Supergirl Episode 19 “Myriad” Review

Verdict: The penultimate episode of season one presents plenty of thought-provoking ideas and an inspiring affirmation of this show’s optimistic ethos, but Myriad is also marred by spotty execution and poorly written villains.

Review

Considering how complex and labyrinthine the story arcs have been on superhero shows lately (take the ongoing Zoom doppelganger story on The Flash, or the convoluted mythology of the Hand in Daredevil), it’s notable just how pared-down Supergirl’s story arc has been for its first season. It’s focused on one set of villains with the same goal throughout the season, and the only mystery here has been the Kryptonians plan, Myriad, of which the details have been entirely kept from the audience. That simplicity means that Supergirl has had the time to truly find itself in the season’s back half with a variety of thematically-driven stories and long-running emotional conflicts that have reaped rich rewards, but it also means that the Kryptonian arc has only periodically cropped up even as the season’s come to its conclusion, with the result being that the mystery of Myriad and Non’s plan hadn’t really built up much momentum going into the season’s endgame. In its penultimate episode, Supergirl returned to that story arc big-time, with results that are somewhat all over the map.

It’s worth saying off the bat that Myriad is a heavily flawed episode of television, more so than any episode of Supergirl since before the halfway point. There’s some genuinely poor moments here and sloppy execution of ideas that are fascinating on paper, and there’s some key problems with the core of the episode itself, as it aims to be a morality play yet presents a hopelessly simplistic moral debate to focus around. And yet, despite all these things, I liked this episode. It’s a bit of a mess, certainly, but its heart is completely in the right place, and in its own haphazard way, it achieves what it sets out to do. Myriad is an episode that sometimes showcases the worst of Supergirl, but nonetheless reaffirms why it’s become an essential part of the DC TV pantheon in recent weeks.

Myriad is chock-full of morality debates and grey areas that are potentially thought provoking, though not all hit the mark. After weeks of teasing, the mystery of Myriad was finally revealed here, and it’s a fascinating evil plan that ties in excellently into this season’s main themes. The best villainous plans are the ones that are somewhat justified in their intentions yet skewed in their means, and Myriad hits this sweet spot with an idea that’s actually very sympathetic in its intentions. On paper, Myriad is an act of altruism – the points Non makes in his visit to CatCo are, though viewed through the prism of Non’s twisted, revenge-fuelled mind, certainly substantial and thought-provoking; and, at the end of the day, the goal of Myriad is to benefit Earth even if the means are incredibly questionable. There’s a really interesting debate to be had here about the nature of free will versus total collectivism, and the debate about whether solving Earth’s problems is worth the sacrifice of individuality is a sophisticated quandary that I’m impressed that the purportedly family-friendly and broadly-drawn Supergirl is dabbling in. However, despite the complexity of the ideas that Myriad dabbles in with its central plan, all it really does is dabble – it fails to truly engage with the complexity of the moral issue by not framing it as a moral debate for our heroes to grapple with. It’s arguable that this debate would have completely fuelled this episode on its own if the heroes had tackled whether Non was right in this assessment, and it’s frustrating that a potentially fascinating idea stays… well, simply an idea. The episode presents Myriad at a surface level and then skips onto other things without delving into it and fleshing out the morality of this plan, and that’s problematic because it undermines the other moral debates presented elsewhere. Myriad purports to be a morality play with the bomb debate, but it’s hard to truly judge it as a full-blooded exploration of morality when it so greatly simplifies an equally complex idea by not exploring any of the nuance.

The other major debate is the one that Myriad does spend most of its time on; whether killing eight per cent of National City’s population is worth stopping Myriad and saving the world. At points, this debate is genuinely fascinating to watch as it allows an intriguing parallel to be drawn between Maxwell Lord and Supergirl, two people who have witnessed deaths of those they love due to a lack of action and now spend their days taking direct action on their own principles. It’s a parallel that organically emerges through their different approaches to the Myriad crisis, and it works very well as a way to bind together Supergirl and a character who’s never really found a stable thematic place for the show as an antagonist and then uneasy ally. Lord’s character is also fleshed out nicely here with a backstory that goes a great way towards justifying his current ideology as a product of avoidably tragic circumstances in which he was, in his own way, somewhat complicit. It also contributes significantly to the ‘nature vs nurture’ debate that’s bubbling underneath the surface of Myriad, making a far more effective argument in that debate than the clunky presentation of Superman under Myriad’s control.

However, the problem with this ‘needs of the many’ debate is that it’s extremely simplistic in its depiction. The idea that Kara is pushed towards considering this solution is a perfectly good one, and it’s naturally and effectively built to with the impactful scene in which she fails to save a CatCo worker falling from the building despite rescuing Cat and James, symbolising the fact that she’s simply not able to save everyone. In questioning and undercutting Supergirl’s initial optimism to the point where she’s willing to embrace alternate solutions, Myriad works just fine, but it stumbles because the alternative is so drastic that her consideration of it doesn’t register as the logical yet fear-driven move towards pragmatism that it should do. It’s the same problem that it faced with the simplification of Myriad as a moral debate; Myriad’s moral questions are far too clear-cut and sharply drawn to be truly complex. While it’s great that Supergirl is confronting these ideas at all, it does feel at times, especially in the middle of the episode, that it’s aiming far higher than it can reach. Myriad goes for a thoughtful meditation on pragmatism versus optimism in times of war, but the problem is that Myriad’s alternative solution for Supergirl is a solution so horrifying that it’s very hard indeed to imagine Kara immediately opting for it at that point without at least thinking of some slightly more moderate, middle-way alternatives. In some respects, the episode suffers from offering up a dichotomy of solutions when it’s trying to explore moral grey areas, and therefore it’s not able to reach the complexity that the ideas it’s proposing require to truly work.

