30 greatest Arrowverse episodes, ranked

Best Arrowverse episodes – No. 6

Pilot (Supergirl season 1 episode 1)

With Arrow and The Flash dominating superhero television in 2015, CBS attempted to get in on the superhero fun with Supergirl – which infamously moved to The CW for its second season. And after finding their Girl of Steel in Melissa Benoist, work on the series officially began.

The pilot episode obviously centered on the titular character, Kara Zor-El, who arrived on Earth years after Krypton’s explosion. By that time, her cousin, Kal-El, had grown up to become Superman. However, years later, Kara (now the mousy assistant of media mogul Cat Grant) finally unveiled her powers to the world when she, much like her cousin, saved a plane from crashing. In doing so, she soon realized that her own adoptive sister, Alex, was an agent for the Department of Extra-Normal Operations, tasked with taking down alien threats.

Despite a few teething issues, Kara was able to overcome any obstacles in her way, relying on Winn Schott, James Olsen and the D.E.O. as the residents of National City discovered that Earth now had a new savior – and her name was Supergirl.

Unlike The Flash, there was no backdoor pilot or pre-pilot guest-appearances here. So, it was up to this episode alone to prove why the show was good enough to be on the air, and thankfully, it succeeded in every single way possible. It was triumphant and grandiose, possessing that feel-good quality that the classic superhero shows were renowned for while also setting yet another standard for the modern-day ones, highlighting that not all of them had to be dark to be entertaining. As far as pilots go, this one was made of Steel.