Supergirl (TV Series, Season 3)
Jul. 31st, 2018 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroWe open on Kara deliberately sealing off her human life and emotions because she’s super-distraught about sending Mon-El into space at the end of last season. This goes poorly, as you can guess, as we already know that Kryptonians are prone to being overly-emotional messes and that nobody stays dead (or exiled into space) in comics.
Lena Luthor, as I think I previously mused, is so reminiscent of Smallville-Lex that I wonder if they’re lifting her dialogue wholesale. And I’m definitely not looking into the fanfiction, because I strongly suspect that pairing her with James lead to an explosion of OT3 Kara/Lena/James fic.
It took me almost half the season to connect in my brain that they had re-cast Smallville’s Lois Lane as Kara’s mom, Alura Zor-El. (The character barely appeared in season two, in my defense.) It’s interesting, actually—the plot twists in this show that very clearly are a result of actor’s scheduling issues seem much more frequent than in other shows I follow. (The breakup with Maggie is another such example.)
If they had to break up the adorable lesbian couple, doing it over the wants kids/doesn’t want kids dynamic seems a pretty decent way to go about it, actually. It’s a fundamental difference that no amount of loving someone “enough” will fix.
Interesting that when they introduced the Legion, they brought in Imra / Saturn Girl specifically as a telekinetic, rather than as a telepath. They already had multiple telepathic characters, so the switch makes sense from that perspective, but why change her powers when Shadow Lass or White Witch had closer power sets to what they wanted? Shadow Lass had even been canonically married to Mon-El! (I guess because Saturn Girl is a classic founder of the Legion?)
The ”main villain” Reign seems to be defeated in episode 18; if the season had ended there with a little tag about Lena turning her back into Sam, it would be a decent ending. But then it becomes clear that the various loose ends were left there for a reason…and I again wonder how much of that reason was scheduling-based. (I read something that the last third of the season had to be rewritten from their original plans, and I believe it.)
The references to the random parts of comics mythos (J’onn imaginary friend being a 5th-dimensional imp named Zook, Kara’s cat named Streaky, etc.) were delightful nods, but then, it’s not like they shy away from using ridiculous things like Argo City or the Legion. If this show gets enough seasons, we’re definitely going to see Comet the Super-Horse.
Going into season four: Winn has headed off to the future to join the Legion, and Mon-El has also returned there, presumably for good. (And Brainiac 5 is staying in 2018, it seems?) J’onn has resigned from the DEO and left Alex in charge, choosing to walk the Earth. James has outed himself as Guardian. Lena, having recruited Eve Tessmacher as her mad science assistant, is doing lots of secret experiments with magical Kryptonian stone (that she can now synthesize). And a mysterious duplicate of Supergirl, likely related to either her time-travel shenanigans or her use of the stone to pull Sam and Reign into the alternate-dimension mind-woods, has appeared in Sibera.
Overall: This tends to be somehow both more didactic and more cheesy than the other DC/CW shows; I still enjoy it, but I acknowledge that the others manage to be stronger dramatically and Legends of Tomorrow embraces goofiness much more fully.
Lena Luthor, as I think I previously mused, is so reminiscent of Smallville-Lex that I wonder if they’re lifting her dialogue wholesale. And I’m definitely not looking into the fanfiction, because I strongly suspect that pairing her with James lead to an explosion of OT3 Kara/Lena/James fic.
It took me almost half the season to connect in my brain that they had re-cast Smallville’s Lois Lane as Kara’s mom, Alura Zor-El. (The character barely appeared in season two, in my defense.) It’s interesting, actually—the plot twists in this show that very clearly are a result of actor’s scheduling issues seem much more frequent than in other shows I follow. (The breakup with Maggie is another such example.)
If they had to break up the adorable lesbian couple, doing it over the wants kids/doesn’t want kids dynamic seems a pretty decent way to go about it, actually. It’s a fundamental difference that no amount of loving someone “enough” will fix.
Interesting that when they introduced the Legion, they brought in Imra / Saturn Girl specifically as a telekinetic, rather than as a telepath. They already had multiple telepathic characters, so the switch makes sense from that perspective, but why change her powers when Shadow Lass or White Witch had closer power sets to what they wanted? Shadow Lass had even been canonically married to Mon-El! (I guess because Saturn Girl is a classic founder of the Legion?)
The ”main villain” Reign seems to be defeated in episode 18; if the season had ended there with a little tag about Lena turning her back into Sam, it would be a decent ending. But then it becomes clear that the various loose ends were left there for a reason…and I again wonder how much of that reason was scheduling-based. (I read something that the last third of the season had to be rewritten from their original plans, and I believe it.)
The references to the random parts of comics mythos (J’onn imaginary friend being a 5th-dimensional imp named Zook, Kara’s cat named Streaky, etc.) were delightful nods, but then, it’s not like they shy away from using ridiculous things like Argo City or the Legion. If this show gets enough seasons, we’re definitely going to see Comet the Super-Horse.
Going into season four: Winn has headed off to the future to join the Legion, and Mon-El has also returned there, presumably for good. (And Brainiac 5 is staying in 2018, it seems?) J’onn has resigned from the DEO and left Alex in charge, choosing to walk the Earth. James has outed himself as Guardian. Lena, having recruited Eve Tessmacher as her mad science assistant, is doing lots of secret experiments with magical Kryptonian stone (that she can now synthesize). And a mysterious duplicate of Supergirl, likely related to either her time-travel shenanigans or her use of the stone to pull Sam and Reign into the alternate-dimension mind-woods, has appeared in Sibera.
Overall: This tends to be somehow both more didactic and more cheesy than the other DC/CW shows; I still enjoy it, but I acknowledge that the others manage to be stronger dramatically and Legends of Tomorrow embraces goofiness much more fully.
