"Better Angels" / season finale--
Supergirl/Kara:When fighting Alex, why not use her freezing breath to immobilize her? Why not use her allegedly faster-than-Superman speed to strip her of the uniform and weapons?
Freeze breath could've been worth trying, but given that jump, it seemed that armor was powered, so it might not have helped. Her speed would not have held up well enough for your tactic to work at all, given that she would be forced to touch the Kryptonite laced armor directly the entire time she was trying to remove it.
My main question there was: why fight Alex at all? Everything was set up to claim that her only choice was to kill Alex or let Alex kill her, but Supergirl could just as easily remove herself from the situation and give herself time to come up with a plan/put into motion her existing plan. Yes, Non could counter that by threatening to make Alex kill herself, and I'm sure that's exactly where the writers would've gone in such a situation, but it seemed really strange that the idea never even occurred to her. Especially strange that, while repeatedly stating she refused to fight, she still jumped straight into attack mode several times.
Not to mention the fact that this was so quickly and easily defused that the situation wasn't even worth the setup time. It was basically only there to give them a cliffhanger for the previous episode.
Soo..a restoration of "hope" breaks the mind control? That's about as plausible as rubbing on a rabbit's foot while hoping on one foot.
Symbolically I like the way it ties into the themes of the rest of the season. Narratively, I have to agree they didn't really earn the idea that 'hope' and 'mind control' actually have anything to do with each other.
: He became a throwaway villain.
Unfortunately true. After a whole season of setup, both Non and Astra were cut down way too easily, and Non's death didn't even really matter much. In the end, the actual villain here was Indigo, who's been a terrible character from the moment she appeared.
True, and it's also an enemy that Non didn't face at the end of this episode - which is kind of strange, since presumably Alex still had it and was awfully worried about John and Kara going alone....
No, this time she really didn't have a choice - Lord specifically said if any Human came too close to the power source, their head would explode. I do wish they'd tied it back into her discussion last week and the very bad results of that, in order to take the opportunity to actually show her learning to be a little more professional, but oh well.
Overall I thought it was a decent episode - like most, my reaction was a little mixed, but for this was it was more positive than negative. As a season finale, though, it was way too low-key, slow and quiet. Sure, the personal drama was fine, but it almost felt like that was all there was. Which is weird, because that final fight scene is the first fight scene in the entire history of the show that I really enjoyed, but it was just over way too quickly. As was Non himself, whose character ultimately didn't really go anywhere. And Indigo dying from being torn apart - while visually cool - really didn't make sense.
In regards to Kryptonian abilities in space, I was surprised at the limits they established here (not that they're a bad thing). I've seen different versions of Superman needing equipment to breath in space, but I've never seen a version of him that was unable to fly in space, provided he had breathing equipment. Is that new to this show?
Overall, I'm not sure whether I'll be back for a potential season 2 or not. I can't really say that the show's improved much at all over the course of this season. But then again, it has at least proven it's willingness to do something unexpected every now and again, and I have grown somewhat fond of Kara, Alex and Jonn as characters. That was also a pretty great cliffhanger in terms of making me want to know what's inside the pod.
