[Editor’s note: This review may contain spoilers.]
Director: Alexis Ostrander
Writers: Eric Carrasco & Aadrita Mukerji
Starring: Melissa Benoist, Mehcad Brooks, Chyler Leigh, Katie McGrath, Jesse Rath, Sam Witwer, Nicole Maines, April Parker Jones & David Harewood
Summary
Manchester Black breaks out of prison with the help of his new team, the Elite. Supergirl tries to apprehend Black and his team while dealing with a shocking new development involving Ben Lockwood.
Positives
The major conflict is really fun. Supergirl is stuck between two extremes and can’t really make a move without her motives being over analyzed and constructed to fit certain narratives. She’s being forced to protect bad guys from bad guys. That’s an interesting narrative.
Manchester Black and the Elite are a lot of fun. They’re fun in part due to the charisma of the actors but also the challenge they pose to both Kara and J’onn.
I like James’ decision to pursue a story about Lena’s experiments. It’s obviously complicated but I like that he’s putting his personal feelings aside. I do hope that it comes up in future episodes that he really shouldn’t be the one looking into L-Corp due to his personal connection to Lena. There’s a conflict of interest there but I do think this story could be really interesting especially when they find out that Lena has already gotten someone killed.
Negatives
Lena is weirdly standoffish to Alex about the government this episode. Which does make sense for how the character usually is. But she just accepted a government contract. Why did she do that and dump James over it if she doesn’t want to work with the government? She doesn’t need the funding; her lab at L-Corp seemed way nicer than the one at the D.E.O. It feels like the writers just wanted to get Lena and Alex in the same room but it doesn’t play or really make sense.
Verdict
This is a strong episode. The season continues to challenge Kara without giving her easy answers. She just has to do what she thinks is right but there are consequences to that. This ties neatly in with almost every character making some kind of choice this episode. I think Lena is written a little weakly but other than that, I really enjoyed it.
