Spoilers "Supergirl": the 6th and final season

Man, I think back to Season Four — so many great characters and ideas, expertly executed and balanced: Lockwood and his Children of Liberty, Manchester Black, Red Daughter, the debut of Jon Cryer’s Lex Luthor, and the list goes on. WTF happened to that show? Now every week just seems like an arbitrary and pointless mishmash that barely registers dramatically. (And Lena’s a witch now? What the actual hell?)

Sure, there are still a few nuggets of enjoyment to be mined — the heat vision laser pointer, as Christopher cited, or Mxy’s song-and-dance backstory exposition. But in general, Supergirl’s glory days seem to be far, far behind it.

 

Sort of deja vu-inducing, since Katie McGrath previously played Morgana in the Merlin TV series.

 

I said the same thing last night when watching it with my father heh.

 

Speaking of deja vu, Nyxly's evil plot is to put together a bunch of crystals which will give her absolute power when combined? I think she's due for a cross-multiversal visit from Thanos's lawyers....

 

Been wondering if Melissa Benoist had realised the same thing and that why she decided to pull the plug.

this season hasn't been so much SuperGirl as SuperBoring.

 

It looks even worse following right on the heels of Superman & Lois's first season, which was everything a Super-show should be.

 

The series has been on a rapid decline for several seasons (like most Berlanti series with the exception of Black Lightning), so its doubtful Benoist just realized that going into the production of the current season.

 

Putting "Supergirl" and "Stargirl" on the same day is a bad move, when the latter can just throw in a ten minute action/FX packed fight scene that the former never managed even in its glory days.

 

Not the funnest sounding type-casting for an actor...

Following in the hallowed footsteps of Lana Lang from Smallville...

 

Supergirl - The Final Season
Season 6 - episode 12 - "Blind Spots"

SG: Just showing up and doing something.

Alex: "you are amazing an can do anything" Enough of the constant, "empowerment" talk that's telegraphed everything from a thousand miles away.

Nyxlygsptlnz: Totems...whatever.

Diggle: Still on his "cameo of no meaning" tour, Diggle acts as BS counselor (SEE NOTES)
To even have Diggle mention Jefferson Pierce only serves as a hard, contrasting reminder of how this series is eternally hollow on the story of black life, even with one character.
_____________________________________________________________________________

Kelly: Joey is hurt in the destruction of what was going to be his new home (BTW, you do not move anyone who has been injured and possibly suffering from internal injuries), while the cartoonish Rankin gains Imp powers via a combination of hand-waving with some gene therapy she's received.

Kelly's "I need to vent to someone who would get it" Really?...not based on James and Kelly as black people on this show.

"you don't see me" Funny, because she never looked for the reflection in that particular mirror over the time she's been a part of this awful series, so she has no ground to act outraged about a life the character never acknowledged to herself. The same with the sudden, 11th-Hour information dump about her feelings which the showrunners did not give two fucks in bringing up until the series was cancelled.

Oh, and the respirator shortage...paper thin and borderline offensive piggybacking this plot on real world hospitals dealing with equipment shortages from the demands/strains of the pandemic.

J'onn: Once again, he's claiming to know what its like to be a black man...when he could not to any degree, as being "black" was his damn choice, not genetics. As he pointed out, he could change his appearance, so psychologically speaking, that would place a permanent wedge of ignorance to the life experiences of real black people, so once again, a freaking Martian's comments on being "alien" by being black was as offensive now, as it was when he first made this statement seasons ago.

NOTES:

One must wonder why actress Azie Tesfai (Kelly), who was one of the co-writers for this episode, spent all of this time on Supergirl playing a character the showrunners never had any intent on using to explore any part of Kelly's black American experience, when every other group under the sun had episodes and arcs dedicated to their issue and/or identities. Further, black co-writer J. Holtham (scripting 6 Supergirl episodes and served as a story editor on Jessica Jones & Cloak and Dagger) brought what to this episode? Not much. The fact that Supergirl was cancelled--so close to the TV grave (in terms of episodes remaining) and only now is the series' only black American character allowed to get any sort of attention speaks volumes--all titled "The Black Experience Was Not Our Concern" by G. Berlanti, et al.

I also note that this episode was a paper thin failure based on what was not written; all one needs to do is read the scripts from the Akils, Goff, et al., for Black Lightning, or Malcolm Spellman's weighty explorations in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, then compare it to this episode, this series, where Kelly slowly (and often sheepishly) spelled out the issues of race or economic disparities as if its some new discovery--for the writers of this episode, who spun their tale like anyone else in Berlanti land.

Again, volumes.

Gotta love how Diggle is shamelessly used as the Wise Token Negro stereotype (as he was meant to be with Luke on Batwoman) imparting advice or sharing a perspective as only he could, which the writers thought they needed. Well, none of this series' black main or recurring characters (two..what a crowd) ever needed a racial self-awareness / pep talk before. But that's what you get with Berlanti productions, a company that--as noted time and again--only used black characters as tokens of their White Liberal checked boxes, when their sociopolitical concerns were never about the black experience at all, and for we in the black part of the audience, we were always aware of what game Berlanti, et al., were playing.

