Kara and Alex work around the General’s orders. Manchester continues to take matters into his own hands. James meets the enemy and Lana makes a very odd discovery.

Supergirl is the perfect CW show to do the traditional cornball Thanksgiving episode and that’s what you get here. Or rather, you get that payoff halfway through as most of the cast sit down for Thanksgiving dinner. We get some nice family moments, we get Manchester settling in extremely well and then…we get a terrorist attack.

The gear shift that occurs between these two scenes, that weird point of grace between action, issue and comedy, is where this show has to live and it’s getting very comfortable there. This entire episode revolves around the leading cast trying to stop a wave of hate crimes that will almost certainly end with murder. The different ways they do this not show how much they need each other but also how different they are. Kara’s high flying powerhouse move, Brainy beating people up with physics and Manchester just torturing his way through Children of Liberty are all pretty revealing. And in the case of the Brain sequence, glorious. He’s really settling in well and gets some excellent stuff this episode.

But the dramatic muscle flexes elsewhere, and mostly with Sam Witwer’s endlessly plausible Jordan Peterson-alike. His clash with Kara and James’ clashes with his soldiers give the conflict the ragged edge it needs. There are absolutely villains here but there’s also a situation that’s racing out of control and it’s that which looks set to be the major antagonist this year.

But by no means the only one. Ben Lockwood, Lana’s increasingly disturbing science project, the Children of Liberty and of course RussianKara are all waiting in the wings. But for now this show’s strength lies in its willingness to both acknowledge that complexity and play with it. The alien dragon fight has been criticized elsewhere for lightening the mood. It does but I think that’s intentional. The message here is simple and clear; aliens are people too. Complex, untidy, weird people who have strange pets and love pie. They make the world more interesting, and that, as much as anything else, is a worthy cause to fight for.

Verdict: Complex, sweet natured and ambitious this is a show that feels very different to its predecessors and stablemates in the very best way. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart