‘Supergirl’ Season 1 Recap: What You Need To Know Before The Season 2 Premiere
Supergirl Season 1 breathed much needed life into the Girl of Steel, bringing her firmly into the 21st century. Despite being much loved by fans and some critical acclaim, the show was in danger of being axed after one spectacular season. Thankfully, as Variety explains, a deft move to the CW network brought Supergirl to a new home. If you’re a fan of the Flarrowverse already on CW, you may not have had the desire or the time to get caught up on the new girl in town. That’s where we’re here to help. Consider this your crib sheet for all things Supergirl before the premiere on Monday, October 10.
Supergirl introduced a lot of characters, both good and bad. Like any great show, there is a very diverse cast, but these are the major players that you should know on both sides of the fence.
The Heroes:
Supergirl: Carol Danvers, or Kara Zor-El, is the cousin of Superman, Kal-El. She was sent to Earth at the same time as he was, but thanks to a mid-flight bump, she ended up landing on Earth much later than Supes. While she came out of the pod as a teenager, he was already grown up and fully established as the Man of Steel. She was adopted by the Danvers family and grew up learning to blend in with the normal humans; after all, with her cousin flying around, she didn’t think the world needed another hero. As the series starts, she works for Cat Grant, the owner of the multimedia conglomerate, CatCo. In the first episode, she is forced to reveal her powers to the world as she saves her sister in a crashing airplane. The rest of the season follows her as she grows into her powers and learns not only to control them, but also to accept her role as National City’s protector.
Alex Danvers: Alex is Kara’s older sister. She works for the DEO (Department of Extra-Normal Operations), a special government division that came into being after Superman revealed himself. After all, if there’s Supes, what other aliens could be out there? Alex is a normal human, albeit extraordinarily trained in combat and bio-chemistry. One of the major themes of Supergirl’s first season was how the dynamic between the sisters changed as Kara grew into her own.
Winn Schott: The second person to find out who Supergirl really is (after her sister), Winn nursed a crush on Kara for a long time. He was fairly heartbroken to be firmly friend-zoned, but was able to work through it. When Kara revealed that she was Supergirl to Winn, he designed her costume for her (and as a neat bit of fan-service, showcased some of her alternate looks from throughout the comics as alternate ideas). It’s worth mentioning that he’s the son of the supervillain Toyman, which has left him with some emotional baggage.
Hank Henshaw: Hank Henshaw is the gruff head of the DEO, and becomes sort of a mentor/father figure to Supergirl. It turns out, however, that he isn’t all he appears to be. He’s actually J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter. He assumed the identity of Hank Henshaw after the original Hank tried to kill him. Also involved in the scuffle was Kara’s father who was mortally wounded (and thought to have died) saving J’onn. This explains why J’onn is so protective of Kara.
Jimmy Olsen: Jimmy is Clark Kent/Superman’s best friend and moves to National City to try to branch out. He gets a job at CatCo. not only so he can make a name for himself, but also to keep an eye on Kara as a favor to Superman. Kara has a crush on Jimmy, but for most of the season he was dating Lucy Lane (the little sister of Lois Lane). In the last episode, however, Kara and Jimmy shared a kiss. Don’t expect that to just be ignored this season.
The Villains:
Supergirl Season 1 was able to introduce a standout set of villains to counter its likeable heroine. In the first half of the season, the primary bad guy (girl?) was Astra, her aunt, and Astra’s husband, Non. Their primary mission was called Myriad, which was designed to prevent what happened to Krypton from happening on Earth. Myriad ended up being a complex form of mind control, which while effective at saving the planet, isn’t really the best way to do it. In the mid-season finale showdown, however, Astra was killed by Kara’s sister, Alex, by a kryptonite sword to the back (which looked as painful as it did amazing).
After that, Non took over as the head of Kryptonian Bad People Incorporated, and decided that maybe mind-controlling humanity wasn’t worth it. He was just going to get rid of the pesky humans and make the Earth a new Krypton. In the end, that didn’t work out so well for him. In a final showdown, Kara faced off against him, going heat-vision to heat-vision. Kara overwhelmed Non and he collapsed with some rather nasty looking burns around his eyes. Is he dead? Can a Kryptonian die to another Kryptonian’s super-vision?
If you’re shaking your head and wondering how other Kryptonians got to Earth, here’s the skinny. When Kara was on her way to Earth, her little detour that delayed her happened because she got caught in the Phantom Zone. Also in the Phantom Zone was the prison, Fort Rozz. As Kara’s ship escaped from the Zone, it pulled Rozz out after it. Fort Rozz crashed and released a rogue’s gallery of super villains. Most of these villains have a grudge against the person who sentenced them to Fort Rozz. That person, Alura, also happens to be Kara’s Kryptonian mother. And in lieu of the mother, revenge on the daughter will have to do.
While this provides a great way for a “monster of the week” to appear, there are also a couple of recurring baddies that you should watch for. The first is Maxwell Lord. Maxwell is the CEO of a tech firm aptly named Lord Technologies. He doesn’t trust the government to watch out for the people and he really doesn’t trust Supergirl. It’s this mistrust that leads him to face off against Kara in several ways throughout the first season. While not a complete villain like Lex Luthor, he is definitely looking out for his own best interests.
The second recurring bad guy isn’t so much a guy as it is a mystery. Project Cadmus is a shadowy government agency that is not only conducting experiments on aliens, they also are hiding Kara’s dad. That’s definitely something that is going to come into play in the second season.
What’s to Come
Supergirl’s move to the CW is bringing her into the fold of the Flarrowverse. While Season 1’s crossover with the Flash established that Kara and company exist in a parallel universe, it won’t really be that difficult to bring her into the same continuum. That should be fully fleshed out in the highly anticipated four-way crossover event featuring all of the CW superhero shows.
Update: In a recent interview with Andrew Kreisberg, Entertainment Weekly got confirmation that Winn and the rest of the Supergirl universe won’t be merging with the Flarrowverse.
He said, “Not for her entire world, but Kara will be traveling from her dimension to our dimension, “our” being the world that The Flash, Arrow, and Legends lives in.”
Read the full interview here.
The Dominators will invade Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow on this season’s 4-way crossover event! pic.twitter.com/9oX6Uvs2Oe
— Supergirl (@TheCWSupergirl) September 29, 2016
What else Season 2 can bring to the table is keeping everyone guessing. Between Superman, Kara’s dad, and the Kryptonian pod that crashed in the final scene of Season 1, however, there should be plenty of meat for fans to dig into.
[Featured Image by CW]
