Yes, I know you were all busy watching Game of Thrones shit the bed in the most glorious fashion last night. Yet, if you happened to tune into the CW the hour before Game of Thrones, you got a sincerely good conclusion to a season that ended up being one of the most entertaining seasons of supershows the CW has done. You also got some massive teases for next year’s multi-show crossover event, “Crisis on Infinite Earths.”
At the beginning of the year, Supergirl felt like a show with a whole lot of enthusiasm and not a lot of tact; as it hit us over the head with metaphors about immigration and the alt-right, it taxed its own credibility. It also felt like things moved way too quickly—with the show rarely taking the chance to breathe and let us settle with these characters for a while.
And while the pacing of Supergirl never let up, the season’s final episode was so much fun, and full of so many payoffs, that you can forgive the many missteps.
And really it comes down to the Luthors. Lex Luthor orchestrated the entire season’s main crisis of aliens versus humans so he could take over the world, wipe out every last Kryptonian in the galaxy, and use all the rest of the aliens who made the mistake of immigrating to the U.S. as batteries.
Naturally, after revealing part of this diabolical plan, Lex quotes Hitler just to hammer home the pure evil of “Lex Luthor” and remind you that even a charming villain is still a villain. That his own mother calls him out for quoting Hitler is shocking; that she was also attempting to poison him because she loves a good forcible relocation, but full genocide is a step too far is...funny?
Or perhaps just diabolical on her part. As her son expounds upon his own genius Ma Luthor seems to realize this kid is a lost cause, and if she wants a dastardly morally dubious child she’s better off siding with her daughter Lena, who is actually a good person and best friends with Supergirl and the Super Squad.
At least, that is, until the end of the episode.
While Game of Thrones gave us whiplash with a heel turn in the last two episodes, Supergirl has been laying the foundation of Lena’s potential turn since her very first episode. She doesn’t go evil in the finale, but she does murder Lex minutes after he fakes his death (and leaves his corpse to rot).
The murder has a cost...not Lena’s innocence or anything like that, but her friendship with Kara, the Super Friends, and her own mother. Lex’s final act of villainy is to reveal Kara’s secret to Lena and let her know every single person she cares about not only knows Kara’s secret but worked to keep it from Lena too. The implication, by the end of the episode, is that Lena Luthor is pissed—she feels used and manipulated (to be fair, she was)—and she could go evil because of it, especially as the season watched her sort of haphazardly slide into a moral gray area (though shockingly still with more development than a certain similar Game of Thrones character).
But will she actually go full evil? That remains to be seen! Typically when people who are friends with a Super learn the truth, and not from the Super themselves, they’re upset and annoyed but push through because they recognize the inherent goodness of the Super. Going evil because your best friend kept a secret is...not the usual course of action. But, again, since season two Supergirl has hinted at Lena’s capacity for great evil, and both her mother and brother firmly believe learning Kara’s secret will destroy what control she’s maintained. So who can say!
Well, okay. Maybe Lex will be able to say—because after his sister murders him and leaves his corpse to rot so she can hang with all her friends who lied to her, the Monitor shows up! He needs Lex, or Lex’s corpse, for the Crisis.
The Monitor also drops off a cloaked figure on Supergirl’s Earth, presumably to better put the characters into the places he needs them to be so the Crisis can go down. The figure appears to be J’onn’s brother, Ma’alefa’ak. In the comics, Ma’alefa’ak is the rare green Martian who has no telepathy. He’s a cruel individual, but clever. So clever he creates a plague that wipes out most of the green Martians. Presumably, that is not what he does on the show—given the green Martians were wiped out by a genocide perpetrated by the white Martians.
Either way, between him, Lena, and Zombie (?!?) Lex Luthor, Supergirl has a nice line-up of villains for next season.
Assorted Musings
- Kasnian Supergirl took one for the team and got absorbed into Kara and I am very sad the show didn’t do more with her.
- But now she lives in Kara so maybe she will show up again.
- Also, she gave Kara purple laser vision. Neat.
- Lex sang along to Sinatra’s version of “My Way” as he betrayed the Kasnians. It was a little on the nose...but also it worked?
- Alex is now dating James’s sister. They’re soft and sweet, but here’s hoping they get more of a plot than “adopt babies and jog?” next season.
- Witnessing Dreamer and J’onn give up their energies to stop a missile that will kill the last remaining Kryptonians (including Superman) is enough to snap Brainy out of his robot mode. Jesse Rath is impeccable in the transition.
- Oh yeah, and Eve was never in love with Lex. She only got in league with him because she was actually an agent of Leviathan, which, in the comics is an offshoot of the League of Assassins run by Talia al Ghul. They appear to be a spy organization in Supergirl too, but are they run by Earth-38 Talia? Who can say! If they are, it would be the first Earth-1 character to get an Earth-38 counterpart.
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