Loved It? Hated It? What did you think of "Reign?"

[Backward Galaxy]

What did you think?

[Aurora Moon]

I feel that it kind of lost momentum after the crossover, which is a shame. I think this was one of the weakest supergirl eps this season to be honest.

They built Reign up so much for the entire season. And when she does finally appear, we get those weird camera angles so to avoid showing her as much as possible until the last second?
I get what they were going for, really. But... I honestly think it would had been far more effective had they actually just showed her from the get-go instead of using weird camera angles to try to build up the "mystery". Especially because there was no real mystery here to be had.... every viewer knew who Reign was going to be, and that she was most likely going to dress all in black to be the polar opposite to Supergirl.

So why not go hog-wild and show us her full costume from the start? I think that would had built up to the climax of the battle so much better.

They also spoke about how she was apparently terrorizing the city, but we didn't get to see much of that? Again, they keep on telling us instead of actually showing us the action. We got to see the big bad of the season terrorize a few criminals, and Morgan edge... that was it. the rest was just her symbol burned into things.

And let's not even get into the Lena/Jimmy Olsen thing.... heh. Or the fact that they choose to drag out the Mon-el angst for Kara again.

This gets a 3/10 rating from me. Mainly because the ep was still watchable somehow despite all the bad things it had going for it. The fight scene was a decent scene by itself... it's just too bad that the rest of the scenes weren't as good.

[Backward Galaxy]

The Reign stuff, to me, feels forced. The mother-daughter stuff comes across incredibly hollow. They don't feel like real characters. They feel like a writer making up memories for fake characters to talk about and pretend they're important. The cult angle is also being handled so haphazardly that it's not coming off as a true threat. It makes total sense that a cult would worship all-powerful aliens, so there's plenty there to mine, but it all comes across as so phony. I'm not sure if CW programming is too unsophisticated to handle this subject matter properly or if it's just straight up poorly written, but it isn't working or believable.

The Lena-James stuff is being shoved down our throats. Tastes bad, man.

I don't care much for the actress who plays Imra, but the Mon-El stuff isn't bad, mostly because Melissa Benoist has raised her game this season. I haven't enjoyed much of the season so far, but I think this has quietly been her best string of performances yet.

AM is right when it comes to the Reign reveal. They were going for a Batman Begins-type vibe with the strange camera angles and quick flashes of action, but it just wasn't shot well.

That fight scene was incredible, though. I feel about that fight scene kind of the same way that I do about the junkyard fight scene in Superman III; worth the price of admission. Felt a lot like the beatdown Barry took from Zoom, which was also well done. I am, of course, ignoring the fact that J'Onn, his Dad, Mon-El, AND Imra all chose to let her get her butt handed to her without offering any assistance whatsoever. But at the end of the day, the show is called "Supergirl", so I'm just going to accept that the story will push everyone else to the side every once and a while. I suppose we can say that Mon-El and Imra don't want to pollute the timeline, and that J'Onn's Dad isn't really a superhero. Still have a problem with the Martian Manhunter doing nothing, but it is what it is.

[Aurora Moon]

I can't help but wonder if they haphazardly hooked up Lena and Jimmy to prevent fans from wondering if Jimmy and Kara would ever get back together or something? or to prevent fans from shipping Lena and Kara together, even though it wouldn't stop people from doing that.

Although I can't see CW doing that... they just love that trope where people keep on getting back together and then having drama as an result of that. Ala Clana. And they seemed to have no problems with Maggie/Alex.

Hmm. The choice to ship Jimmy and Lena together was a strange one though... it just seemed to come out of nowwhere.

[Backward Galaxy]

It seems to me like they don't know what they're doing with James. They inadvertently (maybe?) made him even less relevant when they made Lena head of CatCo (or whatever her title is). If you count Supergirl, J'Onn, and Guardian as the three superheroes, he's the least interesting of the three. If you count Lena, Kara, and James as "CatCo people", he's also the least interesting of those three. It's kind of a problem.

[spotteddog]

I really had no major problems with this episode (my grade - 6), but I do have a comment and a question.

Others have mentioned the weird camera angles when showing Reign - it seemed an odd choice and I found those scenes to be frustrating. We all knew the new character (can't think of her name) was going to become Reign, why be so mysterious ?

And my question - we have all seen Kara get smacked around pretty good by various villains, but never has she suffered so much physical damage. It wasn't like Reign hit her over the head with Kryptonite club or anything - just some sort of post with a big chunk of cement at the bottom. We have seen Kara get hit with much larger objects and jump back up - is Reign supposed to be much stronger than Kara or something ? Confusing...

[Aurora Moon]

yeah, I think Reign is supposed to be stronger than Kara. But I guess that can be difficult to show on screen with live actors and all. If this was an animated series, they'd probably show far more visual effects than the live action did. Sonic booms, etc as the two of them fought each other to show how intense it could be between two Kryptonians who could literally beat each other to death.

[Backward Galaxy]

Others have mentioned the weird camera angles when showing Reign - it seemed an odd choice and I found those scenes to be frustrating. We all knew the new character (can't think of her name) was going to become Reign, why be so mysterious ?

I don't believe the emphasis was on mystery. Think the first scene in Batman Begins where he shows up and beats up all the thugs. The point was to show Batman as a kind of monster striking from the shadows, even though we all knew it was Bruce Wayne. Similarly, we're meant to view Reign as a monster. I think they might've even played some monstrous "roars" over some of it for added emphasis, but I'd have to re-watch it to be sure.

And my question - we have all seen Kara get smacked around pretty good by various villains, but never has she suffered so much physical damage. It wasn't like Reign hit her over the head with Kryptonite club or anything - just some sort of post with a big chunk of cement at the bottom. We have seen Kara get hit with much larger objects and jump back up - is Reign supposed to be much stronger than Kara or something ? Confusing...

Force = mass x acceleration. In this case, I believe we're meant to interpret Reign's "clubbing" of Kara as having happened at such an incredible velocity that it was able to hurt her. Theoretically, I feel like the club of choice would've shattered on Kara before doing that much damage, but call it poetic license. In this case, it's more about how fast the club was swung than the attributes of the object itself.

[Kal-ed]

That fight scene was incredible, though. I feel about that fight scene kind of the same way that I do about the junkyard fight scene in Superman III; worth the price of admission. Felt a lot like the beatdown Barry took from Zoom, which was also well done. I am, of course, ignoring the fact that J'Onn, his Dad, Mon-El, AND Imra all chose to let her get her butt handed to her without offering any assistance whatsoever. But at the end of the day, the show is called "Supergirl", so I'm just going to accept that the story will push everyone else to the side every once and a while. I suppose we can say that Mon-El and Imra don't want to pollute the timeline, and that J'Onn's Dad isn't really a superhero. Still have a problem with the Martian Manhunter doing nothing, but it is what it is.

That is the fight I expected from Smallville Clark vs Doomsday, this show is really doing well in that front. I agree the show is Supergirl but they should at least come up with credible reasons why the other powerhouses arent around.