Supergirl Midseason Finale Recap: “Reign”

KryptonSite would like to welcome Stephanie Hall to the site as she will be recapping and reviewing Supergirl for Season 3! Her review of “Wake Up” can be found here; her recap for the midseason finale “Reign” can be found below.

Amidst the Christmas festivities, Supergirl faces off with the newly awoken Reign, only to discover how truly powerful her new adversary is. Here is a recap and review of the Supergirl episode “Reign.”

RECAP & REVIEW:

A mysterious someone with laser vision carves a symbol into the ground. Cut to Sam’s screams summoning Ruby, who asks about her recent trip. Sam doesn’t remember any trip, but work has her so tired that it takes her a few moments to realize it’s pancake o’clock!

I’m glad Sam is receiving the Mon-El treatment from last season with a strong focus on her life both within and outside of her relationships with the main cast of characters. In only a short while, Sam and Ruby have infused Supergirl with a much needed maternal warmth and brought the series back around to revisiting the kind of storytelling that made season one and the first half of season two an admirable venture. Their heart and unconditional love, much akin to the Danvers sisters, reiterates the strength of family, without discounting the equal strength of found families. Their happiness reminds the audience, and hopefully the writers as well, that Supergirl can still be an empowering example of overcoming obstacles and believing in your ability to succeed. Their story reignites the beacon of hope for young girls and young women that the series originally set out to be.

In addition, Sam’s journey this season brings up an interesting commentary, not too unlike the social commentaries (on immigration, gun control, climate change, sexual orientation, genocide, slavery) that permeated season 2A and made it one of the most interesting and relevant political discussions on television. Here we have a somewhat more spiritual issue in the battle between destiny and free will that’s materialized in the struggle between Reign and Sam for control. Only time will tell where the series falls on the issue. Given this season’s emphasis on embracing your humanity, it seems possible that there could be a sort of redemption arc for Sam, a potential internal fight where Sam’s love for Ruby and her friends, her faith in being a role model for her child, overpowers her urge to be a machine of destruction. It would be a disservice to the message of hope, help, and compassion for all to have Sam succumb to Reign, to have Sam lose herself in the fight, unless, of course, her sacrifice is what saves the day.

Back in the episode, Mon-El and Imra gather alongside the DEO Agents of the Round Table and explain that Supergirl inspired them to create a Legion of Super-Heroes. They assist Earth’s leaders with keeping the intergalactic peace, but (to no one’s surprise) their pod got knocked off course, and now they’d rather spend the holidays making repairs than attending Kara’s rockin’ party. Passing up Alex’s eggnog (recipe: 1 part eggnog, 2 parts rum, I’m guessing), Lena raises her glass of scotch to make a toast with James.

The decision to have Lena toast to health and James toast to happiness at first seems like a set of stereotypical wishes for anyone, but I’m wondering if these two topics carry more weight given the characters involved.

Lena tends to almost die every other episode, so her wish for health could be a simple hope to survive, but it also runs deeper when we consider her brother’s mental break and her desire to steer clear of following in her family’s footsteps. But the writers keeps putting her through the ringer, so her health could be somewhere on the list of impending fights. Lena’s comic book counterpart has been depicted as wheelchair-bound, which, if handled correctly, could provide positive representation given that Lena intelligent, driven, compassionate, and constantly striving to be good despite all odds. However, I’m wondering if they would actually go through with it considering they attempted a paralysis storyline on Arrow, and then found a way around it, barely acknowledging now that it even happened.

With James, his professional and personal life (or at least what we’ve been privy to, which hasn’t been much) has been rather rocky and unfulfilling. Running CatCo took him away from his love of photojournalism, so he found a new purpose with Guardian, but how has that been going lately? We have no idea, and up until he used his shield this episode, it wasn’t clear that he was still acting as Guardian. What would work best would be if the show could find a way to combine his passion for photojournalism with his work as a hero, perhaps in a Peter Parker/Spiderman photography situation. If Kara uses Supergirl as a source, why can’t James Olsen photograph Guardian’s saves and highlight other non-powered heroes around the town? On the personal front, Lucy left him (twice) and Kara abruptly ended things between them, so maybe Lena is the answer to personal happiness for however long.

