Airing in the UK on Sky 1, new episodes every Monday

Writers: Paul Yoo and Katie Rose Rogers

Director: Jesse Warn

Essential Plot Points:

• While watching her daughter play in a football match, Sam is approached by a woman who says she’s “special” and gives Sam a leaflet for a cult that seem to be dedicated to Supergirl. When Kara comes across the pamphlet she, Winn and James decide to check out the meeting.
• Thomas Coville is the leader of the cult dedicated to Supergirl, and it doesn’t take long before Kara realises that people are deliberately trying to get Kara to save them to be anointed so they can join the cult.

• Kara decides to meet Thomas to see why he’s running the cult, and he reveals that he knows that she’s Supergirl and that he’ll keep her secret safe. He also tells her that he’s found every Kryptonian artefact he can find and that’s how he knows all about her religion, he wants to save her.
• Sam confides in Lena that she feels bad for not being there for her daughter, Ruby.
• Thomas decides to take his religious faith into a more drastic action, by putting a whole stadium of people in danger by setting of a Kyptonite bomb so that Kara can save them. After proving she’s not a god Alex comes to try and help, Kara decides to use her heat vision to make a hole the bomb can go into.

Review:

You’ve gotta have faith, yes you got to have faith, at least that’s what Kara’s followers believe in this week’s new episode “The Faithful” which delves into religion, cults and looking up to your heroes. It’s an interesting way of looking at the way Kara has helped people, and how they see her as a result, and through this brief chapter we get to learn more about the effects of religious fantacisim.

This season has focused heavily on Kara and the impact Mon-el’s loss has had on her views on being Supergirl, and now her faith in her abilities is being tested when Thomas Coville and his cult of Super-fans appear. She’s lost, so Thomas says, and given how she’s struggled to find a balance between her life as Supergirl and as Kara lately this seems to be an accurate observation. Thomas is less a worthy villain than he is a way to take Kara to the next stage of her spiritual journey this season. It seems like she is going to discover herself again, and her purpose in life, and that will likely make her a stronger, more resilient character.

Coville is also a great opponent to Kara, he’s not motivated by a need to inflict pain on others but by a genuine desire to help his idol become the best person she can be. While his methods are more than a little bit disturbing, and he and his followers are a little over-the-top, but it seems like the writers have created an interesting villain, and one who has the potential to reappear on and off throughout the season. Whether this’ll have any implication on the Reign storyline is yet to be seen, but it could work well.

There were a lot of smaller stories here to see as well, like Alex’s resignation over Maggie’s reluctance to have kids, as well as Sam’s strained relationship with her daughter and how that’s influencing her mental state. Both hint towards potentially difficult plotlines further on in the series, namely Maggie and Alex’s separation and Sam’s awakening as Reign, and both will clearly have an impact of Kara when they do happen. The writers are approaching both eventualities well, though the Maggie/Alex storyline could be cut since they’re such a cute couple and we’d much rather they stay together since their relationship was so significant last season. With Sam, though, it’s nice to see a potential villain get this sort of build-up, given the series’ past with two-dimensional adversaries. It’s already easy to start liking Sam, and while her daughter can be frustrating at times their bond is much appreciated.

The Good:

• Great villain and development for Kara this episode
• The writers are building up their side characters well, especially Sam.
• Kara: “You do realise that Lena won’t take no for an answer.” Lena: “Accurate”

The Bad:

• The cult does go a little bit too far in trying to realise their belief.

And the Random:

• The role of Kara’s mother has been recast to Erica Durance, why you may wonder? Maybe it has something to do with Reign…

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