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Welcome back to Maid of Steel! In this episode of the podcast you will find a discussion about Supergirl Season 2 Episode 8 “Medusa” (a.k.a. A Prologue to Invasion!), which originally aired on November 28, 2016. After a successful test run of their alien-killing virus, CADMUS is looking for an isotope to weaponize their bomb and mass distribute the extermination gas across National City. Kara and Supergirl play good cop/bad cop, respectively, with Lena as they race against the clock to stop CADMUS before it’s too late.
Vintage Virus Vexes Villains
Night 1 of The CW’s heavily advertised 4-night crossover event was a bit of a disappointment. Though not unsurprising, the crossover really only begins in the last few minutes of the episode, in which Barry and Cisco arrive through a breach. 
They’d been trying to get through all day, we see breaches pop up two different times, but only make it through as time slips away. A cool fact to make note of is that Cisco declares they found Kara on Earth 38, which in the comics is indicative of the Earth most similar to Earth 1. Look at that! Problem solved. In this winter finale of Supergirl, I am struck by the similarities the first third of the season had to the entirety of last season, though it was condensed into 8 episodes. In contrast to Non and Astra developing Myriad to control the minds of humans, Cadmus re-engineers a Kryptonian virus in order to exterminate non-humans. 
Maxwell Lord’s defense tactic, if you’ll recall, was to drop a Kryptonite bomb on the city (not unlike the Medusa mist) in order to exterminate all Kryptonian threats. This would not, of course, eliminate Brainiac 9… but may cripple the enemy just enough. I was underwhelmed with the resolution of that storyline, so there wasn’t much surprise in being underwhelmed once again. Lena’s double agent trickery had me for a moment, but I was left wondering, at the end, where she really stood. She fooled Kara in order to deceive her mother, but there was no conversation between Lena and Supergirl at the end of the episode to resolve the motivation behind her trickery and re-establish the alliance. If not re-establish, then just a conversation to define the relationship. And while I understand the need to end the episode on the crossover scene, since the “4-night crossover event” needed to happen here too, the placement of the Daxamite Hunter Ship scene was very… weird. It almost gets lost in the other stories and probably made an unintentional connection with the Medusa virus by occurring right after the virus was dispersed. That should have been a big final moment of the episode… because it is theoretically leading into the villain for the remainder of the season! (Though I would be very disappointed if we’ve seen the last of Lillian Luthor.)
Cougar’s Comic Cougar
All-Star Superman (Entire series, 1-12 $20 at Comixology) Comixology: The amazing creative team of writer Grant Morrison (BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM) and artist Frank Quitely (WE3) join forces to take Superman back to basics and create a new vision of the World’s First Super-Hero. Witness the Man of Steel in exciting new adventures featuring Lex Luthor, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Bizarro, and more. Karen: It’s on complex.com’s 25 Comic Books You Need to Read Before You Die list, and I concur. It’s a tribute to all of the things that makes Superman (and in turn, the “Super” family) great.
Links
Supergirl won’t return to our television screens until mid-January! So there are no promos to share. If you have some links to share, put them in the comments!
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Happy belated birthday Emilee!
It will be interesting to see how the crossover effects shows’ numbers – will more watch a certain show now that they’ve gotten a taste for how each series is character wise or will everyone stick to their same series? I get people being mad at the mislabeling of “4 night crossover!”, but I hope they don’t hold that against “Supergirl” and actually enjoyed the episode while waiting for the crossover bits and they’ll come back to see more episodes. Also it would be interesting to hear what fans thought of each section especially if they don’t normally watch one or two show(s) regularly.
I agree I thought Jonn’s white martian plot would have gone at least a few more episodes, but I like Eliza was there to help; it would have been cool to see Eliza and Alex working together to solve the problem however. Here’s a “Kept Secret” also from this episode: Kara knows Jeremiah is not just at Cadmus but also working with them for reasons; she started to tell Alex in this episode but stopped so that’s a potential surprising coming for Alex in the future.
“Supergirl” is definitely making use of Chyler’s humor skills! Mon and Alex were my favorites in this episode. Nicely said Emilee regarding how there’s so much stuff going on some plots are falling flat, for example Jonn’s relationship with M’gann has been an interesting plot but we hardly see it; I have to say honestly I’m okay with Guardian having little screen time because I still debate if this was a good story direction or not (it’s organic to Jimmy but it doesn’t fit with his other activities…I’d much rather watch him try to run CatCo each week and fight off people who question why he gets the job when he’s only been there a year and has no business experience for the position) although the flip side is more time might help that plot, and Kara’s whole reporter side job has been a joke basically (it pops up occasionally but nowhere near as much as I thought it would given it’s a life change) but that could be because I don’t really believe in that plot for the character – yes it helps her with her Supergirl absences but I’m just not a fan of it probably because it’s a step towards her being like Clark and I’m not crazy about that. That said they have done some plots extremely well – Alex’s has been AMAZING, Mon’s has been good, and Lena’s while light on screen time has been interesting. Maybe the lesser fleshed out feeling plots will have more happening in the second half so I’ll wait to see what the season feeling is towards them but currently I understand your remarks.
S5 of “Arrow” has been good so far Emilee if you’re interested in hearing comments; Thea’s stuff with Quentin has especially been nice.
They’ll probably have Winn fix Kalex. Alex and alcohol are definitely friends, but I don’t think they’ll do an alcoholism plot with her unless they just want to go really dark because she’s in despair about Jeremiah working with Cadmus; drunk Alex is funny so I’m okay with her being a recurring character on the series. Nice “evil Lillian” laugh Emilee; don’t tease about fanfic – now you two have to write one!
No to the “trapped in a room” trope with Mon/Kara! Also wouldn’t being exposed to kryptonite for that long potentially kill Kara? That would be a trope double whammy – trapped in a room love confession plus love confession while one person is dying; no thank you to those.
You may not want to say “Call Golden Spiral Media.” because you never know what Alexa and Siri may call! A hilarious beat by the way!
Happy holidays!
Besides ComiXology if your library has Hoopla for digital books they also have a lot of D.C. Comics trade paperbacks that you can borrow.