Last week’s episode of Supergirl, “Schott Through the Heart” (3×14), brought us a whole range of stories, friendships, and emotions.
The title tells us that the focus is supposed to be on Winn Schott (Jeremy Jordan) and not only his father’s death, but also his relationship with his estranged mother, Mary (Laurie Metcalf)
It starts with this fun karaoke session with them all at the bar and all taking turns singing, it’s this incredibly bright and entertaining start to an episode that is also full of so much pain and conflicting feelings. To me, this is very much a Supergirl family episode, focusing on family and friendship relationships throughout this episode. The first friendship that struck me as surprising, but sort of refreshing at the same time was James (Mehcad Brooks) and Mon-El (Chris Wood) discussing Imra (Amy Jackson), this is a relationship between two guys (and especially these specific characters) that I don’t think we’ve ever seen before (at least not in this form). I find it sort of nice change-up since the show normally has a much heavier focus on the relationships between the female characters. During this time, Winn notices the TV announcement that his father, Winslow Schott Sr. (Henry Czerny) aka The Toymaker is dead — who was originally introduced on the show in “Childish Things” (1×10). Winn is obviously upset at this sudden announcement in the middle of this perfectly happy moment and James is there to be his friend in any way that’s needed, which marked the second time that there was this great guy friendship moment (all within the first ten minutes of the episode) — this is also a friendship that we really haven’t gotten to see in a while.
Winn isn’t alone at his father’s funeral, his extended family is present in order to provide support for him: Kara (Melissa Benoist), Alex (Chyler Leigh), J’onn (David Harewood), James, and Mon-El. Two surprises come of this event, first of all we meet Winn’s mother and then The Toymaker’s coffin explodes. Mary is taken back to the DEO, which I found a little odd, especially given that she’s not seen Winn in twenty years. It’s one thing to have her seen medically, but then she basically wanders around the DEO for the remainder of the episode without an escort — all I could think was that it reminded me of Jeremiah Danvers (Dean Caine) in “Homecoming” (2×14) when he ends up tweaking with DEO systems. There was just something twitchy about Winn’s mother during the majority of the episode that kept me from trusting her. One moment she’d be concerned that that was Winn’s job and then she’d be extremely proud…and I was caught off guard as to whether it was just a shock kind of thing or if that’s just always how she is. We also find out more about Winn growing up, how when his father was first arrested how the police called her and she never came and got him…all I could think is that it was too bad that the Danvers hadn’t known Winn as a child because he could have just been adopted by them (Alex, Kara, & Winn growing up as siblings would have been so great).
The focus on Winn continues as the DEO is under attack by mechanical flying monkeys and I have to say that this was one of my favorite fight scenes for a while that really stuck with me. Another thing I found off about this episode was that James also sticks around the DEO, but it’s really nice seeing him there to support Winn. I kept waiting for him to go into Guardian mode, though. James comments that he’s glad that he doesn’t work there and I completely thought that that was a lie, I think that if he could be more into the crime-fighting that he would like it better (even if he split his time between the DEO and CatCo) especially because he’d get to spend so much time with his friends.
We find out that Mary was actually the Toyman’s apprentice at one point, which only makes me wonder if she’s somehow still responsible for the flying monkey robots. It spills out the truth about some of Winn’s childhood memories, like that his mother was trying to take him away and his father drove them off the road causing them to crash in order to prove that he would kill Winn if Mary came near him again. While helping Winn, Mary discovers a plate with a company logo which she hides and then magically is able to get a gun from the armory (this raised not only a red flag in what’s going on with her, but also how she’s able to get such easy access to it at the DEO). She ends up confronting a woman in a warehouse, who worked at the prison the Toymaker was locked up at, she became his apprentice and promised to fulfill his wishes after his death. When Supergirl, Mon-El, Winn, and James (who apparently isn’t wearing his Guardian costume, my only explanation for this is so that Winn isn’t the only one in civilian clothing) arrive at the warehouse to save Mary, they end up being attacked by oversized and crazy toys. In the end after they’ve taken down the new apprentice, we do get this great sort of wanting to try to reconnect moment between Winn and his mom with hope for some kind of future between them.
There’s an underlying plot between M’yrnn, J’onn, and Alex during this episode. I actually appreciated and connected with this the most (and not just because Alex is my favorite character). There are all of these pieces throughout the episode that lead Alex to realizing that M’yrnn (Carl Lumbly) has something similar to dementia that J’onn hasn’t seemed to have fully recognized yet. I thought that this was something that many can relate to and I thought it was done well, I have a grandmother who suffers from dementia and there were moments that definitely reminded me of her. The first indication we get is when M’yrnn has pizza (or “tomato pie”) delivered to the DEO even though he’d been shopping for the ingredients of the housewarming dinner earlier in the day. Later, it’s very much the moment when J’onn’s out of the room and M’yrnn remarks that he always wanted a granddaughter to Alex, who then points out that he had granddaughters (K’hym and T’ania). When Alex basically calls him out gently, telling him the story of her grandmother who started to forget things…M’yrnn gets upset and makes her leave, which confuses J’onn. Two things that made me stop and go ‘wait’ during this episode was when Kara insisted J’onn leave for dinner, but didn’t go after they’d said two minutes before that the dinner was supposed to be between J’onn, M’yrnn, Alex, and Kara while the second was that J’onn and Alex didn’t go into the DEO after it was attacked (which I also sort of appreciated because they need to take a break and trust that other people can handle things at the same time). When J’onn approaches Alex at the DEO the next day, she won’t tell him anything more than that she had a lovely time and that he needs to talk to his dad. I was actually half surprised that there was no Green Martian telepathy that came into play in this moment, I’ve always felt like J’onn used to keep tabs on her (but that would also be too easy). After M’yrnn reveals to his son what is going on, we get this incredibly sweet hugging moment between Alex and J’onn…there’s no words and the scene is just incredibly heartbreaking and amazing without them saying a word.
One big thing that we finally get to find out is that the crash of the Legion ship was done so on purpose and Mon-El feels like Kara should know. It had been planned by Imra and Brainy (Jesse Rath) because the third Worldkiller, Pestilence, actually ends up evolving in the future to a huge threat called Blight…so the thought is to stop her in the past and save lives. It’s this serious moment that also breaks the awkwardness of earlier between Kara and Mon-El when she believed he wanted to talk to her about his relationship with Imra. We also get the promise of Mon-El teaching Kara cape tricks and explaining his old suit had a cape.
This was certainly an episode where we didn’t see two characters that we normally see and one kept being brought up: Lena (Katie McGrath) and then Sam (Odette Annable). In the previous episode, we had Lena thinking that she knew what was wrong with Sam and that she could fix her, at the end of the episode we get a glimpse that Lena’s definitely working on something…which we will hopefully see in tonight’s “In Search of Lost Time” (3×15)
What was your favorite part of the episode? Tell us below!
