Supergirl Has a Lesson to Learn From The Flash

I am, unfortunately, just now catching up on the rest of the Arrowverse premieres from this week and after watching the premiere for The Flash, I was so pleasantly stunned that I just had to write this short piece comparing certain aspects of The Flash premiere to Supergirl's.

To start off, I have to confess that when I first heard months ago that Iris West would be leading Team Flash this season, I was very disappointed. I wasn't a fan of how she had all but abandoned her job as a reporter in season 3, and I had hoped that season 4 would get back to that. But after seeing the premiere it actually kind of clicked for me. She doesn't have superpowers and with her dad being a cop, Cisco and Wally both out fighting the bad guys using their powers, and Caitlin gone, she was the only one left to stay behind at Star Labs and coordinate the missions. Yes, it's still frustrating that she seems to have abandoned her day job as a reporter and I hope that's addressed soon, but as far as her leading the team, I get it.

In fact, in comparison to Supergirl, it actually makes a lot more sense than James becoming CEO of CatCo. There are a very limited number of people that know the truth of what is going on at Star Labs and the team couldn't risk bringing in someone else, so naturally, it came down to Iris. On the other hand, CatCo, technically speaking, should have plenty of individuals with the qualifications, experience, and knowledge needed to run the company. Like Snapper Carr for instance, the Editor in Chief, who would have been a much more logical choice than James Olsen, the unseasoned Art Director of one year. It only made matters worse when instead of committing to this storyline, the show runners decided to make James become Guardian in season 2. In between developing this new storyline and balancing all the other storylines, I believe we only saw James actually being CEO once or twice throughout the entirety of season 2.

With Caitlin coming back to Team Flash and taking some of the weight off of Iris, I'm still hoping that we will get to see Iris return to her journalistic roots this season...more than just once or twice. And with Lena buying CatCo, we may just see a future with less Guardian and more of James actually doing his job.

Of course, there were plenty of parallels between Iris and Kara as well. While the context of their situations is different, they both reacted in a similar way, committing themselves to protecting the city and taking it very seriously, even while those around them tried to get them to "lighten up" so to speak. Both women found their strength in focusing on the present, rather than the past and what they had lost.

However, I found Iris particularly compelling because we saw a more diverse reaction from her compared to Kara. We saw her being strong, but then we also saw her struggling alone in her and Barry's apartment, as everything around her served as a reminder of his absence. We saw her struggling at dinner with her dad and Cecile, as she tried to explain to him that she couldn't just sit around and cry all day - she had to be strong and move on. We saw her struggling when Cisco announced there could be a way to bring Barry back, as she fought against the desire to have hope because she didn't want to get her heart crushed again.

I wanted more of this complexity with Kara even though her situation is different than Iris'. Kara has known loss time and time again which gave root to her abandonment issues and because of that, she closed herself off a lot more than Iris did. Therefore, it made sense that Kara was cold and distant throughout the vast majority of the premiere. But at the end of the episode, after Mon-El subconsciously saved Kara's life, I believed there was finally a chance to show the kind of complexity that was so well portrayed in Iris, and instead the writing failed me. Rather than Kara going to the bar with a smile on her face, I would've found it much more emotionally compelling if she'd snuggled up on the couch in one of Mon-El's old shirts, pulled up Funny Face on Netflix, and just let herself miss him - really miss him - for a little bit. After all, the goal of this season is for Kara to get to a place where she's dealt with her abandonment issues and can open up again. What better way to convey that she's on the journey towards healing than to show her actually allowing herself to feel the pain she keeps buried inside instead of hiding it under a smile?

Iris' duality was definitely a strong point of The Flash premiere, but it was truly the rest of Team Flash that brought me to my knees emotionally. After the absolutely tragic disregard for character relationships in Supergirl's season 3 premiere, it was incredibly refreshing and touching to see that at the end of the day, no one had forgotten Barry and what he meant to Team Flash. We saw this in Iris' words to the team at the beginning. We saw it in the conversation Joe had with Iris at dinner. We saw it in Cisco's confession that he'd been working on a way to get Barry out of the Speed Force since the day he'd left. We saw it in Wally's willingness to help. And we saw it in Caitlin's choice to come back and help Cisco, even after being apart from the team for six months.

On the other hand, in Supergirl, it's like no one besides Kara even cared that Mon-El was gone. Winn, Alex, J'onn...they all seemingly forgot that Mon-El had been their friend and part of their family. Instead of trying to find an antidote for Mon-El or at least supporting Kara, they took the easy passive approach for six months afterward, with the excuse of "giving Kara space", and then complained why Kara just couldn't "get over him" and stop having a "pity party" and go back to being "Little Miss Sunshine".

Hearing Joe say "I'm not fine! We lost him - my son, your everything" and then suggest that maybe they should do some kind of funeral to at least have a sense of closure was powerful, not just because it conveyed his true emotions, but also because in that moment, he was reaching out to Iris in understanding and supporting her decision to try to move on.

It was this understanding and supportive attitude between all of the characters that was severely lacking in the Supergirl season 3 premiere. The compassionate friendship between Caitlin and Cisco should have mirrored Kara and Winn's, but while Caitlin and Cisco had sweet, meaningful conversations both about Barry and each other, Kara and Winn spent hardly any time talking to each other, and someone watching for the first time would have never guessed that they are supposed to be best friends.

J'onn was the only character who reached out to Kara in an appropriate way, and even that moment was short-lived and clouded by his earlier remark of "we're not the ones who lost someone" that only served to negate the entire purpose of 2x17.

Along the way, Supergirl stumbled a bit last season in regards to character relationships, opting to favor romantic relationships even when the situation called for a familial one and disregarding established friendships in order to force certain storylines. But I never quite anticipated the disarray that greeted me when Supergirl returned. While I have high hopes for the character relationships in The Flash this season based on the premiere, I can't help but sigh dismally when I think of how Kara is surrounded by individuals indifferent to her emotional pain and that Mon-El will soon be returning to only a family of one.