Review- Supergirl Season 1 Episode 15: “Solitude”

Check out Our Review of Supergirl Episode 15: “Solitude”

Last week, I took Supergirl to task for conveniently depowering Kara at times in order to make the villain of the week seem more potent. This week, that isn’t a problem at all as the series introduces one of the most brutally intriguing baddies to date: the mechanized menace of Indigo!

Indigo is played by Smallville’s own Supergirl, Laura Vandervoort, who really tears up the screen. She is wonderfully vampy as this computer intelligence, and DC fans, the episode makes no bones about the fact that Indigo is a direct descendant of Brainiac. She has the three circles on her head and everything, and name-drops the classic Superman foe whenever she gets a chance. Indigo isn’t only a threat to the modern day, it is also revealed that it was Indigo that knocked Supergirl’s pod of course and brought her to Earth.

So in Indigo, Kara must face a true threat from Supergirl’s past. Now, my one nitpick is- did the brain trust behind Supergirl really have to make Indigo look soooo much like the X-Men’s Mystique? I mean, they weren’t fooling around. Indigo event fights exactly like the mutant shape shifter.

But that is where the similarity ends as Vandervoot and her Indigo really sell the whole living- computer intelligence thing. She is frightening, intense, and comes across as a true powerhouse. She is such a threat that Kara has to team up with the DEO once again in order to defeat her. It is a nice moment of catharsis when Kara forgives J’onn for the murder of Kara’s Aunt Astra, and it is an even more satisfying moment when Alex confesses that she is Supergirl’s aunt’s actual killer. Our heroes are on the same page again and who can blame them; they came inches from nuclear annihilation thanks to Indigo.

Yeah, things got Superman: The Motion Picture this week as Kara had to stop a nuclear bomb. Stakes were high; villains were potent (props to Winn for taking out Indigo with a computer virus), and despite some sappy stuff regarding the ponderous James Olsen/Lucy Lane/Kara love triangle, things stayed at a high level of drama. Heck, through it all, the episode even managed to humanize Cat’s new assistant Siobhan with a new romance between her and Winn!

And guys, we get to visit Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Yeah, it is total fan service as James and Kara’s visit to the Fortress barely fed the plot, but they have the unliftable key you guys (well, a TV budgeted key, it wasn’t hundreds of feet long). And you know what else is in the Fortress? Just a Legion of Super Heroes flight ring. I’m still smiling.

Satisfying and well-utilized fan service aside, Solitude is a big-time episode that feels very important and advances just about all the show’s story beats to the next level of coolness.