Supergirl S02E14 “Homecoming” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Sky 1, new episodes every Tuesday
Writers: Caitlin Parrish, Derek Simon
Director: Larry Teng

Essential Plot Points:

• Kara and Mon-El have started dating, but she would like to keep things on the down-low for now. Mon-El forgets this pretty quickly though and within 10 seconds he tells everyone at the DEO about their relationship.
• CADMUS make their reappearance so Kara and J’onn decide to investigate. There they find Jeremiah Danvers and bring him back to the DEO. It seems they let him go because they’ve developed a fusion bomb which will be dropped on National City.
• Mon-El is worried that Jeremiah was sent to them for a reason, but Kara is reassuring him that everything is okay. The Danvers have a family dinner together now that Jeremiah is back, and Kara and Alex introduce their other halves to their father. When he decides to confront his suspicions in front of the family, tensions rise between him and Kara as a result.

• Mon-El asks Winn to keep an eye on Jeremiah and he finds that he seems to be spying on the DEO but he reveals that he was actually looking at old case files to see what he missed in his daughters’ lives.
• Thanks to Winn’s skills the DEO fins the fusion bomb. Kara, Alex and Mon-El go to try and disarm it with Jeremiah and J’onn advising them from the base. However, there’s no bomb in sight, and Jeremiah goes to hack the DEO and attacks J’onn and Winn with a cyborg arm.
• J’onn and Jeremiah begin to fight, but the former is quickly defeated. Alex and Kara try to stop Jeremiah, Cyborg Superman and Lillian Luthor but after a bomb explodes on a train track Kara has to go save the train while Alex goes after Jeremiah. She can’t bring herself to shoot him though, so she loses him.

Review:

Family ties are tested this week as Jeremiah Danvers makes a reappearance to reveal that Cadmus plan to drop a fusion bomb on National City. Kara and Alex are just happy to have their father back, but for Mon-El it seems like something else is afoot and this causes some friction between all characters involved as Kara is unsure how to feel, and Alex refuses to see Jeremiah as a traitor.

It’s easy to see where Mon-El is coming from; at the outset it seems too good to be true that Kara and co have been able to retrieve Jeremiah when it’s been so hard to do so before. Surely things can’t fall into place that well for Kara? As a result, this week’s episode feels far too predictable, with the broader plotline developments making themselves evident for the audience much earlier than for the characters. Of course this may be the point, as the focus seems to be on the Danvers family drama rather than Jeremiah’s obvious siding with Cadmus. It’ll be interesting to see why he has decided to do so, but in “Homecoming” the notion just wasn’t handled well.

That being said, the episode does provide some great interaction between the various Danvers family members. Alex and Kara introducing their other halves to Jeremiah is a sweet moment and his inevitable betrayal makes things seem all the more poignant and emotional. It shows that there is still some good in Jeremiah; he still cares about his daughters, so this makes him a much more interesting adversary. Perhaps this’ll cause some problems for Cadmus later on, but we’ll have to wait to be sure about that one.

Another interesting effect of the suspicions surrounding Jeremiah is the friction between Kara and Alex. Their heated exchange after Kara decides to confront her adoptive father about his hacking of the DEO was upsetting, and Melissa Benoist and Chyler Leigh work very well with each other in this scene.

Another interaction that brings something interesting to light is the brief but informative one between Jeremiah and Mon-El. What is it that he knows about him? Has Mon-El been less than truthful about the fate of Daxam? Or perhaps he isn’t what he says it is? If it’s the latter it would tie in nicely with the way in which he was treated on the alien planet in “Supergirl Lives”, and it’ll be interesting to see how Kara reacts when things do come to light. Mon-El has been dealt with in quite a good way this series, his evolution from alpha male hotshot to reluctant hero has been approached quite well. It has made him quite an interesting character, and it’s nice to see him dealt with in such a way by the writers.

The Good:

• The exchanges between the Danvers family, particularly Kara and Alex’s were quite emotional this week. Alex and Jeremiah also had an interesting exchange before the latter escaped.
• Mon-El is proving to be one of the most interesting characters on the show, the small but significant revelations about his origins helping to make this the case.
• Mon-El: “I’m at the DEO for two months before I can pee alone, and he just walks right back in?”
• Kara: “But we did catch them red-handed.”
  Mon-el: “No, they were waving their red hands around in the air literally like they just didn’t care.”

The Bad:

• Jeremiah’s betrayal was very obvious and detracted from the emotional interactions and moments between him and the Danvers family.
• Winn’s relationship still feels out of place and random this week.

And the Random:

• For those that may not know, Dean Cain who plays Jeremiah was actually once Superman in the ’90s TV show Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

Review by Roxy Simons

• Read our other Supergirl reviews