Posted in: Movies, TV | Tagged: cw, entertainment, guardian, kevin smith, mon-el, Roulette, supergirl, television

Red Suns And Thanagarian Snare Beasts – Looking At Supergirl Lives

This article will contain spoilers for the Supergirl episode Supergirl Lives.

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Supergirl returned last night with one of the most talked about episodes of the season. Not because of anything that was supposed to happen in it, but because it was being directed by Kevin Smith and the title, Supergirl Lives, was a tip of the hat to the infamous Superman Lives script Smith wrote a long time ago. Smith talked about his time writing the Superman script in his An Evening With Kevin Smith. Another reason the episode was talked about was that Smith's daughter, Harley Quinn Smith, appeared in the episode. The producers obviously liked what Kevin did in the episode as he has been invited back to direct another this season. But let's put the behind-the-scenes stuff aside and look at the actual episode.

The first part focuses on the budding rivalry between Supergirl and Guardian. They both get involved in stopping a jewelry heist, Supergirl has to deal with rockets while Guardian beats up the bad guys and cuffs them. In the middle of all this Winn Schott gets involved, tripping one of the guys with the door of the van, but then being attacked and almost killed if it wasn't for Guardian stepping in. This leaves Winn very shaken and questioning whether or not he can continue helping James Olsen as Guardian. The next morning leads to both Olsen and Kara turning in stories on the thwarted heist, each hyping their own alter-egos role in the event. Whenever they do reveal to Kara who Guardian is, it should be a really interesting moment.

Kara ends up taking the story of a missing girl which she is determined to find. She reaches out to Maggie Sawyer for leads and finds out that there are multiple missing persons and then Wynn finds a connection that Kara follows up on with Mon-El in tow. It leads to a clinical trial that is actually taking humans off world for slave labor and returning villain Roulette is behind it along with aliens and the Slaver's Moon. Supergirl and Mon-El confront the aliens, who escape through a portal. They follow only to find themselves trapped on the alien moon under a red sun. Not a good thing for Kryptonians or Daximites. They meet a somewhat helpful alien named Jo, surrender to the slavers, find the missing people and fight their way out.

At the same time, Alex Danvers, J'onn J'onzz and Winn figure out where she is, finds the portal and head through. Except for J'onn who would die because of the air on the moon kills Martians. Winn is basically ordered to go though because Alex needs him to work the portal and this ends up with the opportunity for him to take on an alien, win and get his courage back. Alex and the strike team find Supergirl and the others and lead them back to the portal. Jo, takes out an alien who was about to attack and then asks to come along. One of the humans, the one played by Harley Quinn Smith, is grabbed by an alien while a ship comes to attack as well. Alex sets off a 'yellow sun grenade' that floods Kara with enough yellow sun light to give her back her powers and she takes out the ship, scares off the alien and everyone escapes.

That's the main story… but some important or cool moments happened in between.

Maggie stays over with Alex and the two have a very happy morning before going in late to work. But when Kara goes missing, Alex freaks out and pushes Maggie away. They talk after and Maggie reveals that she knows Kara is Supergirl and that the glasses don't help. Alex admits she's afraid to be happy, thinking that the universe will immediately take it away. Maggie forgives her, saying she only gets the one.

While talking with the alien Jo, Mon-El points out that he's cooking a Thanagarian Snare Beast. Now this is more than just a reference to Thanagar, homeworld of Nth Metal and the Hawk people, but it's a reference to Smith's Superman script. As Smith tells is, producer Jon Peters wanted a giant spider in the story to open the third act. The studio told Smith to give Peters his spiders, but call it something else… he came up with Thanagarian Snare Beast. Peters did get his giant spider, but in a different movie… Wild Wild West.

While prisoner and while escaping, a Dominator appeared. The second time, stopping one of the slavers from firing on Mon-El and then bowing to the Daximite as one would royalty. This seems to go with the popular theory that Mon-El wasn't one of the Daxim prince's guards but the prince himself. Hence people searching for him, like the two black hooded figures at the end of the episode who found out that Mon-El was on Earth and then killed the alien that told them.

The last two things have to do with minor characters in the episode. Jo, the alien that they brought back with them, really didn't have much to do in the episode. They didn't need him in it at all really, so my guess is that he's going to stick around. The second is the use of Roulette as the villain. She didn't really do anything and could easily have been skipped in the episode all together. Unless this is setting up a bigger story for Roulette in the future, maybe something involving War World.

Speaking of returning villains, next week… Livewire.

https://youtu.be/3OBqCEEONw4

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