After taking a week off to allow us all to recover from the wonderfulness that was “World’s Finest,” Supergirl is back with its penultimate episode, “Myriad.” With its finale next week, the show has a lot to get through–or at least a lot to both resolve and tease out for a potential next season (the show has not been officially renewed yet).
So accordingly, we pick up right after “World’s Finest”‘s shocking end. Kara had just confessed her feelings for and kissed James only to see him march off like a robot and join a growing throng mindlessly goose-stepping in the streets. The opening of “Myriad”–written by Yahlin Chang & Caitlyn Parrish and directed by Adam Kane– reveals that it’s all the work of the oft-teased “Myriad,” Non and Astra’s final gambit that Non–along with the not-actually-dead Indigo–has put into place.
Myriad, as Supergirl finally learns from a hologram from her mother in the Fortress of Solitude, is a giant mind control wave relayed through a satellite owned by Maxwell Lord. It turns out that this was what got Non and Astra sentenced to the Phantom Zone; their plan was to use Myriad on the population of Krypton but they were caught attempting to use it on Argo City. They’ve now unleashed it on National City and gotten every human in the city and in the DEO under its thrall.
Supergirl flies throughout the city only to see James, Winn and everyone else are all mindless drones. Everyone that is, except for Cat Grant and Maxwell Lord, naturally, due to an ion blocker Lord developed.. The three are all bereft as to what to do but suddenly Supergirl receives a text from Superman letting her know that he’s on the way.
Unfortunately, far-off Superman shows up and then, without ever being more than a speck, gets instantly drawn by Myriad and joins the mindless thrall. So this leaves Supergirl, Cat and Max Lord all by themselves…
It’s not too much of a spoiler to say that this episode ends on a cliffhanger. The better to get people to tune in for the finale, don’t you know. But the way everything plays out leading to that cliffhanger doesn’t always work. While Alex and J’onn J’onzz make a welcome return and the beginning fight between Supergirl and former Superman comics mainstay Maxima (played by ex-WWE wrestler Eve Torres) is a huge jolt of adrenaline, other bits don’t quite work.
For one thing, why now is the hologram of Kara’s mom willing to tell her about Myriad? Why not earlier? For another, a minor character never before mentioned commits suicide-by-mind-control and it’s meant to be shocking but it really isn’t. We’ve never seen this woman before so why should we care about her death?
But that aside, this is a well-made episode still. Hopefully, the finale will be able to resolve everything and give us more of that winning Supergirl formula of humor, heart and punching.
Tom Speelman is a contributor to Comics Alliance, The Mary Sue, Strange Horizons and other websites. He is available for hire and blathers on Twitter @tomtificate.
Leave a Reply