Supergirl season 6, episode 8 review: Welcome Back, Kara

Supergirl season 6 returns to The CW with its midseason premiere. How did it manage to set up the series’ final arc?

It’s been a minute since Supergirl aired new episodes on our TV screens. It’s been a lot of minutes, actually, as the Girl of Steel’s sixth season initially kicked off back in March when it held the line for spin-off Superman and Lois – which had to take an unplanned production break.

The seven episodes that it aired between then and May were tasked with wrapping up season 5 and setting up season 6 while also attempting to make the limited use of series star Melissa Benoist work. The result? A mini-season about rescuing Kara from the Phantom Zone – which finally happened in the midseason finale’s concluding seconds.

Supergirl season 6 is now back to air the final 13 episodes of the series. The question is: How did it set up that final arc?

Here’s everything that went down in “Welcome Back, Kara”.’

Supergirl season 6, episode 8: Welcome Back, Kara

The midseason premiere essentially hit the reset button on everything we had seen so far in season 6 (and much of what we saw in season 5 too), centralizing the episode’s main narrative in CatCo.

A return to the heart of the show is the perfect setting for Kara to put the Phantom Zone experience behind her but that proves to be easier said than done when Andrea tasks her with exploiting her connection to Supergirl so that she can write a piece about how she saved National City from the Phantoms. That also comes with the responsibility of interviewing those attacked by the Phantoms – something Kara cannot do as she hasn’t gotten over her own experiences with them.

Meanwhile, Zor-El wishes to see what his daughter’s life is like on Earth before he reunites with Alura on Argo City. This inevitably leads to a discovery that the planet is slowly dying – which isn’t helped because of the toxic waste created by Lex’s DEO that leaked into the ocean – and an attempt to fix that with Kalex from the Fortress of Solitude unwittingly creates a toxic swamp monster, setting up the final fight between it and the Super Friends.

There aren’t any teases in regards to a new Big Bad but there is a reference to Nyxly so it seems like the show is setting her up as the final threat – you know, until Lex Luthor inevitably returns for one final showdown with Kara and the Super Friends.

Supergirl finds its heart again

Minutes into “Welcome Back, Kara”, it became clear that the show had shifted gears in a bid to deliver a worthy final season for fans. In recent years, it has just meandered through its stories in a very going-through-the-motions kind of way, forgoing any real emotional conflict just to get the plot-of-the-week neatly tied up in 42 – 45 minutes. That wasn’t the case here, though, because the midseason premiere felt like it belonged in the show’s first season because it actually made time to focus on fallout.

Fallout was something of a theme of the midseason premiere as Kara’s struggles to cope in the aftermath of her time in Phantom Zone provided viewers with some authentic conflict for the Girl of Steel to work through, and seeing this super-human struggle with very human issues grounded it in reality – something the first season thrived on doing.

Something else the episode did that mirrored season 1? Placing the narrative back in CatCo and giving the magazine itself a goal to overcome for the first time in too long, with Andrea Rojas’ well-meaning-but-somewhat-mean approach to save it harking back to its glory days when Cat Grant tried to do the same.

And that character journey is also based around the fallout of Lex Luthor’s time on the show as Andrea looks to redeem herself by redeeming the show’s iconic media outlet. This also enriches the show with a real human quality to its overarching narrative as Kara, Nia, William and even Andrea all have a collective goal while also having their own personal demons to overcome along the way (or get in the way).

And speaking of fallout, Zor-El’s noble but misguided attempt to save the world saw him make similar mistakes to the ones he did when he tried to save Krypton, again calling back to what we learned from the show’s first season.

But the real heart of the show has always been the relationships that Kara has with her super friends, primarily with her sister Alex, and “Welcome Back, Kara” does its best to spotlight every single one of them.  While not all get the focus they need, that will come in time, because the midseason premiere was all about reuniting the Danvers sisters and giving them one final obstacle to overcome: The fear of losing themselves by losing each other.

All of that resulted in the show delivering its best and most engaging episode in a very long time, allowing it time to breathe as a standalone adventure built upon love, family, friendship and even a little bit of hubris and it brought all of Supergirl‘s finest qualities to the forefront once more.

Super Sentiments

• The friendship between Nia Nal and Lena Luthor was unexpected but it’s another refreshing nudge to the status quo.
• It really irks me that powerful moments keep taking place off-screen. I feel like, given that the series started with Kara thinking both of her parents were dead, we really should have seen Zor-El and Alura reunite. Just like we should have seen Alex tell Kelly that Kara was Supergirl earlier in the season.
• You’re really telling me that Andrea and William couldn’t figure out that Supergirl was Kara even though Lex’s document named her as “Kara Zor-El”? Those glasses and that hairstyle must be one heck of a disguise!
• So it seems like Kara and William won’t be heading down the romance path after all. Another clear sign that the creative team weren’t planning on the show ending back in season 5 but it has already created an interesting new dynamic between the pair.
• Brainy is a delight! His “I meant every word” response when Kalex asked him if he was being serious about the mean things he said about the robot was a real laugh-out-loud moment.
• I’m interested to see where Andrea’s interest in the Super Friends goes. This also feels like a clever nod to Cat Grant’s fierce loyalty to Supergirl in the first season and I’m honestly so here for that.
• I’m struggling to really put into words how refreshing of an episode this was. It holds up against the show’s better days (trust me, I’m rewatching them) and it feels more like Supergirl than the show has in a very long time.

Supergirl season 6 returns to The CW next Tuesday, August 31, at 9:00 p.m. ET.

What did you think of Supergirl season 6’s midseason premiere? Let us know in the comments below!