Supergirl 3×02 Review: “Triggers”

While Kara continues to struggle with Mon-El’s absence, her fear of what has become of him is what truly haunts her. “Triggers” gets inside Kara’s head a bit more, but her heartbreak and struggle over Mon-El remains the least emotional storyline happening on the show, despite Melissa Benoist’s solid performance in the episode’s climax. Jane the Virgin’s Yael Grobglas guest-stars as the metahuman Psi and, although her power had some impact, the villain-of-the-week plot proved lackluster. It was Samantha Arias (Odette Annable) and her daughter, Ruby (Emma Tremblay), who provided the emotional weight in “Triggers” and kept up the episode’s momentum.

Thankfully, the second episode proved not to be as dark as the premiere. Kara is back to being a team player and not avoiding Alex and the rest of the team. However, she’s still down about Mon-El. While I would never begrudge her for her feelings, it’s nice that Kara’s true fears emerged and it wasn’t about losing Mon-El per se, but about the possibility that he might be dead (and because of her decision) that’s bringing down her mood and causing her to push everyone away. Still, Mon-El unfortunately continues to be a major factor even when he never appears onscreen while she continues to believe Supergirl is strong and Kara is weak. It’s unfortunate that she feels this way and even more unfortunate that she thinks she doesn’t have anything outside of Supergirl. Hopefully, all her emotional stories this season won’t revolve around a man, but this remains to be seen.

Lena buying CatCo has provided an interesting new dynamic and one that is starting to bring the media company and James back into the picture in a big way. Having no idea how to run a media company, Lena has decided to leave her LuthorCorp in someone else’s hands while she acquaints herself with her new job as the CEO of CatCo. This rubs James the wrong way because Lena’s decided to come in everyday instead of meet once a week; she also calls together meetings and doesn’t inform him. He probably feels she’s overstepping her boundaries and isn’t including him and this is causing some work-related tension. In Supergirl’s first season, we learned that (of course) James didn’t particularly think highly of the Luthor family. Now that one of them is in the midst of his everyday workplace, it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. The potential for a hate-to-love relationship is definitely there. Moreover, it’s just nice to see that James is more involved this season thus far. Could they give him more meaty scenes? Yes. Could he interact more with Kara? Absolutely. Is there potential for this storyline with Lena? Oh yeah.

As for Lena, she seems very excited to be working at CatCo and, more importantly, she’s happy to be working alongside her friend. Even though Kara isn’t being a particularly good friend right now, the Girl of Steel quickly learns that Lena isn’t going to be a pushover boss. Kara’s disappearances don’t go unnoticed and Lena is quick to let Kara know that if she’s going to be insubordinate and act like a flaky employee, that her behavior will not be tolerated. It’s a great moment and a reminder that Lena Luthor, although ready and willing to give Kara the benefit of the doubt as her friend, is also not to be messed with. Lena has backbone and it’s perhaps this attitude that will snap Kara back into her life moving forward.

Even though there’s a lot going on with all the main characters, it’s Samantha and Ruby who provide the heart in the episode. After Samantha saves Ruby in the premiere, Ruby’s curious as to how she did it and comes to the conclusion that her mother is a superhero. Ruby puts herself in danger to prove this, but, as of now, it seems like Samantha can only tap into her power when necessary. Things get even more interesting when it’s discovered that Samantha is now the one running LuthorCorp in Lena’s place. It’s really fantastic that the writers are carefully positioning Samantha as a character we can care about. She doesn’t know what her future holds and it adds to the mystery and also makes for some wonderful character development. It’s easy to see that, by not rushing through her character arc, the writers clearly care about telling Samantha’s story the right way. So far, Odette Annable is proving to be a wonderful addition to the season and someone whose storyline is the most intriguing thus far.

Yael Grobglas played a good villain, but besides a cool power, there isn’t much Psi had to offer in terms of being multi-dimensional. She accessed Kara’s fear, however, and the best part was the continued mystery of why she keeps seeing visions of her mother. Could it be that she is trying to send Kara a message? How is she connected to Samantha? If Kara can focus some more attention on the more intriguing aspects of what’s been going on, there’s hope that it could provide some more material for her to work with besides focusing only on her loss.

“Triggers” wasn’t fantastic, but it provided some solid subplots which carried the episode. The villain-of-the-week was less than stellar and so Supergirl continues to struggle with creating more memorable antagonists. Aside from some nice moments between Kara and Alex, Samantha and Lena’s subplots were the most intriguing of the episode. James hasn’t disappeared yet, so that’s a plus, and he’s getting to interact more with other characters (namely Lena). Winn, on the other hand, remains a bit out of place in season three; it’s not clear what the show intends for him or even if he’ll have a story besides being the DEO’s go-to man. Let’s hope the show finds a place for him now that it isn’t clear how often he’ll be shown as the Guardian’s sidekick.

Random Thoughts: 

• Alex dropped the kids line to Maggie, who looked less than thrilled. Turns out Maggie isn’t too hot on kids… and that’ll absolutely come up later.
• I guess Morgan Edge isn’t a factor anymore? Or is he just taking a break from being the weekly sexist jerk?
• Melissa Benoist did a pretty good job in her emotional scene.
• It’s really, really nice to have Kara and Alex scenes again. Their bonding has been sorely missed.
• M’gann is back and calling J’onn to Mars! It’s great to see her back on the show.
• I guess Mon-El never did get to the end of Romeo and Juliet. I hope the show’s not intending to compare the two because that’s weird.
• Kara quitting in the premiere had zero impact. She just showed up like nothing happened and that was that. Why can’t this happen in real life?
• Ruby’s faith in her mom rescuing her was exceptionally sweet. What she did was dangerous, but at least her heart was in the right place.
• The visions are becoming more creepy.
• The fear scene played out like a video game scene and looked really fantastic.