Look, I'm going to spoil the heck of of last Monday's episode of
Supergirl. Sorry, there's no way around it.
So if you haven't seen it yet, and you want to remain blind, come back after you've seen it. This post will still be here. I promise.
Spoilers commence after the 4 pictures of
Kara Zor-El...
Still here? OK, commence spoilers.
Everyone was kind of
ecstatic over the Supergirl episode a couple of days ago that revealed (last chance to avoid spoilers!!) that
Hank Henshaw was really
J'onn J'onnz.
And it was, top to bottom, the episode of the series yet.
But...
I think some people were so enamored over the (admittedly
squee-inducing) fan service that they managed to overlook a few very troubling things about the story.
I'll let you decide whether there are justifiable qualms or not, but allow me to elaborate.
**
WAIT, JEMM IS A BAD GUY?!?
You guys are probably tired of me
kvetching about this. But I ain't gonna stop anytime soon.
The number of intellectual properties available to
DC is overwhelming. And, obviously, the number of villains they have is far, far greater than the number of heroes. That's just how comics works, right?
Yet, under current management, DC apparently
cannot resist the urge to take heroic characters and turn them into sadistic villains. Why? I have no idea. But there's nothing the DC creative hierarchy finds more compelling that taking someone who was a hero and turning them into a reprehensible villain.
Infinite Crisis took
Superboy-Prime and
Alexander Luthor, who had been heroes in
Crisis On Infinite Earths, and turned them into genocidal maniacs (dragging the
Superman of old
Earth-2 along as a dupe). First
Hawk, and then
Captain Atom also became genocidal maniacs, killing off heroes (and entire universes!!). On the
nu52 Earth-2,
Terry Sloan(e) (
Golden Age Mr. Terrific),
Jimmy Olsen and
Hourman have become, well, genocidal maniacs.
It's not like there aren't
existing villains who couldn't be used in these roles. But, no, DC feels the need to
Kingdom-Come themselves as often as possible. Despite the fact that the current troika thinks that villains are "
cooler" and "
more interesting," they would seem to rather turn heroes bad than actually use villains as villains.
So,
Jemm.
He was never really a substantial, significant hero. But he wasn't a bad guy, either (except when brainwashed by
Luthor).
So why not use a
villain for the role of
uncontrollable killing machine? More than one person has suggested that, say,
Despero would have fit the required role in this episode to a T. Or any of the many, many
many space-based villains available to DC.
But no, they have to take a hero and turn him into a bad guy.
Because.
Really, this is
NOT a trend we should be encouraging.
**SNAP
What's the first think J'onn J'onnz does when he appears on screen (albeit in shadow). He defeats Jemm of Saturn.
BY BREAKING HIS NECK.
So it's
J'onn Of Steel now, eh?
Look, I know we don't know J'onn's power set in this universe. But don't we all think of J'onn as a character who would be strong enough,
smart enough,
moral enough, to find some
other way than outright killing an escaped prisoner to resolve the situation? Does this sound at all like the J'onn we
squee about?
(Plus, if they didn't kill Jemm, we could have Supergirl fight him later...
wasteful!!)
Seriously, everyone was so enamored of a 2-second CGI shot that they kind of completely
missed that DC just repeated their
Man Of Steel approach by making J'onn a hero who kills first.
And it was completely unnecessary.
BONUS QUIBBLE: It would have been easier to accept J'onn's broody "
I am the last survivor of my race" if he hadn't just
killed Jemm,
WHOSE PEOPLE WERE DESCENDED FROM J'ONN'S RACE. Yes, I know, different universe, probably not the same history. But still...
ULTRA BONUS QUIBBLE: Using the fact that Henshaw
escaped from locked handcuffs to deduce that he
must be an alien is, well, fairly dumb, as
Harry Houdini was escaping form handcuffs before your great-grandparents were born. Seriously. unless you're telling me Houdini was from Mars...
**ALEX IS A TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE CHARACTER
Look, I will grant you that she had a fine
bad-ass moment against Jemm (which, by the way,
completely failed).
But in a series where she has done little but whine and try to hold others back, her
nadir comes when she selfishly chooses this moment of crisis to allow her personal suspicions
to endanger the lives of every single person in the base. This is the moment she chooses to confront Henshaw? At least one
DEO agent died directly because of her actions this episode. And if Henshaw
hadn't turned out to be J'onn J'onnz, than
every single person in the base would have died because of her, and all of the prisoners would have escaped. This was her grand moment?!?
Whiny is bad. Whiny
and selfish
and ridiculously stupid
and endangering the safety of the entire city is unacceptable. And at this point I don't know if the character can be salvaged (especially if they follow through with the "
she's going to be Max Lord's girlfriend" plot).
(This is not a knock on
Chyler Leigh's acting ability...no one could do much with the incoherent, unlikable mess of a character the writers have created for her).
So, yeah,
great episode of Supergirl...but let's not overlook the troubling blemishes on an otherwise pretty fun show. Let's stop wasting our heroes by turning them into villains. Let's stop having our heroes be so quick to kill. And for heaven's sake, someone do a complete reboot of Alex, ASAP.