With its villains, Myriad also faces the problem of the execution working at cross-purposes to its intentions. Non and Indigo are the face of Myriad, which means that, on paper they’re (or, at least Non is) villains with complicated yet altruistic motivations – a desire to help Earth that’s expressed in entirely the wrong way. And in Non’s scene at CatCo in which he explains Myriad, the character does reach that level of complexity as he makes the aforementioned thought-provoking points about the genuine benefits of his evil plan, making him an ambiguous villain who’s not a cookie-cutter ‘destroy the world’ moustache-twirler. Unfortunately, Non’s only this complex villain in that one scene, because every other scene in the episode he’s presented as unquestionably evil as he looks upon all he’s conquered and declares himself a lord. Myriad fails to maintain a decent level of complexity within Non’s characterisation in his other scenes, and as such he falls into the same villainous clichés that he’s been mired in all season, becoming a deeply boring villain whose only interesting facet is a plan that was actually cooked up by the considerably more interesting Astra (so there’s not much individuality there either). Indigo, meanwhile, is fine as a fun villain who’s just in it for the destruction and the chances at power, but her scenes with Non suffer from feeling camp and exaggerated with the overtly clichéd villainous dialogue, contributing to the unevenness of the episode as it swerves from thoughtful debates on morality to cackling super-villains.

I’ve criticised Myriad a great deal because there’s genuinely a lot at fault here – but, as mentioned above, the episode still just about works despite it all, and it works because the messy moral debates and the unevenly portrayed villains are all in service of a really terrific end-point. After a particularly troublesome mid-section, Myriad finally coalesces with its final act into an inspiring superhero story, and it’s the scene on the CatCo balcony where the episode’s intentions truly become clear. Cat’s speech to Kara about believing in hope over fear and simply being Supergirl to save the day is a fantastic scene not just because of Calista Flockhart’s earnest performance that really conveys the inspiration Supergirl has had on Cat, but because it’s a perfect summation of what makes Supergirl great despite all of its myriad (I couldn’t resist) flaws. Supergirl certainly has had its problems, but it came out of the blocks with a notably uplifting tone and optimistic, open-minded central ethos that it’s refined and added nuance to as the episodes have improved, and it’s this ethos that really sets it apart from most of its ilk (aside from, maybe, The Flash, though that’s been plenty dark in recent weeks). And while the show has backed up and reinforced this ethos with a stronger narrative framework, sharper thematic focus and better-defined characters, it’s the uplifting central message that’s still arguably the most crucial element of this show. With this in mind, a lot of Myriad’s intentions become sharper even if the execution isn’t retroactively improved. The episode can be seen as a way of testing that central message of optimism to its very limits by showing all the disadvantages of that worldview in a critical situation, before ultimately re-asserting its importance to this particular show in a genuinely inspiring fashion, reinforcing that central ethos by stating that, while darker and more pragmatic methods may be tempting for its central heroine as the most ‘logical’ path, this show is ultimately about holding onto hope and believing in the good of others. There’s absolutely room for a whole host of central worldviews in superhero fiction, and a darker view doesn’t make a bad adaptation, but Supergirl’s optimistic worldview has nonetheless been hugely refreshing and uplifting viewing; and Myriad makes the best and most compelling case for the importance of the show maintaining this central view.

Myriad closes with a pretty huge cliffhanger as Kara finds herself squaring off against a brainwashed Alex kitted out in a Kryptonite battle suit and armed with the sword that killed Astra, and it’s a shocking twist that promises some really fascinating, thematically rich conflicts next week as the Danvers family is pitted against each other. After all, a central theme of this season has been family, and how better to explore that theme through a fight involving a glowing green sword?

Myriad is a confounding episode for a large amount of its run-time, showing flashes of brilliance and confronting some thought provoking ideas but frequently failing to follow through on the complexity of the ideas it proposed in favour of simplistic storylines that undercut the moral ambiguity the episode tries to hard to purport. However, it all comes together so convincingly at the end with an inspiring affirmation of hope and optimism in the face of disaster with a final act that re-contextualises the episode as working messily towards a truly inspired objective. It’s all over the place in its execution, but Myriad is the type of nakedly optimistic superhero fiction that we need more of, and it sets the table convincingly and excitingly for next week’s season finale with a terrific and shocking cliffhanger. Riddled with flaws it may be, Myriad comes out the other end with its goals achieved – and now, there’s just one more episode left this season.

Odds & Ends

• The Alex/Hank storyline was a tad slight, but contained some really fun moments as Kara and Alex’s mother giddily reacted to the sight of the shapeshifting Martian Manhunter. J’onn’s final fight with Indigo is undoubtedly exciting and tense, but the final moment which appears to show him giving into his wounds feels like a bit of a fake-out.
• I understand why the writers wanted to explain Superman not helping, as plenty of people would have chalked that up as a plot hole, but a few lines of dialogue would have sufficed instead of the evasive, strangely conceived scene in which Superman gives into Myriad… because of nurture?
• Another good week for Cat – best moment aside from the balcony speech: her deeply meta reference to Calista Flockhart’s real-life husband, Harrison Ford.
• The opening fight scene at the DEO was a really exciting way to start the episode, as well as providing a few callbacks to early episodes, getting plenty of momentum built up right off the bat.
• And, as mentioned, next week’s is sadly the final episode of the season, in which Supergirl squares off against Non and Indigo for the final showdown. I’ll bet that, in the grand tradition of character deaths in the first season finales of DC TV shows, a major character will snuff it – at a guess, either James or Lucy given their recent focus.