Supergirl season 4 has proven itself to be a vast improvement from previous seasons, and this doesn’t change the fact that everybody should be tuning in to see the Girl of Steel in all her glory.
However, is the anti-alien story growing to be a little too much for the show to handle, especially when Agent Liberty isn’t the only Big Bad we have this season? Lest we forget, Russian Kara is training and growing stronger after the split due to the mysterious substance that Lena is now developing.
In the latest episode of Supergirl, we saw this story split off into three divisive plots: Kara battling Ben Lockwood on television, James inserting himself into the path of the Children of Liberty, and the vicious attack city-wide against aliens using dogs to sniff out them out.
The most unnecessary issue in this story is definitely the James/Guardian plot, as I’ve written about previously. The Thanksgiving episode just made this issue worse with James’ impending harm at the hands of the Children of Liberty because, frankly, he didn’t listen to Lena’s advice. (Listen to Lena, she’s always right. Everyone knows that.)
Plus, not denouncing the Children of Liberty after being proclaimed their human hero is just a really gross look on James’ behalf. For someone with multiple alien friends, including his best friend, it’s sad how clearly terrible of a friend he is to not stand firmly against anti-alien domestic terrorists.
Meanwhile, the way Ben Lockwood is inserting himself into every situation regarding the alien “problem” in National City is becoming a bit unrealistic. Somehow, this man always finds a way to “win,” even when he’s not hiding behind his mask.
He’s not combated arguments against his beliefs from at least three of the characters we love (Lena, Kara, and James), yet he’s still standing tall. Somehow he’s even managed to get his own television show to broadcast his outdated beliefs to the entire world. Yes, let’s give a platform to the leader and spokesperson of a domestic terrorist organization. What could go wrong?
The problems with the anti-alien hate story are as follows: Supergirl is giving a platform to these people that exist in our own world and have a big enough platform of their own, and there are so many threads to this story that even if it did last the entire season, it could not come to a realistic or satisfying conclusion in support of our characters and their beliefs.
What is the best outcome that can be hoped for at this point? Agent Liberty is stopped, but Ben Lockwood’s work with the mask and without it is enough to keep these hate-filled terrorists going for years, as we’ve seen in the real world.
Even when they find out Ben is the guy leading the charge, there will still be those that support him. Creating the human side to Agent Liberty and inserting him in the story at all of these various points may be great for the episodic drama, but the overarching scheme can never recover from that decision.
The hate will not just suddenly stop because this single man is taken down, nor will the Children of Liberty. If the movement is really spreading as rapidly as the characters say it is, there’s no chance to have this story come to a resolved ending, it just isn’t realistic or possible.
While I appreciate the attempt and the grandeur of this terrible story, the show needs to slow it down and limit the fallout if we’re truly to believe that humanity can come back from this.
As Lena stated in the latest episode, it seems like humanity is on the brink of a civil war with the aliens, and that’s not just going to stop because one man is taken down. Ben Lockwood may have helped radicalize the Children of Liberty, but they’re their own force now, as James is soon to figure out.
As Supergirl season 4 continues, the anti-alien story needs to begin to lessen in size and force. While it’s important, this is a TV show and Supergirl hasn’t taken a story from one season to another (they hardly take characters from one season to another), so I doubt they’d continue writing the rantings of Agent Liberty well into season 5.