Supergirl: Final Season Premiere – “Rebirth” Review

Few would say that Jon Cryer’s Lex isn’t one of the best additions to the series in his entire run. The Arrowverse has never had the best record with nuanced villains in the first place, and that has always been a particular weak point with Supergirl. Season 5’s Leviathan story was unfortunately no exception. It’s hard to say what about Supergirl in particular who encourages such campy and unnecessarily over-the-top performances from actors in these villainous roles. Which is why it’s a relief to see Leviathan and characters like Gamemnae take a back seat in Lex’s favor in his great moment of triumph, not that Cryer doesn’t chew certain landscapes himself in this episode. This silly montage showing Lex reveling in his apparent victory is definitely the most enjoyable moment of the premiere. But with Lex, that silliness is offset by a real sense of threat and outright meanness. In many ways, this is the most faithful version of Lex’s comic book we’ve ever seen live. He’s a larger-than-life evil genius, but he’s got just enough humanity for you to understand why he does what he does and why he ultimately fails. Lex’s Achilles heel is the fact that he assumes he’s too smart to be outsmarted or overwhelmed. It’s something this episode plays well with. It also offers a hard limit to the entire Lex Season 5 arc. He may have helped save the multiverse in Crisis, but only out of personal interest. And here at the end, we see him getting dangerously close to transforming into a new Anti-Monitor.

This episode also successfully resolves a number of other details starting in 2020. Alex is finally getting a proper superhero name to go with his power and costume. CatCo has once again become a respected journalistic medium rather than a cog in a corporate conglomerate. And Brainy, despite that very Wrath of Khan quality in this opening scene, is saved from death and has the opportunity to mend his relationship with Nia. This latest subplot fits in well with Kara / Lena’s long-awaited reconciliation and the idea that secrets are necessary, but so too is honesty and transparency. It will be interesting to see how the all-important Kara / Lena dynamic plays out in Season 6 now that Kara no longer has to play her best friend’s voluptuous reporter. Are they still friends at this point?

As cleanly as everything ties together in this episode, there is a nagging feeling that everything is resolved a bit too quickly and too easily. With Leviathan defeated and Lex once again becoming Public Enemy Number One, there is a certain “back to the status quo” feeling with the ending. It would have been nice to see Lex’s blueprint unfold for more than one episode before the series veered into true Season 6 territory, with one episode focusing on the race to destroy his satellites and the next one developing on the final showdown between Lex and Kara. . On the one hand, with Lex so determined to remake the world into a world where he is loved by all, this is a real missed opportunity not to turn the situation around and to make him see firsthand how the world sees it now. .

It’s hard not to wonder if the decision to shorten the scope of Season 5 to two episodes (which happened before COVID, notice) could have played a role in making the finale more rushed than it is. could not have been otherwise. There’s also the question of whether Cryer was involved in the second filming round of this episode, or whether director Jesse Warn was forced to settle for existing Lex footage from last year. This is perhaps another obstacle against “Rebirth”.

Yet even though this episode seems geared toward resetting the status quo and moving Lex off the stage, it does give us a big twist as Season 6 itself approaches. Kara is now trapped with the other Lost Souls inside the Phantom Zone, leaving only an incomplete record of herself. An intriguing development, and one that could theoretically take place for a while. Either way in the coming weeks, the series will face an uphill battle surpassing the Lex Luthor stories of the past two seasons.