'Supergirl' postmortem: What's next after that Myriad reveal?
Warning: This story contains major spoilers from Monday’s special Supergirl-The Flash crossover. Read at your own risk!
Talk about bad timing!
After teaming up with the universe-hopping Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) to take down the devilishly dynamic duo of Silver Banshee (Italia Ricci) and Livewire (Brit Morgan) in the long-awaited Flash-Supergirl crossover, Kara Danvers (Melissa Benoist) finally made her move on James Olsen (Mehchad Brooks).
Unfortunately, their lip-lock coincided with Non (Chris Vance) activating the mysterious Myriad, which viewers discovered was basically a form of mind control, turning the residents of National City into mindless drones for the Kryptonians.
However, this wasn’t the initial plan for Myriad. “Originally when we were developing the series, [Astra] was trying to mine the core of Krypton and now she was trying to mine the core of Earth just to show the synchronicity [of it],” executive producer Andrew Kreisberg tells EW. “But Greg [Berlanti] rightly pointed out that it should be something much more emotional and something much more visceral.”
Instead, the producers opted for mind control, which raises some very interesting questions as the CBS super series charges into its final episodes of the season. “As you’ll hear in subsequent episodes, you start to get very cogent arguments on the bad guy’s side on why Myriad is the way to go,” Kreisberg says. “For us, we always love it when the bad guys have a point - they’re leaving out the point about killing a lot of people, or you losing your free will, but next week, Non actually gives a speech where he talks about, What has your free will gotten you? It’s gotten you a planet full of reality TV shows and politicians who can’t stand each other, and you’re all standing around sitting by as global warming is coming to destroy your planet.’
“What if everybody was working in lockstep, what if everybody was moving in the same direction, what if everybody was working together, wouldn’t that be better?” Kreisberg continues. “Obviously we can all talk about how that’s horrible and you’re losing your free will and we’ll all miss our reality shows, but he has a point of view you can argue, and that always makes the most compelling villains.”
The activation of Myriad also speaks to why Astra (Laura Benanti) was so desperate to get it up and running before her untimely death. Even when she wavered on whose side she was on, she stood firm behind Myriad, and for good reason. “What was so interesting about the idea of it was Astra had tried to do Myriad on Krypton and was arrested and thrown in jail,” Kreisberg says. “When she got out of jail, Krypton was destroyed. As far as Astra’s concerned, she was right. They didn’t listen to me and now they’re all dead.’ She has proof positive, at least from her perspective, that [her] plan might’ve saved Krypton and [her] plan can save Earth.”
With most of National City now under the control of Non, Supergirl will be dealing with how to save her city, and the world, by herself - mostly. “She has a couple of surprising players that you wouldn’t expect to be the two people completely unaffected by Myriad to help her,” Kreisberg teases.
Supergirl airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.
