It's not all flashback, though, because there's a framing story of sorts. The episode opens with Lex being hailed as a hero, having killed Margot (the old Leviathan lady) and rescuing all of the people kidnapped by Leviathan... and then we dial back the clock a little bit. Supergirl and her team are trying to figure out the huge problem of the missing people, and they're all sort of convinced that they need to tie Lex to the crime... and Kara ends up using Myriad as a plot device to help track the missing people. As this is going on, of course, Myriad's activation interferes with Lena's Non Nocere project, and with a few prodding words from Lex, he ends up causing Lena to storm off to the Fortress of Solitude, which does a couple of things for Lex -- he breaks the whole Kara/Lena friendship right when it's at the cusp of mending; he gets the teleportation coordinates for the Fortress of Solitude; and he sends an invisible alien (a Leviathan agent, apparently?) to attack and ultimately unleash the Sun-Eater as a threat that Supergirl, J'onn and M'gann needs to solve.

The heroes save the day because of course they do, while Lex ends up making himself out to be a 'hero', uncovering where Margot has been stashing all the kidnapped Obsidian Lens people, killing Margot and then calling foul on Supergirl for suspecting him all the time. Leviathan is angry and we even briefly get to see Gemmamae reveal her creepy robot form briefly, but Lex makes it out like he's doing Leviathan a favour by covering up their mistakes, and ends up earning that coveted 'seat at the table'. This plays into the whole Lex/Brainy thing, and it really does work to sell just why Brainy is committed to this alliance since Lex, despite consistently endangering people, is always proven right that 'Supergirl will save the day' and how Lex does get results in ways that Brainy would never have considered.

Of course, though, at the end of the episode, Lex himself strolls into the Fortress of Solitude while 'My Way' plays, seemingly at a whim, and it's genuinely curious to see how this is going to go on in regards to Lex's plan, playing Supergirl, Lena and Leviathan and manipulating everyone. The episode really hammers home what an insane chessmaster Lex is, and how smart he is in controlling and positioning everyone... while also highlighting that, fundamentally, Lex can also be impulsive and caught in an ego-centric tunnel-vision when it comes to either his sister or the Kryptonians. A very, very great character-centric episode, and, hell, might be my favourite episode of Supergirl so far.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• We're not sure if this is the same Morae, but a Morae was prominently featured in season four as part of Manchester Black's supervillain squad. 
• The Sun-Eater was last seen in the season four episode "Stand and Deliver". 

Supergirl S05E15-16 Review: VR Games

Supergirl, Season 5, Episode 15: Reality Bytes; Episode 16: Alex in Wonderland

Episode 15: Reality Bytes
We continue on with the whole Obsidian North VR storyline, and for both of these episodes, it's basically a bit of a late introduction to the concept of the whole VR-world thing. We see this in glimpses last episode and it's been mentioned a couple of times throughout the season, but Obsidian North's whole VR goggles thing just felt like a weird thing in the periphery while we focus on different things. "Reality Bytes" has a main storyline where the J'onn and Alex Manhunter P.I. duo go off to investigate a missing person case, another pretty fun, if, again, standalone plotline, and said missing person case leads to the fact that Obsidian's VR-land is able to basically be exploited. Shocker.

Anyway, the visuals and the plotline as J'onn and Alex track bartender Al's missing brother Trevor is pretty neat, because we learn that apparently there's a bug in Obsidian North that allows someone to bypass all the failsafes and prevent them from ever getting out of VR-land, and Trevor has ended up being trapped in a nightmarish torturous house-of-horrors by crazy programmer Richard Bates, who is angry that Trevor is having, well, VR sex with his wife. Which... holy fuck, Obsidian North, do you not even have guidelines for these things? Without even going into the problem of underage users of the VR lenses, do they think that this isn't going to be one of the first things that people would do in a VR land? We get a pretty decent, tense build-up to the crime, though, and it's a very solid sci-fi story through and through.

More interestingly -- and something that gets built up upon in the next episode -- is the fact that the very pro-Obsidian and pro-technology Kelly, in her first moment of real relevance outside of being a satellite character, is extremely disturbed to realize that the very bug that allowed Richard Bates to turn VR-utopia-land into a torture house is something that came up during testing and something that Kelly had reported. I do think this is smart; putting a member of the supporting cast as someone who's supporting the whole VR lenses thing means a lot more in making the VR situation ambiguous and more of a debate compared to it just being Andera Rojas.

In the B-plot, Nia discovers that some asshole bigot is attacking the trans community and scaring her poor roommate in order to draw Dreamer out, and it's... it's definitely a better way to do an LGBT-inclusive storyline than Batwoman's tenth episode. This episode's Nia story still has the subtlety of a brick to the face, but it works with what we know about Nia's character, and we even get a classic "are superheroes allowed kill scum?" angst bit thrown in. The plotline is extremely simple, and some asshole punk with a knife really can't hope to stand up against Dreamer and her brand-new glow-whip trick, but the acting and Nia's clear frustration and anger, and her attempt to rein that anger in, is definitely done well. It's just that I do feel like the Nia storyline could've really been given more time to breathe, and the dialogue could be written to be a bit less "lifted from an angry internet forum poster"... although I suppose that it fits the sort of character that the transphobic punk is supposed to represent. Nia Nal is a character that Supergirl definitely under-uses, and while not perfect, this is certainly a neat spotlight on her. Other decent smaller scenes include Brainy slowly and methodically helping out Nia in the background and informing the authorities of other assholes that target trans people; while Kara ends up being a neat mentor to Nia at the end of her story.

