Supergirl season 5 premiere review: Event Horizon

Supergirl returns with villains galore pursuing the Girl of Steel and her Super-Friends. It doesn’t help that CatCo has a new owner and Lena hates Kara.

Season four of Supergirl ended with Lex Luthor (Jon Cryer) using his dying breath to reveal a shocking truth to Lena (Katie McGrath) – her dear friend Kara Danvers (Melissa Benoist) has been Supergirl all along, and she’s been lying to Lena about her identity. Lena has allowed this hurt to fester in her, as we see in the opening scenes of season five. Lena is running simulations of killing her former best friend. But Lena insists to her super-smart AI that she isn’t a villain. That’s where they all start.

But the team have plenty more to worry about as a villain from the Phantom Zone is brought to Earth, and she has a beef with Martian Manhunter.

Where are Supergirl and her Super-Friends at?

Proving the showrunners still have their ears to the ground, the season five premiere delves into a generation getting lost behind the latest VR/AR technology by Obsidian Tech, while a special election looms over the country.

Kara, after being an enemy for much of the previous season of Supergirl, is now up for a Pulitzer following her efforts to delivery the truth in season four. But nagging at her is the impending conversation with Lena about her true identity. While Lena only sees Kara’s deception, Kara herself is terrified of losing her friend if she reveals that truth.

J’onn J’onzz (David Harewood) has become a community leader, while Kelly Olsen (Azie Tesfai) and Alex Danvers (Chyler Leigh) have cemented their relationship as the cutest couple ever. Elsewhere, still in love, but grappling the upheavals of the season four finale, are Querl Dox (Brainy, played by Jesse Rath) and Nia Nal/ Dreamer (Nicole Maines).

Though James Olsen (Mehcad Brooks) is leading the team at CatCo, the serenity of Supergirl and her Super-Friends comes to a crashing halt when Obsidian Tech owner Andrea Rojas arrives, saying that Lena has sold her the company and she’s taking over James’ role.

Enter the Villains!

As Bam Smack Pow had reported, Jennifer Cheon Garcia was cast as the season five premiere’s villain. Midnight is a bringer of death and sided with the White Martians during the war on Mars. J’onn had sent her to the Phantom Zone, but he’s unaware that his own brother is back and has a vendetta against him. Midnight attacks the venue of the Pulitzer ceremony, where she opens up a black hole that sucks in J’onn. Supergirl has to rescue him by jumping into the event horizon, hence the title of the episode.

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But Midnight isn’t the scariest part of this episode. Andrea has decided revenue and subscriptions must drive CatCo’s editorial approach, which means she wants the team to be more Buzzfeed of the early noughties than the New York Times. Kara, James and Nia are horrified but, while Kara decides to make a stand while compromising the length and verbosity of her pieces to keep her job, James isn’t that relenting. Despite breaking the non-competing clause in his contract that would prevent James from ever being a journalist again, James decides that he would rather face a brand new adventure than compromise his principles. Considering that Mehcad Brooks has decided to leave the show at the end of this season, our guess is that this is how the character will be phased out.

It’s great that the showrunners are championing journalism again in this season, especially since it’s an industry constantly under attack under the new administration, but perhaps there needs to be more nuance put into the dichotomy of news journalism being wheedled out because of lack of revenues and the hard work being put in by some “clickbaity” outlets.

Lena and Kara

According to Alex, Kara has come up with plenty of excuses to avoid telling Lena the truth about her and Supergirl. She took Alex’s advice from the season finale but, as Alex clearly points out, she wanted Kara to give Lena a break for one night, not forever. At some point, she will have to confront Lena with the truth.

After another aborted attempt at revealing her identity to Lena, Kara finally blurts it out just before her Pulitzer presentation. Lena has specifically taken on the role of introducing Kara but, while Kara sees it as yet another affectionate move by Lena, Lena, in fact, had ulterior motives.

Lena was planning to disclose Supergirl’s identity to the world, and it’s only a heartfelt apology by Kara that appears to stay her hand. As always, the most remarkable moments on Supergirl come in the form of the human interactions between the characters. Not only is Kara’s explanation for hiding the truth from Lena impeccably delivered, but the dialogue is genuine in its understanding of why Kara did what she did. The emotional resonance of making bad decisions for fear of losing someone you love is as authentic as it gets, and we can’t help but side with Kara as she wordlessly pleads for Lena to forgive her. And it seems to work, as well. If only…

Super Sentiments

Kara’s super suit popping out of her eye-glasses is so Iron Man. But her instantaneous exclamation at seeing pants being added to her outfit is delightful. This is precisely why we love Benoist’s rendition of the character – she’s just like the rest of us.

Speaking of outfits, Alex remarking that everyone changes clothes so fast, while she’s still in her evening dress, is another realistic comment. This show never stops reminding you of how it has its pulse on real people.

J’onn’s brother was introduced in the season four finale as an agent of Leviathan. He is the person who brought Midnight to Earth. But for some reason, J’onn doesn’t even know he has a brother! It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the season.

The episode ends with Lena seemingly taking on her more Luthor-like family traits. One really wishes the showrunners hadn’t decided to go down the villain route for the character. There was potential for this character to grow beyond her family name and their baser instincts. Can Lena be redeemed? Let’s hope she doesn’t go far enough for us to have to conjecture about that. While the episode set up the key plot points for the rest of the season, it lacked the gravitas of the season four premiere.