‘Supergirl’ season 2, episode 10 review: Can you re-wire Livewire?

We certainly have to say that this is not the version of Livewire we thought that we were going to get entering Monday night’s new episode of “Supergirl.” After all, this is someone who’s been known to date as one of the show’s most notorious adversaries, and she’s been every bit as dangerous as she’s been snarky. We like watching her because there is an element of humor and personality to her, and this is something that we don’t necessarily get from other villains out there.

Now, we turn to the complications surrounding Monday night’s new episode “We Can Be Heroes” — there were many ridiculous moments throughout (great Livewire banter and pop-culture references galore), but at the same time there were also a few moments that just didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Namely, we’re looking at Supergirl decided to give Livewire a head start in getting out of town and out of trouble after it turned out that she was the victim in what was at first deemed a prison escape. She was taken by a guy interested in harvesting her powers to create an army — and apparently a guy who got turned down by “Shark Tank” for it. We’re honestly rather surprised Kevin O’Leary went out on the invention, given that he looks a little bit like Lex Luthor.

It was easy to feel bad for what happened to Livewire in this instance, given that she didn’t quite deserve the treatment that she received; however, this is still someone with a reputation for killing and a terrible mean streak. How do you let her run free, thinking that she can be redeemed? It’s one thing to be hopeful for forgiveness, but it’s another to be reckless with it and we’re not sure that she’s made it to redemption yet. We wouldn’t have treated her terribly after this, but wasn’t there a way to at least put her in a villain sort of halfway house?

Now, let’s turn to the fun part of this story — watching James, Winn, and Mon-El all stupidly decide that they could take out Livewire’s captors on their own without her help. They were somewhat bitter over her downplaying their abilities, but she was right. It wasn’t quite that they weren’t capable of being heroes; they just weren’t either ready or weren’t doing it for the best reason. For example, Mon-El just wanted to spend time with Kara, and Guardian still doesn’t have the powers to take on many serious villains. They all got it handed to them out there, and Supergirl had to bail them out.

While Kara doesn’t necessarily approve of what James is doing, she’s also not going to stop him from continuing to be heroic in the future. That’s the compromise there, for now.

The trouble with M’gann – The other major storyline this week was the resident White Martian facing death after she experienced an unexplained phenomenon, one she explained a little bit later as receiving almost a vision from her own people that they were coming. Poor M’gann doesn’t really receive to have too much support either on Earth or on Mars, but Hank did do the right thing here in the end and let her go. Unlike Livewire, she wasn’t really much of a menace to society. She’d just made a few mistakes along the way and had some reasoning for them.

—

The good news about “We Can Be Heroes” is that it touched on the unresolved feelings with Kara and Mon-El, the jealousy that James has towards him being viewed as special because of his powers, a happy moment or two for Alex / Maggie fans, and also the return of Brit Morgan, who remains fantastic as the electric villain. We enjoyed it throughout, and while we’re thrilled that there’s potential for another Livewire reprisal, it’s hard to get on board with the decision to just let a villain of her caliber go. Grade: B-.

What did you think about this episode, and the return of Livewire to “Supergirl”? Share in the comments.