Supergirl 3x19 "The Fanatical" Episode Review
Major Spoilers for the latest episode. Caution!
I consider this episode a "filler" episode. We stepped away a bit from the main plot and focused on character dynamics, which is the heart and soul of Supergirl. The main villain of the episode is the Rao Cult, lead by former victim Olivia in Coville's absence, but they are now worshiping Reign, the true Rao God.
Tanya, a former member, escapes them with an interesting book in the last episode, and goes to James Olsen for help. After Olivia leads a charge into Catco to retrieve the Rao Book back, James suits up to become Guardian and rescues her.
Olivia shoots James right in the face and breaks his helmet, exposing his identity to the enemies. The police arrive and try to arrest the wrong man (James), letting Olivia and her Cult escape. She later blackmails James into giving up the book and Tanya or everyone in National City will learn his identity.
Lena and James have a private moment about this issue. He tells Lena about the time he went on vacation with his family at a fancy hotel and got arrested with his cousins because the police assumed they trespassed. James was seven, and they slapped handcuffs on him. He teared up and got hauled through the lobby like a criminal.
This leads to a memorable scene about racism in America and how revealing his identity as Guardian will change everything for James Olsen. Being Guardian allowed people to judge him by his actions and not by the color of his skin, which is 100% understandable. The best part of the entire episode belonged to James Olsen. It was about damn time!
James decides to hold press conference to get ahead of Olivia. He will not let this Cult blackmail him. Tanya does not want him to do this and decides to give herself up, but Mon-El comes with her as backup.
His alter ego Mike Matthews has returned! I'm starting to get mixed feelings about Mon-El.
They lose track of the van because something in there blocks the trackers, but Kara is certain Mon-El will find a way to contact them. He does using kryptonian crystals and emits a frequency only kryptonians like Kara can hear.
Supergirl and Guardian get to the cult right after Olivia performed a ritual. Using Tanya to translate the ingredients, Olivia successfully created a Worldkiller. Olivia is fueled and takes on her former idol.
Unable to defeat Olivia or touch the rock in her hand without letting out heat vision, Supergirl reasons with Olivia to let go and to not let the rock control her. Olivia listens because the power is too much, but she can't remove it. Supergirl burns Olivia's palm and Mon-El knocks the rock away.
Supergirl freeze-breaths Olivia's hand to help with the pain and comforts the young girl.
Elsewhere, Alex is having a hard time reaching Ruby. She closed herself off after learning Sam is a Wordkiller Reign. She isn't ready to grieve or whatever, but Alex keeps pushing her to feel something or do something. J'onn and Alex team up to help each other.
Everyone goes to the arcade!
M'yrnn is triggered by a shooting video game and crashes. J'onn manages to calm his father and sits him down with Ruby. Both Alex and J'onn step away to talk to people about the incident. Then these two get to talking!
Ruby and M'yrnn scene is another character dynamic I enjoyed. Another highlight of the episode. She asks him questions about Mars and how he got through his grief. Then they play foosball and become best friends. More scenes with them please!
Alex and Ruby apologize for pushing and rudeness respectively. Ruby wonders if she'll end up like her mother. Valid question as we are reminded Ruby is half-kryptonian! But Alex has no real answer but promises to be there for her no matter what. This is good character development for Alex. She is getting prepped to become an excellent mother.
The Supergirl-Lena-Kara dynamic is starting to unravel. Supergirl is struggling to deal with Lena because she knows she crossed a line asking James to look into Lena's vault. Then she yells at Lena for creating technology that blocks her x-ray vision.
Lena is starting to distrust Supergirl and is only helping her because she cares about Sam. She has no interest in making amends with the Girl of Steel because she has people like James and Kara in her life. This is where it gets trickery.
Kara goes to James, asking him about how to fix her friendship with Lena without exposing her secret identity. Telling Lena this late in the game will destroy the friendship entirely. I can already sense the huge foreshadowing on this.
The Smallville Lex-Clark vibes manifested. Lena might go too far this season or next season and become an enemy of Supergirl. I would hate to see this happen, but if they continue to distrust each other, I think Lena will go down the dark path. Kara needs to tell her friend about being Supergirl because I don't buy how "not telling her is protecting her" logic.
If she figures it out on her own, the consequences will be too catastrophic. Mon-El and James have no idea what they're talking about. I mean, she should follow James' example. One day, he wants to expose his identity to the world on his own terms. I think that's pretty Oliver Queen and Tony Stark of him to do.
James and Kara hug it out too by episode's end. They have restored the original friendship between them, but damn do I miss their romance. I'm not over how they totally sunk it at the beginning of season two like that.
But this episode proved instrumental in episode's end like most filler tends to do. Lena needs more of that rock that created Olivia into a Worldkiller. She can reverse-engineer it into a cure for Reign/Sam. She is starting to become immunity to kryptonite (Davis Bloome/Doomsday logic) and only have a few days before Reign can escape.
Mon-El and Supergirl borrow J'onn's spaceship to go find some more of that rock in outer space. This is set-up for next week's introduction of Argo City. Get excited or look it up if you don't know what that means!
Oh Yeah. Coville is alive and admires the crime scene, where his Cult completed the ritual.
I thought this was an okay episode with a lot of good highlights and memorable scenes. It had a lot of emotional punches, but that's how Supergirl beats bad guys. Comment and share how we're feeling... I think we got four episodes left in the season.