‘Supergirl’ episode 14 review: Siobhan Smythe’s arrival; Maxwell Lord’s ‘better angels’
After the last new episode of “Supergirl” brought us one of the most shocking developments of the season courtesy of the death of Astra, a good percentage of Monday’s episode was spent sifting through the aftermath. We had an hour that we would consider to be fairly engaging for the most part, but was lacking somewhat in terms of the chief villain for the hour.
Really, was Master Jailer all that exciting at all? We could really care less about Fort Rozz at this point, and our preference for villains on this are more the ones that have some more tangible mythology. We’d actually prefer to see more either created on Earth or tied a little less to Kara, and there wasn’t much here that was captivating. The largest takeaway from watching all of this is that there is clear tension between Kara and Hank Henshaw over him “killing” Astra, which in turn could lead to them not working together. Could this be more problematic for Alex, given that she is actually the one who put the sword through her aunt? We’d say so.
The more involving long-term story here revolves around Non’s Myriad initiative that he first kicked off in the last episode, something that we know is extremely dangerous / something that Kara’s holographic mom will not discuss. This is the long-term threat, while we know already that the short-term one is going to be some of the villains we see for the next couple of weeks.
The remainder of the storylines this week were all over the map when it comes to enjoyment. First of all, we’ve got the arrival of Italia Ricci as Siobhan Smythe, the new assistant to Cat Grant who is establishing herself as a fixture of ambition. The reason this role works is thanks first to Ricci’s performance, and then also having the knowledge already that she will eventually become Silver Banshee by the upcoming crossover with The Flash. Cat is pressuring James Olsen to find Maxwell Lord, who in turn pressured Kara to release him from the DEO. It was interesting for James to take the whole “innocent until proven guilty” stance here given what he knows about this world and what Max is capable of; as a matter of fact, it felt almost out of character to want to see him on the street again. Why trust someone who has given you no reason to do so? He’s now free, and that includes “free to cause mayhem” given that we saw him previously create Bizarro-Girl.
What was a little more appropriate for James this week was worrying about his relationship with Lucy Lane, who was obviously not pleased to learn that he knew about the DEO and wants him to explain more of his connection to Supergirl. It makes sense that he would want to tell her, just as it makes some sense that she would not want that information out there. This is going to come to a head, and what you have to wonder here is if the destruction of this relationship could lead to destruction for James and Kara as friends.
Overall, we’d consider this a mixed-bag episode that did provide some entertainment, but also had a somewhat-flat villain and a few decisions that really don’t make sense. Grade: B-.
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