Review 504: Supergirl (Season 3)

Kara Danvers (Melissa Benoist) grapples the personal sacrifices she's had to make while saving National City as Supergirl. She even considers giving up her human identity altogether.
Being human and vulnerable is hard. Maybe she's better off embracing her alien DNA and only being the Girl of Steel!
As Kara struggles with her path forward, she continues to work with J'onn Jonzz/Martian Manhunter (David Harewood) and her sister, the formidable field agent, Alex (Chyler Leigh) at the DEO.
With the arrival of new allies in the form of the Legion of Super Heroes and chaos caused by new foes Morgan Edge (Adrian Pasdar), Reign (Oddette Annabelle) and other powerful worldkillers, everything that Kara's ever known and everyone she's ever loved will be tested.

At the beginning of the season, we find Kara in a very bad place as she's still reeling from the loss of Mon-El (Chris Wood) at the end of the last season. Thinking that she can no longer be a hero and have a normal life, she throughs herself squarely into her duties as a superhero. She feels that focusing solely on those duties is the one thing that helps her cope with her loss, she even says it: "My life as Supergirl is the one thing I can count on. I can go out there and help people. I can make a difference in the world. I can...  feel strong, even though a huge par of me feels so weak and she's taking that away from me. And if I don't have Supergirl, what do I have?"

Genetically engineered to be faster, stronger and more ruthless than a normal Kryptonian and to bestow judgement on those who have "sinned", Reign is arguably the most brutal and dangerous villain has encountered thus far.

The back half of the season (particularly episodes 18-23) have a lot of frankly bizzare ideas and B-stories bashing up against each other and at times it felt like the writers were throwing everything at the wall and seeing what stuck.

What makes Samantha Aries such an interesting character is that she's not inherently evil, but that she's a foil in so many ways to Kara and Clark.
They're survivors of Krypton with an A.I. and hidden fortress and were adopted by human families when they arrived on Earth. But whereas Kara and Clark were raised with love and affection and were fully aware of their heritage, Sam was the product of experimentation and genetically engineered and grew up thoroughly unaware of her powers.

Both Clark and Kara had loving foster families who raised them to have very strong moral values whereas Sam was kicked out by her adoptive mum when she got pregnant as a teenager.
Both Clark and Kara became heroes of their own free will whereas Sam so desperately wants to be a hero. But because of her genetic design, she's destined to be a villain.

Along with the return of Mon-El, we’re introduced to the Legion of Super Heroes consisting of Imra Ardeen (Amy Jackson) and Querl Dox/Brainiac 5 (Jesse Rath). The Legion is a group of heroes that Mon-El formed, inspired by Kara and they hold many of her ideals.

Directors Jesse Warn, David McWhirter, Dermott Downs, Kevin Smith, Chad Lowe, Larry Teng, Glen Winter, Gregory Smith, Andi Armaganian, Alexandra La Roche, Antonio Negret, Marizee Almas,  the cinematography is beautiful, the score by Blake Neely and Daniel James Chan is thematically striking,