The fourth season of Supergirl premieres October 14. Note that’s Sunday night. Can they turn it around from the shambles of last season? It started out strong but fell off the rails in the second half. Way, way off the rails. Indeed, they spent like half of the season finale setting things up for this season.
Cast changes this season: Jeremy Jordan (Winn Schott) will no longer be part of the regular cast but instead be in a recurring role. Jesse Rath (Brainiac 5) will be promoted to regular cast. Chris Wood (Mon-el) and Odette Annable (Sam Arias/Reign) will no longer be regulars. Nicole Maines will join as Nia Nal/Dreamer, the first transgender superhero on television.
Diving back into reporting, Kara welcomes a new cub reporter to CatCo. Meanwhile, James and Lena argue about James’ impending indictment for acting as the vigilante Guardian, while Alex and Brainy struggle to get in sync at the DEO. Supergirl is called into action when remnants of the anti-alien terrorist organization Cadmus try to assassinate pro-alien leaders, but their endgame turns out to be much more sinister than she expected. J’onn relishes his peaceful new life, but an outing with an old friend causes him concern.
Mercy Graves has made an appearance. Can Lex Luthor himself be far behind? I wonder who they’d cast to play the big bald baddie?
They solved the problem of the lack of Cat Grant by putting Kara into the mentor role. I think she could be good at it; she learned from the best, after all. Kara doesn’t deliver the lines with the same panache as Cat, though.
Anti-alien sentiment has always been a simmering undercurrent in this show. It looks like this season that will now be front and center. Supergirl has never been shy about addressing politics. Some issues, like feminism, they are more successful at exploring. Others, like gun control, less so. One hopes that this season will be the more successful commentary on the current political climate.
ETA: And hopefully they’ve put that whole lame Guardian storyline behind them.
So the president finally gets outed as an alien. So does that make her automatically have to resign because of not being a natural born citizen? Or were her parents resident aliens making her a citizen by birth?
I have a hard time buying the James-Lucy romance. I just don’t see a lot of chemistry between the two. But yes, glad the Guardian crap is over.
Another case of perfect timing of a news story appearing on television when the person involved happens to glance at the screen. Come on, if the charges against James were dropped, wouldn’t he know about it before the news came on? Does his lawyer not possess a phone?
If I was the alien with horns coming out of my wrists, I would have been glad to have them removed. Looked like about the most useless horns ever.
Still, it’s good to have Supergirl back. Not sure if it has more than one season left in it, but it has been a fun run.
I liked the Premiere. A big improvement from last season which kind of limped along. I liked the White Nationalist parallels and seeing Supergirl just doing run of the mill superhero stuff in the beginning.
Only knock was I don’t like the sister’s new hair style and not sure what to make of J’onn going all Kung Fu “Walk the Earth”.
I wonder if the Vice-President knew she was an alien? And if so, was the Veep behind what happened at Camp David? (Is the Veep an alien? Is the Speaker of the House? I suspect people on the show will demand blood tests.)
The Graves siblings remind me of the villains of MiB II - Otis (nice reference) even looks kind of like Johnny Knoxville. Don’t know if they’re intentionally going for that, but the smart, violent woman and the dumbass dude in a motorcycle jacket…
And Kara’s inability to process that things can be better than ever, but still terrible is sad…but realistic.
On a shallow note. I love Alex’s hair when she’s in civilian mode, but it really doesn’t suit her when she has it up for work.
Oh duh, thanks. I still wish he was called Jimmy and not James and that he wore a watch that had a button that made a “zee zee zee zee” sound that Superman could hear from across the continent.
CHAOS IN NATIONAL CITY - A shocking revelation causes chaos in National City. Supergirl sets out to capture Mercy Graves, while Alex takes control at the DEO. Back at CatCo, Kara decides to write an investigative story on Mercy and asks Lena if she can interview her as Mercy has ties to the Luthors. Meanwhile, Brainy meets Nia and the two end up in a precarious situation.
Memo to Director Danvers: When you have an agent who has professed anti-alien sentiments, it is not a good idea to put him in charge of security for prisoners who have those same sentiments. It’s also not a good idea to put those co-conspirators in adjoining cells, as they can keep right on conspiring.
While this show has never been the pinnacle of good writing, there was something notably bad about the dialogue this episode. Melissa Benoist can deliver those cheesy lines with conviction, as evidenced by Supergirl’s closing speech. Nicole Maines on the other hand isn’t that good of an actress (yet). The writer gave Nia what would have been Kara’s lines in CatCo (convincing Jimmy to write an editorial) without adjusting for a different character or actress. The result was that the delivery fell flat. At the other end of the spectrum, Rhona Mitra just lacked a moustache to twirl.
Not to say that there weren’t good moments in this episode. Lena keeping Kara close by to protect her from the bad guys, thereby preventing her from changing into Supergirl, was straight out of Silver Age comics. It was fun watching Kara make creative use of her powers without revealing her secret identity. They need to do it more often. This should put to rest the speculation that Lena knows that Kara is Supergirl.
Nia falling asleep and then, upon awakening, being compelled to get coffee just in time to rescue Brainy must be a foreshadowing of her future powers. Why else would she look for coffee at a pizza place?
One thing bothered the bejeezus out of me: there is no place for people to gather that has a clear view of the south face of the White House. Had they used the north face, it would have been fine.
There was a tad too much foreshadowing of the anti-alien guard. The minute he appeared on screen, we could see he was up to no good. Why telegraph the obvious so early?