#sometimes i think about s4 kara/sam and think about this scene

[samueltanders]

[occidentaltourist]

Legion of Doom

Lately I’ve been thinking about the ways in which S2 altered the DNA of Supergirl as a show, so to speak, in a way that is still being felt now. The crossover brought home the point that there isn’t much teamwork anymore on Supergirl; whereas the other Arrowverse shows did have their featured pairs in the lead, they also featured their respective teams in strong supporting roles. Kara and Alex were essentially by themselves, and even then they were split up for most of the crossover.  

TPTB have decided to continue down the S2 route with the introduction of the Legion – which was baked into the choices made about how to handle the crossover. 3x09 really made clear to me what the tradeoffs of that decision are.

A lot of airtime was spent on Legion exposition and scenes that, in my view, were rather repetitive in purpose and just served to draw out Kara’s angst over her current love triangle predicament. We could have spent half the time and gotten the same points across: that Imra is a sympathetic character; that she and Mon-El have a real marriage; that they’re from the future and Mon-El is now past his dudebro slaver days and is a leader who fights for the greater good of the universe; that Kara is still perpetually on the verge of tears and thinking of her Mon-El ordeal as the worst thing I can imagine; and on and on and on ad nauseum.  

In lieu of spending more time with, say, Alex or James – we are introduced to new characters – Mon-El 2.0, Imra, the imminent Brainiac 5 - that will be Supergirl’s new gang of sidekicks for the battle with Reign. What was wrong with the old sidekicks? Beats me.

This is starting to look to me like some kind of backdoor pilot, with Supergirl the show serving as an extended audience focus group and/or launchpad for these characters to go elsewhere in the Arrowverse. Maybe their endpoint is to just go back into space and the future, and drop by now and again when Supergirl needs them. Or is S4 being set up as The Legion, featuring Supergirl? (Yikes.)

Anyway, the price the audience pays for all that exposition and time spent on Kara’s love triangle – and I include the long, drawn out saga of Mon-El’s reappearance in 3x07 in this -  is that they need to take narrative shortcuts. Even though we’ve only seen them substantively interact a couple of times – and only once without Lena present - we’re now told Sam and Kara are best friends. They didn’t have time to show us, so we’ll just have to settle for a group hug and trust that something happened offscreen to create this bond.

Instead of showing us some steady development of Lena and James and some rationale for why they’re now making googly eyes and kissing each other, we have to settle for Kara telling us that there’s chemistry and Sam insisting that James likes Lena. Sometime between Lena thanking Jimmy for saving her life and the holiday party, they realized (offscreen) that an irresistible force was drawing them together. And because there’s no more time left to do anything else, James is folded into Lena’s storyline and conflict with Morgan Edge. And Edge, with his ever sharp and acid tongue – calls James her bodyguard. Which, as with all his barbs at Lena and Supergirl in the past … may be more true than the characters would like to admit.

TL;DR I am resigned to the domination of the Legion and all its attendant drama for Kara in 3b, at the expense of the other characters and storylines. My hope is that it pays off when they finally get their ship fixed and sail back off into space.

[thatsjustsupergirl]

I know this isn't something I should be worrying about for a while, but well. You predicted that Alex might end up adopting Ruby if/when Sam dies at the end of the season, yeah? That actually kind of worries me because I'm concerned about how the show will manage to balance Alex having a kid with Alex doing plot stuff, since 2B showed they couldn't even figure out how to balance Alex having a girlfriend with Alex doing plot stuff. I feel like, just like how in 2B all of Alex's plotlines (1/2)

(2/2) related to Sanvers only, the show might have all of Alex's plotlines revolve around being a mom to Ruby. I do want Ruby to stay next season because, she's basically half-Kryptonian, so it would be so cool if Kara could mentor her. (I wonder if Ruby will get Kryptonian powers too?) But I'm also kind of dreading next season because of this possibility for Alex. I guess what I'm asking is, how do you think the show will handle this?

That’s a valid concern -- although kids aren’t allowed to work as many hours per week as adults, so it would be pretty hard to have a storyline like that eat up all of Alex’s time.

However... 2B was a mess because something behind the scenes was a mess that led to bad management of storylines. S3 so far has shown no symptoms of this at all -- if anything, they have too much story, for all the characters. There’ve been quite a few cut scenes thusfar and the show is desperately trying to squeeze in extra seconds as often as possible by skipping the opening credits and shortening the “previously on” segments. (Let’s put it this way: the opening stuff now takes 0-20 seconds, where last year it averaged about a minute, sometimes more.)

I can’t say for sure what they’re going to do -- whether Ruby sticks around for S4 and for how much time per episode is going to depend on a whole lot of things, including contract negotiation and the feedback they get during S3. That said, I would 100% be on board for a mentoring storyline, so long as the main focus is still on the adults. And they’ve done a good job thusfar with balancing Sam’s development, so I think we might be safe.