Supergirl: The Faithful review S3 E4
Faithful explored some interesting topics about belief, trust and hero worship. And the plight of the working single mother for good measure. The premise was good and executed well enough, but a rushed conclusion made for an episode that didn’t truly reach its potential.
We get a rare flashback to the night Kara saved Alex aboard the plane. Kara’s actions encouraged her to become Supergirl, but it also inspired a broken man, Thomas Coville (Chad Lowe) to drastically change his life.
Over the next two years, Coville recruited other people Supergirl saved to form a community based on Rao’s teachings with Supergirl as their savior.
That’s an interesting concept, but how would these people know about Rao? Is Superman sharing too much in Metropolis? Nope, it’s just a Kryptonian artifact Coville tracked down. This conveniently ignores the major question of how he could have translated any of this since Kryptonian probably isn’t on Google Translate.
I always tend to like when the characters have some downtime just hanging out. That was even more so the case here as Kara, Alex, Maggie, Lena and Samantha kicked back over wine and shared stories. Away from her needy daughter, Ruby, Samantha is an interesting character accomplishing several purposes this season.
She’s filling the tried and true DC CW role of hero turned enemy and unwittingly serving as the impetus to cause some strife and possible Maggie/Alex break-up.
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Seeing Ruby perform a solo triggered all kinds of emotions in Alex, who decides she really does want children. Maggie wants to be the cool aunt, leading to a major difference of agendas. I doubt the writers can ever get viewers on Maggie’s side on any conflict with Alex, but this one might be the biggest. In fairness, Maggie is making it clear she doesn’t want kids. Alex needs to communicate her desires just as strongly. Chyler Leigh has now firmly established herself as the show’s best actor with another emotional performance.
Samantha is also providing a more modern take on the single working mom who’s making strides in her career and can actually have a life outside of Ruby. By comparison, Ruby just comes off as annoying and needy.
This scene provided such a fresh dynamic I was annoyed Kara left to go rescue a man in a burning building. Super villains on the loose are one thing, but Kara needs some serious superhero boundaries. She doesn’t have to bail on every fun moment especially when National City has its own fire department.
Turns out the potential victim was putting his faith in Supergirl saving him so he could officially join the cult. That’s a serious initiation requirement.
Kara confronts Coville who amazingly manages to see through her carefully constructed disguise of glasses and pulled back hair. It’s even more amazing that no one else has figured that out either.
While it seemed like James was in danger of having a nice moment with Kara questioning her stance on blind faith, Kara had to rush off to stop another incident. Since Legends of Tomorrow is practically the catch-all series for throwaway characters, maybe James should join that cast since he’s so wasted here?
The writers blew off a potentially strong extended subplot in one episode. It felt like this storyline could have developed across several episodes with escalating incidents to further Supergirl’s suspicions instead of the cult immediately taking the more villainous turn by trying to blow up a stadium. She’s quick, but Supergirl isn’t The Flash.
This also made the cult’s reaction to Supergirl bleeding a stretch. It’s not like Supergirl has never been hurt before or was everyone away during the past two invasions? And this might be some Monday Morning Quarterbacking, but with a possible bomb threat, why wouldn’t J’onn already be en route to help instead of Alex?
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Kara’s sloppy bomb removal technique looks to cause a problem for Samantha, who got a vision that Reign is coming. I appreciate the effort to tie everything together, but this seemed random and weirdly timed considering Samantha was already showing signs of something unusual occurring.
Overall, Faithful was a decent episode, but I believe it would have been better with stronger pacing and less forced breadcrumbs to Reign’s arrival.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Photo Credit: The CW