Back at the party, M’yrnn realizes he loves the magical brown water that is hot cocoa more than the magical brown water that is coffee. Just wait until he tastes Alex’s eggnog. The Danvers sisters take a moment to check on each other’s well-being. They’re both hanging in there. When Sam and Ruby arrive, Alex takes Ruby aside to tell her about that time she jumped out of a building and Supergirl caught her. Sometimes this series completely ignores things that happened in the past, but sometimes they remember gems like this.

This scene between Alex and Ruby seems to foreshadow a potential future in which Alex adopts Ruby after Reign’s reign ends. Can you imagine how excited Ruby would be when she learns one of her new aunts is actually Supergirl? More subtly, Ruby’s interest in Supergirl also brings up questions about just how similar the two of them can be. Is Ruby part Kryptonian? Can she develop powers to help others or is she also destined to become a worldkiller?

Sam notices Lena making googly eyes at James, but Lena denies it, saying, “There is no chemistry.” And I said the same thing because there has been zero indication of a Lena-James romance until now. To say it’s “forced” sounds like a cheap way to knock it down, but is a pairing that has been brought into existence by the writers will to pair them up rather than a pairing brought to fruition by the actors’ natural chemistry. The rule of writing is “show, don’t tell,” and all they’ve done is told. Maybe with a little more time and effort, this relationship can grow into something that feels real because I love the idea of a Luthor and a Super-adjacent, but we’re not there yet.

Kara joins the Bechdel-failing conversation to give her seal of approval. Lena considers letting her Luthor genes shine through and killing both Kara and Sam, but then she’d miss the only two friends she has, so she returns to her scotch. If Sara’s going to be drinking scotch on a different Earth, I could do with Alex and Lena as drinking buddies on this Earth. Kara makes an emotional speech about how the two of them helped her through a tough year. I’m sorry, but what about the Superfriends? Are we ignoring season one now? Regardless, it’s nice to see Kara making friends only as Kara Danvers, an average girl with less than average vision. Harkening back to “show, don’t tell,” we need to see more of Kara’s relationship with Sam to really cement their friendship on the same level as Kara and Lena or Kara and Winn and James.

The DEO Agents of the Round Table leave to investigate a symbol burned into a field on L Corp land. It’s the same shape as the Supergirl logo, but a skull fills the center. Hologram Alura provides little information about the symbol, only that it pre-dates modern Krypton and the Book of Rao.

James assigns stories on the symbol in a scene that reminded me of the scene from episode “Welcome to Earth” where Snapper does the same. Not only does it show how confident and skilled James has become in his role as acting CEO, but it also made me wonder where Snapper is, and on a similar note, where Kara is. She fought so hard last season to become a respected reporter and now she’s nowhere to be found. She’s barely been inside CatCo this season, and we’ve yet to see her chase a story, so what was the point of an entire season of Kara learning to juggle reporting with heroism with love if it all falls by the wayside? Lena struts in like she owns the place, because she does, and blames Morgan Edge, who denies everything.

Desperate for answers, Kara and Winn visit the alien bar, but all they find is Mon-El and Imra giggling over messy chicken wings. A call from Thomas Coville, leader of the church of Supergirl, pulls Kara away. Coville assigns the symbol to the devil, saying it signifies the beginning of the end. First, comes the mark. Then, comes the work of the beast in the form of many deaths. Finally, the reign of the beast. It’s Kara’s destiny to fight the devil, but she doesn’t believe he/she exists.

When Coville mentioned he spent two years collecting artifacts and information about Rao, including meeting a Kryptonian priestess, it made me realize how little we still know about Kryptonian customs and religion, which is odd, considering that it’s how the lead character was raised. Other than tidbits with HoloMom and seeing Kara pray in “Triggers,” Kara doesn’t seem as connected to Krypton as one would think, with is such a missed opportunity to explore the ideas that shaped her and include a discussion on freedom of religion and the balance between religion and science, god and human.

