Dru Zod finds himself beset from many sides, but the disunity among his enemies may yet prove their undoing.

It’s actually really something to watch a show like Krypton and see how it assembles its characters quite so cleverly. The best (and also most frustrating) drama occurs when an audience can see a bunch of people on the ‘right’ (or at least better) side all working from different, often counterproductive angles against one big bad.

So we have the resistance, led by Jax, which has a very direct, brutal approach towards fighting against Zod. Jax proved last time out just how deep that ruthlessness went when it was revealed that she had fashioned the Codex into a smart weapon designed to kill quite a lot of people in one go. This week, having been robbed of that opportunity by the intervention of Nyssa and Val, she finds new, more personal ways to demonstrate just how far she’s willing to go.

Speaking of Nyssa, oh my gosh is Wallis Day getting a lot to sink her teeth into here. Turns out that she wasn’t quite as involved with the finer details of the plan she helped implement as we might have assumed. But in true Nyssa Vex style, she isn’t about to sit down and cry to herself about it. Nyssa’s focus, at all times, is on recovering her child. If she can do the occasional good deed along the way, then, as long as it doesn’t stop her getting him back, she’ll do it. But this isn’t the mother in distress feeling sorry for herself I feared they might turn the character into. This is someone every bit as willing as Jax to do what she needs to, and to shoulder responsibility for any consequences of so doing.

Back on Kandor, turns out that Adam and Seg didn’t quite get rid of Brainiac after all (surprising nobody). But it also turns out that when you’re all alone in a hostile city run by a despotic maniac, having an evil genius sharing your brain space isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Brainiac of course helped Seg avoid being somatically reconditioned, but his usefulness doesn’t end there. There’s some great scenes here between Seg and Dru where you suddenly realise that although you’re rooting for Seg, what you’re really seeing is two galactic-scale villains playing off against one another. Braniac may well be parasitically latched into Seg’s brain, but in reality it’s our hero who is often along for the ride.

Jayna and Dev also continue to be a compelling duo to watch. They think fast, complement one another’s styles well and always have one another’s back. I don’t know whether the writers are intending this relationship to develop any further somewhere down the line, but I wouldn’t hate the idea.

What continues to impress though, is that the show really does go a lot deeper with its themes than one might expect. Various exchanges between different characters emphasise this, whether it’s Nyssa’s fatalistic acceptance that she’s a villain to all sides now regardless of what she does or Jayna’s speech to a bar full of civilians about the difference between regular, garden variety tyrants and Dru Zod. There’s nobody here striving for a perfect Shangri-La ending, juts a whole bunch of people with their own motivations fighting for something personal and maybe improving the world a little along the way. If they ever actually manage to team up effectively, maybe Dru Zod will even be in trouble.

Verdict: Dark without being ‘gritty’ in the DCEU sense, full of excellent performances and drum-tight writing. This show is just another example of how the DC TV shows really do excel in the genre. 9/10

Greg D. Smith