‘Supergirl’ episode 11 review: David Harewood shines in powerful Hank Henshaw story
Has there ever been a character who went from zero to sixty in the first season of a show quite like Hank Henshaw on “Supergirl“? If you look back during the pilot episode, the guy was a tool. He didn’t love aliens, didn’t trust Kara working for the DEO, and did not really have much substance to him.
Since that time, the writers have given David Harewood precisely what he deserves: Some pretty fantastic material, especially when it comes to letting us into the world of who his reborn character of J’onn J’onzz truly is. We knew that the man had it rough, but we were never one to presume that it was this rough. Here’s what we were looking at: A White Martian invaded National City, and these were the same creatures who enslaved and murdered his whole race. This was a Holocaust story in many ways, and Harewood pretty much ripped our heart out and broke it while explaining what happened to his people. The show basically played with as much CGI as possible to paint the picture of his people’s downfall, and for the most part it was effective.
This episode was of the variety where it was about more of the journey than the end result, mostly because we all saw the grand finale here coming: Hank was eventually able to defeat the Martian with the help of Supergirl, and the creature is now back at the DEO.
Meanwhile, Kara has a potential new love interest in her life in Adam, Cat Grant’s son who she helped to establish a good relationship with over the course of the episode. We actually think that she wasn’t being as terrible to him in the early going as Adam’s reactions made it out to be, but they still were able to work it out. The only real critique we have about the way all of this went down was the complete lack of Winn Schott through the majority of all this. If Kara doesn’t want to hurt her friend, shouldn’t she really consider telling him that she is going on a date with someone else? She shouldn’t stop her life for the sake of someone else if she doesn’t have feelings for him, but some consideration is nice.
Save for Hank’s story and what we saw with Kara and Adam, we’re not going to say this was a huge episode for “Supergirl.” It’s still waiting for one that gets everything together. At least there was a lot to still enjoy here, and it sets up more of what could be coming for Kara’s personal life. Grade: B.
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