At L Corp, a news clip about the 1-7 Gang captures Sam’s attention, but Ruby’s plea for dinner snaps her out of it. Since she’s behind on work, Sam can’t take Ruby out for dinner, but she does remind Ruby of the Christmas they spent having a snowball fight in a truck stop parking lot and marveling at their newspaper tree. It was the best Christmas ever because they were together. Sam gives Ruby a necklace with the House of El crest and tells her it means “stronger together,” just like they are. Everyone goes through a rough patch in their life, and Supergirl is definitely in hers right now while she’s still dealing with the whole Mon-el situation, but I hope someday soon she emerges on the other side and once again becomes the optimistic idol that Ruby sees her as.

Before Lena and James can meet a source, someone with a ray gun attacks. James deflects the beams with his handy-dandy Transformers-style Guardian shield. Lena conveniently doesn’t see and passes the attack off as her quarterly assassination attempt. Oh, the inconvenience. If Lena doesn’t know that Kara is Supergirl, can she at least know James is Guardian? I want to see her more involved in the city-saving shenanigans. There’s so much untapped potential with Lena’s intelligence that could be used alongside Winn while tweaking Guardian’s technology for the greater good.

Across town, the mysterious someone with laser vision (i.e. Reign) takes out the 1-7 Gang. I understand that the writers wanted to wait for the “Reign in her suit” reveal to happen for the audience at the same time it happened for Supergirl, but trying to hide her identity here just made the scene look odd and fuzzy.

Better at solving puzzles that involve her enemies than those that involve her friends, Lena ties her assassination attempt to Edge. He planned to kill her in a way consistent with a Kryptonian, whether Supergirl or the newbie. This awakens Sam’s sense of justice, and she powers out of Lena’s office with a SHIRT RIP and a beautiful, haunting score. Fortunately for Edge, Reign can’t find him in his lead-lined panic room. Supergirl summons Reign by burning her own symbol into the roof of CatCo. First, Supergirl destroyed the CatCo elevator, now she’s burning the building; it’s a wonder Lena hasn’t called her out on it, but I guess Lena is too busy calling Edge a “sociopathic cockroach.” She pours James a drink for saving her life, but before they can finish, she pulls him in by the tie for a kiss.

Before Supergirl meets Reign, Alex begs her to forget being human. Be cold. Be Kryptonian. Born to cleanse and dispense justice, Reign engages Supergirl in a brutal fight that inexplicably draws blood from Supergirl’s head. Seriously, how is Supergirl bleeding without Kryptonite being present? It would certainly make a statement about Reign’s strength if she can hit Supergirl hard enough to break canon, but you’d think we would have seen a hint of strength-induced bleeding when she was brawling with Superman last season. Even though Supergirl gets a decent shot in, Reign flies her up to a rooftop, only to drop her onto the street below. We’re not used to seeing full-fledged fight sequences on Supergirl given that she can usually knock someone out with one punch, so this five-minute fight was a spectacle to behold, right on part with Supergirl vs Superman. Alex rushes to an unconscious Supergirl’s side as a group of onlookers, including James and Lena, wonder if she survived. Back at the DEO, Alex goes into Dr. Lexie Grey mode, intubating Kara and checking her weak pulse.

The next morning, Ruby rushes downstairs to find her mother staring vacantly out the window. Sam dramatically turns around and the screen cuts to black.

Happy holidays, folks!

ODDS AND ENDS:

– “Ho Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum” by Jimmy Buffett is the greatest Christmas song ever. Sorry, J’onn.

– Morgan Edge: Lena, I didn’t recognize you without a .38 in your hand.
Lena: Maybe I should hit you over the back of the head and put you on a drone headed for the reservoir.
Morgan Edge: Allegedly.

– Supergirl returns January 15.

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