Supergirl has aired its first eight episodes, and we look at our top five moments from the first half of the season.
Supergirl premiered this fall to enormous hype, and for the most part has lived up to it. With some big reveals and intriguing character dynamics to choose from, we look at our top five moments from the first half of the season.
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Hank Henshaw is J’onn J’onzz
Perhaps the biggest reveal of Supergirl‘s first half is that the apparently shady Hank Henshaw is actually one of the most pure-hearted, heroic characters in the DC Comics. We learned that years ago, Jeremiah Danvers and Hank Henshaw went to South America to terminate a hostile alien. (Sub-reveal: Jeremiah worked for the DEO.) That alien turned out to be the Martian Manhunter, J’onn J’onzz.
When Jeremiah realized he was not a threat, he wanted to leave J’onn alone while Henshaw wanted to kill him. This led to a conflict with both Jeremiah and Henshaw dying; however, J’onn promised to look after Jeremiah’s daughter, so he took Henshaw’s form, took over the DEO and recruited Alex.
We know the second half of the season will be delving more into J’onn’s backstory, and we couldn’t be more excited to see where this goes. After all, J’onn is one of the founding members of the Justice League; his presence on Supergirl is a huge deal.
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Cat reveals she knows Kara’s secret
At the end of the mid-season finale, Cat Grant proved herself a smart, observant woman as she deduced that her assistant is Supergirl. Not only has Cat been paying more attention to her assistant than it seemed, but she figured out a secret that most comic book stories let go on for too long.
Though the trailer for the second half of the season indicates Kara will continue to deny this, that can only go on for so long. So, what will this new dynamic between boss and assistant entail? Cat has already been determined to protect the image of Supergirl without knowing who she is, so we look forward to watching Kara and Cat’s relationship continue evolving now that Cat knows Kara is Supergirl.
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Kara steps out of Superman’s shadow
In Supergirl episode 3, “Fight or Flight,” we actually got to see Superman, if through a blurry lens, when he arrived to save Kara from one of his rogues, Reactron. Kara, however, refused to let her story be one in which she is a damsel for her cousin to save.
Instead, she faced down Reactron and defeated him, something Superman had never been able to do. By doing so, Kara cemented herself as a hero in her own right and the hero of her own story. This worked on both story and meta levels, as Kara is also in the shadow of Superman in pop culture. She was claiming her right as a hero for audiences of the show as well as the characters in the show.
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Kara’s aunt is revealed as the Big Bad
The reveal of Supergirl‘s Big Bad is noteworthy for a couple of reasons. First, Andrew Kreisberg and co. created a new character specifically for the series; Astra is an original character, and she was made to be Alura’s twin for the emotional impact of Kara having to face down an enemy with her mother’s face. This is then tying into the fact that Kara’s mother is more flawed than Kara realized as a child.
And second, she’s a woman. Supergirl, so far, has had a heavy focus on its female characters with male characters playing more supporting roles, inverting the superhero series status quo. But more than that, Astra does not fit into the usual roles for female villains of seductress or crone. She is a military leader who outranks even her husband.
Astra makes the conflict with Kara personal, and she does so while subverting typical roles of women in superhero stories.
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Red Tornado makes his live action debut
Red Tornado makes this list not only because the character made his live action debut after a rather long history in the DC Comics, but because he represents the potential for other characters who have perhaps been left out of live action comic book adaptions to appear.
Red Tornado’s appearance also signaled a certain fearlessness the Supergirl producers have toward bringing in potentially unusual or difficult characters. Android? No problem! What else you got?
What else, indeed?
Supergirl‘s winter premiere airs Monday, January 4 at 8:00 p.m. ET on CBS.