Brief Thoughts On ‘Supergirl’ Season 6, Episode 14
by Erik Amaya
Next week on Supergirl, Nxly’s (Peta Sergeant) hunt for the totems leads to one encased in rock. And it happens to be the Hope Totem! But as Nxly isn’t big on hope, she issues an ultimatum to Supergirl (Melissa Benoist): hand over the totem she’s collected or National City will fall. We suppose that means the Super Friends were successful in their own objective from the end of this week’s show?
As for this week, the humanity gauntlet proved to be somewhat interesting as Nxly faced overwhelming compassion. Sadly, though, the end result was nil as it seems the imp learned nothing from that infusion of emotion except to throw it away. We imagine her recovery of the Hope Totem will turn out to be quite violent as a consequence.
Meanwhile, it feels like this week’s totem story was really just a spine to give William (Staz Nair) something to do and for Lena (Katie McGrath) to get more comfortable with magic. In the latter’s case, it was a effective use of screen time as Lena can’t really go from scientist to full witch in the span of an episode or two. If the cast was just a little bit smaller, we’d love to linger on this idea as Lena so closely identified as a woman of science as recently as this season. A few more scenes of her coming to grips with the irrationality of magic would really give McGrath more to chew on. And yeah, it’s clearly the intent, but you can already feel the show running out of time to do everything it wants to accomplish before the end.
William, meanwhile, has no reason to stay at Catco. He’s clearly Daily Planet material and we hope his eventual exit leads to a job in Metropolis at a post-Morgan Edge Planet and not some sort of noble sacrifice to get the totems from Nxly. We feel for William and Nair. The character and actor were brought on to be one thing, but it’s clear the series really didn’t have room for it; particularly after the Crisis. Come to think of it, Catco barely fits into Supergirl‘s paradigm at this point.
Oh, also, we’re glad Alex (Chyler Leigh) finally found a child to take care of. Sure, it’s a little late in the grand scheme of things — and we wish she and Kelly (Azie Tesfai) had talked about this in a previous episode — but it is a nice payoff to something the show’s rarely had time to come back to. Ending her story on a note of family is the right choice, and with six episodes left, it’ll even have time to be endearing.
Supergirl airs Tuesdays on The CW.