Anyway, a pretty solid and fun episode overall, even if it does feel a bit too standalone. The episode does end with a neatly ominous beat of Old Ominous Lady Margot taking Richard's comatose body and putting it in some sort of bizarre body-holding facility that can't be up to any good.
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Episode 16: Alex in Wonderland
And we finally get a proper sense of the VR storyline, and how deep the VR rabbit hole goes. It certainly doesn't take much for the audience to realize that Leviathan's big sinister and insidious plan involves the VR lenses, and that Andrea Rojas is their unwitting pawn for whatever they plan to do about it. And the plan is... to make people be unaware that they're stuck in VR-land, and have them think that VR-land is reality? And then kidnap their bodies and store them in Margot's evil warehouse of cocooned comatose people?

This episode is also heavily Alex-centric, which is awesome. Less awesome is the revelation that after being MIA since... season three? Season two? Since forever ago, Jeremiah Danvers has just fucking died off-screen due to a heart attack, and so we'll never get any sort of follow up to him trying to escape Project Cadmus or any of that jazz. Utterly bizarre and pretty poorly done. Still, Alex is working through a lot of grief, ranting about how Jeremiah was a wonderful father to Kara and always wanted to protect her, but essentially abandoned Alex. Not inaccurate, but Alex is clearly projecting a lot of her grief, and the scene at the beginning of the episode of her alienating Kara and Kelly is definitely a very well-done one showing how ugly grief can make someone.

So after getting drunk on wine, Alex ends up deciding to put on those fancy-schmancy Obsidian North VR contact lenses, and lets herself loose in a world where she is Supergirl. I'm not sure how the logistics of VR-land works, and how VR-land is able to craft such a tailor-made and accurate representation of a top-secrete government facility and its staff. Does it draw inspiration from Alex's memories? And if so, how many ethical rules is it breaking?

The biggest complaint, though, is the fact about how much of Alex's wandering around in VR-land being Supergirl and whatnot has very little to do with mourning Jeremiah or her initial fight with Kara. There's the unbridled joy as Alex ends up being Numero Uno in this new world instead of playing second-fiddle either as a daughter or as a superhero, and that's neat, but I don't think that emotional plot thread is followed through in a satisfying manner. The actual showcase of how dangerous VR-land's attempt at making at least some of its users lose their touch with the real world is amazingly done, though, with Alex-Supergirl finding a couple of users that feel... a bit off, but maybe they're just kooky or really into LARP-ing, yeah? And then she starts losing touch with reality herself, being baffled that there are two Supergirls, and then ripping out her VR lenses and waking up to the real, solid hard reality... that she's Supergirl. That bit is greatly done. Also greatly done is the over-exaggerated scenery-chewing bits that the virtual versions of Hank Henshaw and Brainiac-5 are doing. David Harewood has too much fun playing the Saturday Morning Cartoon version of Hank Henshaw.

The actual resolution of the plot is all right. We get some Kelly focus, which is welcome, and as the formerly biggest supporter of Obsidian North, her basically trying to get Alex to focus and accept reality -- the reality where her father's dead and she's not Supergirl -- is neat in concept, but in execution it's just underwhelming. And it's basically just "life sucks, accept the parts of it that suck and move on". I guess there's something to say about Alex being super self-independent that the avatar that Kelly sends in is a younger Alex instead of Kara or someone else, but it's a bit obvious that Melissa Benoist isn't available because she's sitting in the director's chair.

I'm also not 100% sure what makes the VR-mind-takeover works. Is Leviathan specifically targeting some specific people, or is it just literally just random? Because presumably a lot of the people that Margot abducts are people like Richard Bates that are essentially dispensable, otherwise we'd get a lot more people like Alex where their family members return to find them with red eyes half-dead on the sofa or on the bed or something.

In the B-plot is another Kelly storyline before Kelly gets wrapped back into rescuing Alex. Kelly gets approached by William Dey, who's super convinced that Lex Luthor is evil and that maybe he's the mastermind behind the VR glitch, and they basically discover that some of the people that have logged into VR-land for too long are actually missing... and then William enters the Warehouse of Evil only for a hologram to make it a so-near-yet-so-far bit. A far more interesting way to take William's character as a conspiracy-paranoid investigative reporter than the forced romance we've been having in the past couple of episodes. Andrea Rojas is also involved in a brief B-plot of her own where she's apparently not very aware of the mysterious glitches in her products and whatnot, but she still has enough of a soul to want to help out when things actually get risky. I still don't really care about either one of these characters, but this episode is good effort in trying to make them relevant. (Oh, and post-Crisis Eve Tessmacher is working for Rojas now. Okay?)

Overall, a clunky episode, but one with a very strong protagonist. Chyler Leigh's performance throughout this episode is A-star all throughout, and it's a pretty strong story for Alex despite the lack of cohesion with the framing Jeremiah-death storyline, which is still handled pretty poorly. I'm still not fully sold on the VR storyline, for sure, but at least it seems that we're going somewhere and I really would like to see Leviathan actually do something and be just a mite bit more involved in the events going on.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The dating app Upswipz was featured in the third season of Legends of Tomorrow, founded in part by Ray Palmer. 
• Jeremiah Danvers hasn't been seen since... season 2, I believe? The real-world Psi is a recurring secondary antagonist in season three.