The Power of Hope
The Supergirl Season 1 finale picks up right where last week left off with Kara and a mind controlled Alex fighting each other. It’s actually not that bad of an action scene, even though it only takes about two minutes. Kara gets knocked around pretty good though because of her refusal to fight her sister. Alex is just about to finish Kara off when J’onn flies in with Eliza to get her to snap out of it which of course works. Well, that was disappointingly brief.
They make their way back to Cat’s TV station to try to implement Supergirl’s plan to take down Myriad. Supergirl goes on the air to give another hopeful speech and begs the people of National City to embrace their free will again. As much as I like how much this show emphasizes hope, even I’m a little surprised that this plan actually works (though maybe I shouldn’t be since this basically proves how lame Myriad was to begin with). This doesn’t sit well with Non and Indigo, so they decide to cut all “greater good” pretense and just kill everybody. Great, so not only is Non a rather lame Big Bad but he’s also the biggest sore loser in history.
The next day at CatCo, everyone has gone back to work and Kara and James try to talk about their kiss. Sadly, that riveting plot line is put on hold when Cat calls them in for a morning meeting.
Meanwhile, at the DEO, Lucy and General Lane reunite, though their happy reunion gets marred when General Lane still insists on taking J’onn prisoner. Lucy says that his black-and-white attitude toward everything is what allowed Non to take over in the first place and also why his relationship with her and Lois is nonexistent.
Meanwhile, Eliza has sensed that there’s been something Alex has wanted to tell her and now that the Myriad smoke has cleared she wants to know what it is. Alex then reveals that Jeremiah is still alive and while Eliza rightfully points out that this makes no sense, Alex vows to find him and bring him home.
Maxwell Lord them shows up to tell them that while the mind control is no longer an issue, the Myriad signal has been amplified and the signal will kill everybody on Earth in about four hours. Lord works on finding the source of the Myriad signal but he also warns Supergirl that defeating the Kryptonians by herself is going to be difficult. While he believes it’s entirely possible she’ll be able to win, he also knows it’s much more likely that this is a suicide mission. Kara seems to agree because she goes by CatCo to give James, Winn and Cat some thinly veiled goodbye speeches (Cat in particular notes that Kara’s speech to her sounds like either a eulogy or a suicide note).
Photo: Supergirl (CBS)
You Try Lifting a Million Ton Spacecraft
Lord has been able to trace the location of Non’s lair and it turns out to be none other than Fort Rozz. General Lane reveals that when Fort Rozz crash-landed in Nevada, the prison was so enormous that the military was unable to move it, so instead they decided to just leave it there and keep it hidden (and for some reason apparently put zero surveillance on it). Supergirl goes to fight Non but J’onn insists on coming with her despite General Lane’s usual objections of him being a danger to national security. Thankfully, everyone else in the room is smarter than General Lane and acknowledges Supergirl is going to need all the help she can get (since Superman is inexplicably unconscious off screen through all of this).
Kara and J’onn fly in and are confronted by only Non and Indigo (the rest of their army are conveniently already in their sleeping pods). Kara tries talking Non and Indigo out of their evil plan but they’ve both long since given up on pretending to be remotely interesting so they fight instead. Kara goes against Non while J’onn takes on Indigo. The respective fights end with J’onn ripping Indigo in half (whoa) and Kara out heat-visioning Non (basically a repeat of the Red Tornado fight minus the loss of powers).
Even with the Kryptonian threat neutralized, Kara still has no way to shut down Myriad, so Kara decides to use her strength to lift Fort Rozz into space and get Myriad’s signal out of range. Alex tries to talk her out of this though saying Kara won’t be able to survive in space (wait then how did Superman go off planet last week?) but Kara insists there’s no other way. Kara is able to get Fort Rozz into space without much trouble but quickly loses consciousness. Alex is then seen flying inside of Kara’s old rescue pod to save her.
Kara wakes up back inside the DEO and gets a standing ovation from everyone involved including General Lane. As a matter of fact, General Lane has more good news saying that J’onn has just been pardoned by the President and reinstated as director of the DEO (does this mean Lucy will be changing jobs again?). Secretly, however, General Lane gives Lord a likely season 2 MacGuffin/piece of the Fort Rozz ship.
Afterwards, at CatCo, Cat has a little surprise for Kara. As a reward for her unwavering loyalty and work ethic, Cat gives Kara a promotion and a new office. To further symbolize Kara moving up in the world, Cat gets her name right for possibly the first time in the show.
Back at Kara’s apartment, she’s celebrating with Alex, James, Winn, J’onn and Eliza for a job well done when James finally takes her aside to finally talk about their kiss uninterrupted. They, of course, admit their feelings for each other and kiss once again. The moment gets cut short however when a meteor is seen crashing towards National City. Kara and J’onn fly in to investigate it and the meteor turns out to a Kryptonian escape pod that looks exactly like Kara’s. Kara looks inside the ship and is shocked to see what she finds.
Photo: Supergirl (CBS)
Analysis
This recap might feel a little shorter than usual and that’s mostly because, for a finale episode, not a whole lot happens. The mind control plot is wrapped up extremely easily and everything afterward feels like some sort of an extended epilogue. Once the mind control thing was over, it felt like everything was just being used to fill time. My feeling is this was originally supposed to happen all in one episode but when CBS asked for an additional seven episodes they decided to drag it out.
As I said before, Non wasn’t a particularly interesting villain and the fact that his Kryptonian army was nowhere to be found in this episode makes the so-called climax feel more like an afterthought.
Photo: Supergirl (CBS)
Supergirl Season 1 Review
I have tried really hard to like this show and there are plenty things I actually do like about it. Melissa Benoist is an excellent Supergirl and the rest of the main cast is certainly not without their moments. Cat might be my favorite non-Supergirl character of the show and makes the often soap opera-ey goings on at CatCo more fun to watch. Hank Henshaw got off to a rough start but once he was revealed to be J’onn J’onnz, the writing for him thankfully got much more interesting. As for Alex, she had plenty of badass moments and if Supergirl is allowed to be renewed for a second season, she could end up being on par with Chloe Sullivan as far as original characters go. James and Winn could certainly be annoying, but at this point, I’ve mostly chalked that up to the writers still trying to figure out what to do with them.
As much as I like the characters, this series still leaves a lot to be desired. I thought for a little while about what the problem was and my personal theory is the pacing which in this season was just awful. Plot developments end of happening either way too fast or way too slow with nothing in between. Kryptonians will fly in to carry out some part of their evil plan only to then disappear for the next several episode to presumably twiddle their thumbs until the writers need them to do something again. The amount of stalling with the Kryptonians is painfully obvious, and with several episodes, you would be forgiven if you forgot they even existed.
This was even a problem with Maxwell Lord since they moved things along with him way too fast. He’s figured out Supergirl’s identity by episode 12, so the writers have the DEO stick him into a jail cell until they can figure out what to do with him.
I’m hoping this ends up being like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. where the show ends up finding it’s groove as things go on. That is, of course, assuming Supergirl comes back for season 2. Fingers crossed.