Supergirl: The Darker Side of Kara Danvers

Supergirl has struggled (and failed) to create an alternate side to Kara Danvers. They wrote themselves into a corner, picking Kara to be the plucky, clumsy, teenage-esque girl, mainly concerned with love and becoming a hero.

Her motives have always been pure and innocent, stemming back to her family drama on Krypton and the love she had for her mother: who had secrets of her own.

Both episodes 6 and 16 from Season 1 see the writers’ attempt to cross Kara into the dark side: to embrace the anger that was deep inside her. The first attempt failed. The second succeeded, but the intentions were different. This was what was needed to further Kara’s character development.

She still hasn’t grown into a full-fledged hero. She’s still finding her niche, and discovering what entering into this life has for her. Kara is still fighting to discover who she is.

On Supergirl Season 1 Episode 6, “Red Faced,” Kara’s anger took hold of her, affecting her duties as CatCo assistant and Supergirl. The anger in that episode was much more innocent: it was toward her mother. The episode focused on breaking Kara’s nice, little girl routine that she had unfortunately fallen into, but never got to a real root of her anger issues, which caused serious problems for National City.

Kara was still coming into her powers and dealing with the mess that her family had made for her. Her mother had been a liar, but that was hardly explored. Her aunt was an alien activist, intent on “saving” Earth from what had happened to Krypton, but that wasn’t explored before her death either. This anger stemmed to her life on Krypton. It wasn’t dark, it just showed that Kara couldn’t always be nice.

“Red Faced” was a failed attempt to create another side to the plucky, optimistic girl that cruised around National City as Supergirl. Her family on Krypton never felt like her family to the fans. Alex Danvers is her sister. The fans see that.

On the other hand, Supergirl Season 1 Episode 16, “Falling,” was a very important episode in Kara’s path to becoming Supergirl. As Supergirl saves a firefighter, the exposure to red kryptonite causes a chemical reaction in her body, possessing her. Kara becomes mean, angry, and bitter, channeling her inner Cat Grant.

This leads to multiple disasters, including Kara getting Siobhan fired, Kara turning on Alex and harnessing all of the anger and hatred in their relationship, and throwing Cat Grant over a building, prompting a city-wide memo that Supergirl is now dangerous and not to be trusted.

We see a different side to Kara: she’s embracing every bad thought she’s had and discovering what those feelings mean to her. She’d buried so many things to keep pretending to be the happy, innocent assistant, but it was all forced out of her like a twisted bowl of linguine.

Alex and Kara’s relationship has always been seemingly-perfect, but with the revelation that Alex killed Astra, it was only a matter of time before it blew up. Kara’s use of Alex’s manipulation of her (as a teenager) against her and embraced that hatred that they both felt, deep down, set off a course of events that will probably mend their mess of sisterhood.

But James was also affected by Kara’s darker side. He finally learned of the jealousy and spite that Kara held toward Lucy, learned of her feelings for him, and saw how twisted she could become.

By creating this rift between them over Astra’s death and much deeper issues of jealousy and resentment towards each other, Episode 16 was instrumental to introducing the darker side to Supergirl — the Oliver Queen to her Barry Allen if you will – and forcing her out of the shell of the person she was at the beginning. Kara’s actions finally have real consequences: the whole city is now against her, she’s destroyed her relationship with James, and Hank has been revealed as J’onn in order to stop Kara from murdering her sister.

Kara finally has to struggle with what being a superhero actually means, and not just struggle with the time commitment. She ruined lives, unwillingly, but still, they were ruined at the hands of Supergirl. She became the monster Maxwell Lord was afraid of and destroyed government support of the DEO.

Supergirl is no longer just the optimistic girl with the bright sweaters, who worries over pot stickers and pizza, though I hope they don’t lose the essence of the show.

Even in her darker times, I hope Kara remains optimistic, but can address the negativity that comes from what she does, and still argue with her sister over who gets to pick the movie and choose the toppings.

Supergirl airs Mondays at 8/7c on CBS.