Supergirl season 5, episode 2 review: Stranger Beside Me

Lena has turned on Kara, a new owner has taken over CatCo, and James quit his job. Meanwhile J’onn J’onzz is battling a secret brother on Supergirl.

In the Season 5 premiere of Supergirl, J’onn J’onzz (David Harewood) was attacked by a fellow Green Martian, who claimed to be his brother. He left J’onn in a state of pain that is very particular to his species, but Supergirl and her Super-Friends are already on track to finding a cure in the second episode.

While James Olsen (Mehcad Brooks) has quit CatCo, he’s had endless new job offers – he has been asked to run for Senator and to become the new Media Director.

Meanwhile, CatCo itself is under siege by new owner Andrea Rojas (Julie Gonzalo), who is using her new position to advertise Obsidian Tech’s AR contact lenses.

The Way to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions

Lena Luthor (Katie McGrath) is the Arrowverse’s greatest actor. She’s successfully fooled Supergirl/ Kara Danvers (Melissa Benoist) into believing that she has forgiven her friend for lying to her about her true identity. But Lena is simply biding her time.

She has created a smart AI, Hope, for herself and she reveals to it that she can use the new Obsidian AR technology to re-program humans and aliens to never hurt each other. A noble goal, but Lena has proven before that she’s willing to make huge sacrifices to meet them. So, who is her guinea pig? None other than her former confidante Eve Teschmacher (Andrea Brooks).

Lena is nursing a world of pain because of Eve and Kara’s combined betrayal – so much so that she doesn’t hear Eve’s fear about being recruited by a secret organization when she was 16, an orphan in debt. Eve is, of course, referring to Leviathan, who were teased in the Season 4 finale. They’ve been playing the long game, but what is their endgame?

Lena goes down a really dark path in this episode with her treatment of Eve, and it’s already obvious that we’ve lost this hero for good. Kara will be battling demons from all sides this season. We wouldn’t have expected to feel sorry for Eve, but the woman deserves better than being stuck in the Luthors’ web of evil.

J’onn’s Brother

Querl Dox (Jesse Rath) knows how to cure J’onn’s ailment, but the elements are only available in the future. Or so he thinks. Kelly Olsen (Azie Tesfai) is already working with Q-waves at Obsidian Tech and she brings J’onn in to examine him. A trip inside J’onn’s mind reveals that he did indeed have a brother, but his memory of him, and how he collaborated with the White Martians and betrayed his people, has been wiped.

The White Martians are still pulling Ma’alefa’ak’s strings, but this is probably Leviathan at play again. J’onn’s brother seems lost and confused, and his aim appears to be to recover his own memories. Is he an innocent in this war? It’s hard to tell, especially since he is quick to impersonate Kara’s friends and family and put them all in danger.

It’s great that J’onn is getting his own arc from the beginning of the season, especially since Season 4 retroactively drew J’onn into the main storyline and it didn’t work quite as well. However, in quintessential comic book fashion, every time a character claims to be the last of their kind, endless family members crop up to prove them wrong!

Kara’s Work Problems

Yes, the show is called Supergirl, but sometimes its strongest scenes lie in the non-super moments. This episode certainly highlights some of the issues that regular folk face at work. Every time there’s a change in management, the company culture and agenda changes. It affects the workforce negatively – and we’ve all been there, so we feel Kara’s pain every step of the way in this episode.

Rojas has a completely different outlook on how CatCo should run, and of course, the people suffering are the staff like Kara and Nia Nal (Nicole Maines). It’s impressive to see Kara power through it, despite Rojas’ right-hand man, William Day (Staz Nair), attempting to steal Kara’s thunder and put her in her place.

The one fear is that, in quintessential Hollywood style, the showrunners are planning to pair Kara and William together; it’s possible if they’re trying to go down the Mr. Darcy route. Let’s hope not, because that would be a most inauthentic approach to Kara’s character development. Seeing Kara hold her head high and remain a team player under trying conditions at work makes Kara more realistic than ever before.

Super Sentiments

• Lena and Andrea are going to be at loggerheads this season after Lena reneged on her promise to reveal a huge secret in the previous Supergirl episode. Will Andrea push Lena’s buttons enough for her to reach out to Kara for help? Could this rivalry actually turn Lena back to the good side?
• Alex and Kelly continue to be a really adorable couple, despite Alex almost killing Kelly with blueberries. It’s very obvious that the two of them have a strong connection (their chemistry in the previous season was palpable), but good on the writers to show that whirlwind romances can have their downsides.
• Nia is such a sweet character, but one wonders if being with an alien from the future, Querl Dox, is worth the trouble. At this point, Querl’s inability to grasp the intricacies of human interactions and relationships borders on him being obtuse rather than just alien.
• Pop culture has embraced the notion of portraying characters who are on a spectrum of mental abilities, but far too often they are fetishized, glamorized and caricatured. Querl is fast approaching all of those. Does Nia and the show writers have the patience to explain ‘theory of mind’ to him and make him a likable and believable character again?

Season 5 of Supergirl feels like a cohesive whole, with an ominous sense of dread looming in the shadows. There’s a plethora of villains and plenty of mystery, plus new arcs for several of the characters. There is, perhaps, a little too much of the romantic arcs of the main couples, which means we’ve hardly seen the DEO at all. That will probably be rectified soon, along with viewers getting to see all these characters at work and as superheroes once again.