Danielle Solzman
Supergirl welcomes some new cast members while still stressing the importance of journalism as the fifth season premiered on Sunday night.
The series changed up the status quo in the fourth season finale when Lex Luthor (Jon Cryer) revealed that Kara Danvers (Melissa Benoist) is Supergirl. There was no telling how Lena Luthor (Katie McGrath) would react. The fifth season started with Lena testing a virtual reality system. There’s no way that this is going to end well.
At the same time, Lena sells CatCo to Andrea Rojas (Julie Gonzolo). This would make for an interesting move if Rojas didn’t install herself as the company’s Editor-In-Chief while doing so. This means that Jimmy Olsen (Mehcad Brooks) is going to be out of a job. National City’s Guardian is also no longer a series regular. Jimmy will leave the series at some point this season. It is only a matter of when. In taking over the company, Andrea her own ideas for what CatCo should be. She even brings in William Dey (Staz Nair), a writer from the Times of London if it means improving the company. This doesn’t sit well with Kara and rightly so. Kara has every right to be upset with the direction of CatCo. She also makes sure that Andrea knows it. Nobody is going to edit her work for clicks.
I’m interested in seeing how the ownership sale plays out over the next few weeks. A bolder storytelling choice would have seen Andrea already owning a gigantic media empire. Instead, Andrea owns the virtual reality technology that has National City in a frenzy. She references Elon Musk while discussing her own media philosophies. It turns out that clicks are more important than honest reporting. I expect that we will be seeing a lot of discussion this season about the changes in CatCo reporting practices.
One of the underlying tensions of the first episode is Kara wanting to tell Lena the truth. After all, Kara wins the Pulitzer Prize for reporting! At the moment when we think it will probably drag out for more episodes, the hammer drops! If Kara didn’t do this sooner, Lena would have uploaded a file onto the CatCo servers. Kara gets emotional when she tells the truth while Lena doesn’t really react. Things come to a halt during the festivities when National City gets attacked. It turns out that there’s new villain in town with a vendetta against everyone’s favorite Martian Manhunter, J’onn J’onzz (David Harewood). Meanwhile, Malefic J’onzz (Phil LaMarr) is in town and he means business.
Last season of Supergirl drew some strong parallels to the current political climate. The current season appears to back down from getting political. Backing away from the Children of Liberty storyline is fine but Supergirl also stresses the importance of journalism. This is likely to be the most political that the series gets under the current climate. The bigger question will be whether or not Kara and Lena’s friendship will ever be the same. Will their friendship be strong enough to survive under the eyes of Lex? We know how much power Lex has but we also know that Lena doesn’t have the best relationship with her older brother. What we also know is that Luthors are scorpions. Time will tell.
A few things to note:
Supergirl gets a new uniform this season. After her previous uniform gets torn in a fight, Braniac-5 (Jesse Rath) designs a new uniform that gets activated by the swoosh of Kara’s glasses. While it may take a while to adjust to, I love this new look for National City’s favorite hero.
Meanwhile, both Brainac-5 and Nia Nal (Nicole Maines) get into it over who is the best movie villain of all time. This manages to spark some discussion that Film Twitter can certainly relate to! As tradition tells us, the girlfriend is always right.
Bonanza Productions Inc. in association with Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. Television produces Supergirl with executive producers Greg Berlanti, Jessica Queller, Robert Rovner and Sarah Schecter.
CAST: Melissa Benoist, Chyler Leigh, David Harewood, Katie McGrath, Jesse Rath, Nicole Maines, Julie Gonzolo, Aazie Tesfai, Andrea Brooks, Staz Nair
