"Supergirl" Recap: "Myriad"

​Written by John Edward Betancourt

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

One thing that I have always loved about comic books, comic book movies and comic book television shows, is the fact that at some point in the adventures of the particular hero that we know and love, there is a powerful defining moment for all of them. This is when they go beyond simple everyday hero and become a true protector of the earth and on Supergirl, that defining moment arrived last night.

It was a move that I found incredibly satisfying the more I think about it, simply because we really have spent the last eighteen weeks of the series watching Kara Zor-El grow and evolve. She's gone from mousey assistant, happy to hide her powers from the world and leave its salvation to her cousin to full blown flawed hero, learning on the fly how to balance her life, her feelings and everything in between and now her greatest challenge awaits her since "Myriad" finally gave us all the answers about the mysterious Kryptonian plan we have been waiting for, while setting the stage for one explosive showdown. 

As it turns out, Myriad was nothing more than a mind control device invented by Astra to help save Krypton's ecological problems by forcing everyone on that world to focus on saving the planet over anything else. If that seems underwhelming for an evil scheme, I thought the same thing as well until we saw what Non could do with this device. The fact that he was able to send someone to their death with a mere thought is a little scary and it makes sense why Kara backed down because facing off against Non would have resulted in the end of plenty more innocent lives. But what really drew me in and made this whole evil scheme work for me...is the fact that Non truly believes he is saving this world by enslaving it and doing the right thing and well, the best villainous plans out there have always been the ones where the bad guy thinks their cause is noble and just. 

But my favorite part of last night...was Kara's journey. For the first time on the show she was essentially on her own, with only Cat and Maxwell Lord to serve as her think tank this week and this was a genius stroke of writing. By removing every resource she has relied upon so far it forced Kara to finally make the hard choices and by removing Superman from the equation as well, it forces Kara to step up and save the entire planet for a change and in the process...become a big time hero. But it was the hard choice that Kara faced that really stood out for me. It's not often we see a hero have to decide between sacrificing 300,000 lives to save 7 billion and her decision, with Cat's help, to find an alternate way to save lives was just what the episode needed to not only give the people of National City hope, but also the audience.

Because at its core, this was for all intents and purposes a bleak episode, and a brilliant one at that. After all, for the first time ever it really seems like the odds are truly against Kara. She's going to have to find a way to defeat her Kryptonite covered sister, deal with Indigo and eventually Non with little to no support. J'onn is still badly injured somewhere in National City and who knows if Lord's new plan will work and let's not forget the man still has his Kryptonite bomb ready to go as well. In the end, there's really no better way to set up a season finale than this and I can't wait to tune in next Monday to finally watch Kara deal with Non, save the day, and take her place as one of the world's finest protectors. It's been a long time coming and quite frankly...she's earned it. Until next time. 

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