After last week’s shocking cliffhanger, “Supergirl” derails its gripping storyline drastically with “Man of Steel,” a baffling origin of our villain, Ben Lockwood, who starts down a dangerous path towards prejudice and violence against aliens.
The only real plot line this week is at the beginning and end of the episode: First up, J’onn catches Supergirl as she falls to the ground after the air is irradiated with Kryptonite, but Brainy says that until they can purge the Kryptonite from the air worldwide, Supergirl is toast. By episode’s end, Lena manages to conjure up a miracle gadget that encases Supergirl in a suit that should keep her safe, but she’ll have to stay in it indefinitely.
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Everything else this week was a flashback storyline about Sam Witwer’s Ben Lockwood, as the show backtracks through “Supergirl” history and how the alien attacks over the course of the show affected him and his family- well, his dad dying anyway. His wife and son are barely mentioned. While this week was a fun dive into the “Supergirl” greatest hits and rewarded longtime fans, the whole “Give the villain a backstory” thing actually backfired for once.
Simply put, Lockwood didn’t do anything right out of the gate to earn our sympathy. He very quickly devolves into xenophobia and goes on racist, borderline manifesto-like rants at his university, in front of alien students I’d like to add, and even starts secretly killing aliens with seemingly no consequences. Sure, his rants get him fired from the university, but his boss ends up coming to one of his anti-alien rallies!
The problem is that the guy was pretty much an A-hole 24/7 and the show didn’t do anything to convince us otherwise. And without a real reason to root for him, the entire episode was uncomfortable to watch because of how nasty he was. Also, the main cast of the show barely figured into the episode aside from a few pointless connections between Lockwood, Lena and James that could’ve very easily been cut out of the episode. It was an overall disappointing episode that didn’t add much to the season.
“Supergirl” airs Sundays on The CW.