This week on Supergirl season 4, Manchester Black and the Elite faced off against Kara Danvers and the Legion of Superheroes. On a basic level, this was a cool episode that kicked ass.
The action in the episode was far beyond what you usually get in any non-crossover event episode of a CW superhero show. That helped carry the episode even with the very questionable ethics.
The fundamental problem with this episode is that we’re presumably not supposed to be on the Elite’s side. I get that killing people is wrong, but Kara is willfully ignoring that the violence didn’t start with them. Yes, she left the D.E.O. But, she hasn’t done enough to fight against it. Plus, Alex Danvers and Brainiac 5 are still working for it.
In the big turning point of the episode, Manchester informs her that the U.S. government is going to use a rocket to shoot down innocent alien ships. Kara flat out doesn’t believe this. This is a show in which the heroes who are most supposed to represent the fight for justice are also most in denial about injustice even existing.
Manchester and the Elite re-program the rocket to aim for 1600 Penn. Kara destroys it before it can harm anyone. Afterwards, she assures the President that she didn’t want to destroy the rocket, she had to. I don’t know why she did this. This was the perfect opportunity for her to give an awesome speech about her refusal to let anyone harm aliens. Instead she assures the President and the audience that she would never do anything this cool unless she absolutely had to.
Then, Alex confronts Lauren Haley about the rocket. Haley informs her that she had no idea and the President acted alone. This is a big problem with Supergirl. It’s unwilling to acknowledge that institutions can be harmful. Instead it always comes down to bad apples. Just like its hero, the show is obsessed with justice but can’t even acknowledge that injustice exists.
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