Review 505: Supergirl (Season 4)

Supergirl reaches new heights in its fourth season, maintaining its daringness to explore topical themes and

Kara Danvers/Supergirl (Melissa Benoit) faces a bigger threat than ever before: a wave of anti-alien sentient spreading across National City that's been formed by Ben Lockwood/Agent Liberty (Sam Witwer). As Kara mentors a new investigative reporter, Nia Nal (Nicole Maines) at CatCo Worldwide Media and tries to use the power of the press to shine a light on the issues threatening to tear the city apart, Supergirl takes to the skies to battle the many villain rising up in this era of divisiveness.
How does Supergirl battle a movement when she, an alien herself, represents what people fear most? But it's the arrival of the malevolent Lex Luthor (Jon Cryer) and his nefarious plans for evil dominion that present the Girl of Steel with her greatest challenge...   and a shocking new ally.

The primary theme of this season is (according the show runners) What is stronger: Hope or Fear? Fear itself can be seen as a villain: Can we conquer it?
Ben Lockwood and the Children of Liberty represent fear whilst Supergirl (of course) represents hope as clearly evidenced by how she continually refuses to let fear win.

How can Supergirl be a beacon of hope when she represents what people are afraid of?
Supergirl had to tread carefully. Each wrong move she made could give fuel to this growing unrest, and attacking it outright would simply prove Lockwood and his sympathizers as having a point.

The idea of racial prejudice against aliens is an idea that's been touched on in previous seasons of Supergirl (most notably with the Project Cadmus storyline in Season 2) but Season 4 takes it up to an 11 with the Children of Liberty being the face of that as they prove to be even more than Project Cadmus.

During the Supergirl vs the Elite mini arc of the season, The Elite and the Children of Liberty come to represent two forms of extremity in regards to the alien refugee crisis - either violently attack aliens of violently attack humans. Kara, of course, doesn't believe in either extremity due to her moral values, but she does know that any action she takes against either party with will be read as being in support of one or the other. If she helps the Elite, she will be branded a terrorist and if she goes against them she'll look like a traitor to fellow aliens. Each wrong move she made could add fuel to the growing unrest, and attacking it outright would simply prove that Lockwood and his sympathizers have a point. Seeing her struggling to maintain her ideals and inspire both sides was very compellng.

I don't mind admiting that there were times where I was rooting for the Elite over Kara and the Superfriends mainly because Kara's naive optimism made things worse more than once.
Supergirl’s best efforts seemed to only put aliens in more danger and give truth to Lockwood’s words. 

All of this  in spectacular fashion in the finale, the boldly titled "The Quest for Peace", outwardly an homage to the infamous fourth Superman film of the same name, but clearly a reflection of Kara's journey to expose Lex Luthor's    ultimately giving us a wonderfully and appropriately uplifting sense of finality as it felt the worst was behind Kara.

Directors Jesse Wran, Armen V. Kevorkian, Kevin Smith, Tawnia McKiernan, David Harewood direction is  the cinematography is brilliant
the score by Blake Neely & Daniel James Chan is brilliant,

Melissa Benoit continues to shine as Kara Danvers/Supergirl. Kara has always been a compasionate superhero even to those who she believes don't deserve as we see in this season in how she deals with the Children of Liberty. She wants to protect everyone regardless of wether they're human or alien.

During the Annual Arrowverse Crossover Elseworlds, we see the return of Tyler Hoechlin as Superman as well as the introduction of the Arrowverse version of Lois Lane (Grimm's Elizabeth Tulloch) who manages and comes across as fresh, energetic addition to Supergirl's roster of supporting players.

A very noticeable new addition to the main cast is Nia Nal (Nicole Maines). Kara sees a lot of herself in Nia and in turn Nia shows that she deeply admires Kara.

David Ajala proves to be an excellent new addition to the show playing Manchester Black delivering a very charismatic and energetic performance
For him
to him ridding the world of the Ben Lockwood and the Children of Liberty is a pure crusade.
Though it becomes increasingly impure as the season goes on mainly because of how violent and morally questionable his methods are and how he continuously goads J'onn into abandoning his peaceful life.

Another excellent addition to shows main cast is Col. Lauren Haley (April Parker Jones).
Initially introduced as military officer assigned to supervise Alex in her new position as the Director of the D.E.O and ensure the organisation does its job the way corrupt President Baker wants it to.
However, some of Baker's more erratic decisions such as making Ben Lockwood President of Alien Affairs clearly and deeply unnerve her and she begins to question him and her own actions.

As a result, her hostility towards aliens lessen over the course of the season and she shifts her priorities to keeping the general populace - human and alien alike safe from harm and agrees to help Alex and Supergirl take down the anti-alien administration.

The show goes to great lengths to show that while she's certainly an antagonistic character, she's far from a villain and is simply a little misguided in her methods.

Sam Witwer and Jon Cryer make for a simply inspired pair of villains playing Ben Lockwood/Agent Liberty and Lex Luthor respectively.
Showrunners Robert Rovner and Jessica Queller took a great risk in featuring Agent Liberty as an antagonist considering he's a hero in the comics but the gamble payed off thanks in no small part to Witwer's engaging and highly charismatic performance.

Of course, Witwer has made a name for himself in nerd culture playing villains and his role as Ben Lockwood/Agent Liberty is no exception.
As brilliantly shown in Ep. 3: daintily titled Man of Steel: Lockwood was once an mild-mannered and   open minded history professor who actually spoke for alien rights. But after one too many bad encounters, he began to develop xenophobic views of aliens and has now made it his mission to "empower" human beings
As the season unfolds, however, we see that for all the threat that he poses, Lockwood is little more than a pawn in a much bigger game
In his attempts to help people who feel oppressed by the presence of aliens and who have suffered from alien attacks, he allows himself to be manipulated by Lex Luthor

As for Cryer as Superman's arch nemesis Lex Luthor, he and Superman were once good friends (no doubt a reference to the Superman prequel series Smallville) but Lex's more crueler methods caused friction between the two to the point that Lex came to believe that Supes was the cause of alien terrorism as his presence attracted extraterrestrials and subsequently declared war on his former friend.
Throughout the season, we see that Lex is depicted as being exceedingly arrogant and overconfident to the point of being delusional despite his considerable intelligence and calculating nature.
Luthor's debut in Ep. 15: O Brother, What Art Thou is a real game changer that really amps up the status quo of the show on its home stretch.

Brenda Strong also recurs throughout the season playing Lilian Luthor and

As always, Helen Slater is a delight whenever she shows up playing Eliza Danvers 

 

Overall Supergirl (Season 4) was amazing! Giving us a truly bold exploration of shows themes and challenges of Supergirl's ideology and 4.5/5.