That was evident in Kelly being on this series for years, yet her biggest character or social concerns had nothing to the black American experience--it was the last thing anyone would ever detect about her character because Berlanti and his cronies were not thinking of that key driver of a black life. Oh, but viewers are supposed to swallow the excuse that Kelly was just burying her feelings all along. No, that's not going to sell to anyone knowing the history of Berlanti productions.

Both Black Lightning and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier repeatedly presented a world that has no feel good answers for the plight of black Americans, or even a suggestion of it; in the former, there were no "Orlando, you should get on the city council" nonsense, as if its that easy, and since Kelly would know an ex-con would have next to no chance of succeeding, it makes the writers--the BLACK writers--seem as mired in the Pollyanna bullshit as Berlanti and his cronies for having her make such a statement.

Freeland never had quickie solutions, not for metas or the common person; in fact, by having Lala--a crime lord--hand out needed food and supplies to suffering residents was a statement that the problems of Freeland--for black Americans are so out of control that even the most unlikely source felt the need to help when it barely coming from official sources.

Notice the contrast in hero debuts; in this episode, Kelly is instantly supported as Guardian, and not once is she questioned, or we're given the impression or hint that she ever will face judgement. On the other hand, in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Sam Wilson's entire, series-long struggle with inheriting the Captain America legacy/identity centered on his knowing that the second he suited, up he knew many would hate him (as he explained to the senator). Kelly may not bear the stars and stripes, but she would not need to for a large part of white society to despise her on sight. All we witnessed were insta-celebrations and not a shred of doubt--questioning that any black superhero would face (and yes, the Pierces faced it, too).

That's how divorced from the experiences of the black American two black writers were.

GRADE: F...but I can imagine someone cheerleading this as some great, thought-provoking examination of the black condition in America.

 

J'onn's comment on choosing to look like that also makes no sense, he had to look like Hank Henshaw originally so he could keep working at the DEO to reform it from the inside. He couldn't really change his look before being found out because then he'd lose that position.

After he was found out he could have easily changed his took whenever he wanted, but before that, it really wasn't a choice.

Was it cancelled? I thought it was just ending.

 

Dean Cain is half Japanese, so Jeremiah Danvers might be half Japanese, so Alex Danvers might be a %25 Japanese, female, lesbian.

 

These Diggle appearances don’t make much sense. I assume this is before the Flash one when he was getting those attacks.
Considering what the actor had to go through to be on all these shows with the quarantines, they would have used him more substantially.

 

he has been directing some of the shows so it's possible they filmed the scenes while he was there.

Also according to IMDB he directed last night's episode so wouldn't have been too much of an issue for Diggle to make an appearance.

 

If Rankin goes to Jail despite being under the influence of 5th dimensional energy, then Supergirl should have gone to Jail when she was under the influence of Red Kryptonite.

Can felons vote in National City?

 

I thought that guy was a alien. Are they even allowed to run for office

 

Interesting.

 

I guess that's the end of the counter-theory that S&L can't be set after the SG finalé because SG's Diggle cameo must take place after S&L's. I know I only watch three out of however many shows, but I have very little sense of how these were supposed to attach to each other beyond having the same guy show up.

He's made similar comments about living on Earth looking black while he doesn't necessarily have to before. I suppose it was always an option not to impersonate Hank Henshaw and go back on the run using any other appearance.

 

No.

You thought correctly.

There's a difference between a series being canceled and a series coming to a defined conclusion.

 

A pretty good one. Very heavy-handed, as is typical of this show; the white councilwoman vampirically draining the life from the people in the neighborhood couldn't have been a more blatant metaphor. But it had some potent and effective things to say, and deepened Kelly's character in a way she's needed. I like how the story gave her a very strong personal reason to become Guardian and to stand up for an overlooked community, and a reason for redesigning the costume to make a statement about her identity, with a more visible face and the really nice long braids. (Although in the process they've made it much closer to Jack Kirby's original Guardian costume.)

That was 5-6 years ago, though. And he could've adopted a different persona in his off-duty life. Instead, he made a choice to stick with the Henshaw appearance.

No, this was clearly the end of the arc, as it was always intended to be. (Remember, most of Superman & Lois's season was delayed by a COVID case, and as a result, Supergirl's season actually started earlier than originally intended. So this was always going to be the last of Diggle's appearances.) In The Flash, he was fighting against the headaches and the voice in his head saying "Worlds await." At that point, he didn't seem to fully understand what was happening to him. But here, he told Kelly that he was "offered the chance to become a special kind of hero," so by now he does have a clear understanding of just what it was all about. And when he left at the end, his last line was a decisive "Worlds await." Which tells us, implicitly, that he chose to accept the calling after all and will now be going off to become a Green Lantern.

If anything, the only Diggle appearance that was out of order was the S&L one, which seemed like it was meant to come first, as it barely touched on his arc aside from a throwaway reference to "glowing boxes." (Plus, again, it was probably meant to air earlier.) So we go from there, where he's basically just in his normal status quo as an ARGUS agent, to Batwoman, where he's seeing a specialist about his headaches, to The Flash, where the headaches get worse and a voice in his head tells him "Worlds await," to here, where he's over the headaches and has accepted the calling. Clearly there's a missing piece between The Flash and Supergirl where he somehow got his answers and made his choice, but that's the most logical order for the sequence.