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Supergirl "S2E21 Resist" - Review: Irresitable!


Supergirl "S2E21 Resist" - Review: Irresitable!
10 out of 10

Resist – As the Daxamite fleet lays siege to National City, its forces are quickly overpowered, forcing Supergirl and the team into a dangerous alliance with their bitter enemies. When Alex is ordered to destroy the mothership with a secret weapon, Kara must rescue Lena and Mon-El before it’s too late.

So how about that alien space fleet? National City, this how a Whovian London feels every Christmas. Immediately, this all feels like such a big event from the incredible early action sequences with both Maggie and Alex getting signature badass moments. We even get a sci-fi classic big floaty hologram leader’s head. Yet the skill is reinforcing this dramatically as well as visually with our heroes driven underground and a rather surprising desperate times alliance formed. Within minutes, this feels like the biggest event the show has ever done by an absolute mile. Throughout the episode, there’s still the classic penultimate episode sense of building towards the finale but unlike most such cases, it delivers no shortage of its own thrills rather than just laying groundwork. Although the plane crash/debris aftermath looked DIY film student level, everything about the Air Force One sequence was amazing. As the episode plays out, there are constant threats and stakes, and despite the expanded number of feature characters, plenty for all to do.

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Now this episode has an excellent sense of pulling together different characters and stories across the season into a climax but even if the rest had missed, the bus Calista Flockheart’s returning Cat Grant would make it all worthwhile. While it’s a little bittersweet because it reminds us just how much she’s been missed, Grant owns her every scene and services the episode in every way possible. From her attitude packed opening address to a genuinely awesome resistance rallying speech --“Everyone needs to be a superhero”-- and every great joke in between, she is what takes this episode from being a 9 to a 10. That said, Linda “Wonder Woman” Carter holds her own as the returning President. The only gripe I have is the still all too convenient benching of Martian Manhunter. If that was purely so that David Harewood could stay as Cyborg Superman all this episode, even with the R2-D2 jokes, that’s a real waste. There were still plenty of great character moments across the regular characters though courtesy of Jessica Queller & Derek Simon’s writing in way they happen alongside action or drama based scenes rather than being the central focus. Even with desperation all around them Alex and Maggie still get a gem of a couple moment when Maggie remembers they first met the last time the President was in town.

As well as the action, we get a surprising amount of story twists too: chief of all the impromptu Royal Wedding which played excellently into Rhea’s character as a manipulator while also setting up the DEO/Cadmus team up. I haven’t been crazy about her all season but I loved Lillian Luthor in her DEO scenes, remarking that aliens have invaded like she’d been claiming all along was such a fantastic, “I told you so moment”. Then of course, the final minutes delivered that all import swerve on a perceived victory, setting up for an even more desperate fight in the final episode.

Resist is not an episode without mistakes but the good parts aren’t good, they are spectacular. I thought this year’s Legends of Tomorrow end episodes would take some real beating but it turns out this Supergirl got game. Resisting this episode is futile.

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