Spoiler Warning for Krypton, episode 7, “Transformation”
Well….I hate to devolve into memes so quickly but…that escalated quickly. Like, wow…
Seriously, wow.
Jeez there’s a lot that happened in this episode! It honestly feels like a season finale, or at least a mid-season finale. But I know it’s not, because there are only ten episodes this season. I’m really not sure what’s going to happen next!
For those of you who haven’t seen this episode yet, let me put it in context. Imagine if in the first season of Game of Thrones Ned was executed, Daenerys’s dragons had a growth spurt to full adulthood, and the Wall was broken down by the White Walkers…all in the same episode. Halfway into said first season.
Alright, enough reacting, let’s talk about what actually happened. We open (after a ‘previously on’ segment) with Jayna escaping from the Voice’s chambers as Brainiac stabs the other guards in the head with his tentacles. Brainiac is…unimpressive. Admittedly, that’s partly just the result of needing the character to look like a halfway point between Brainiac and a Kryptonian. But there’s also something…off about his voice. They’re doing the whole Voice of the Legion thing, blending the Brainiac voice with the Voice of Rao voice. But even worse is that it sounds like he has cotton balls in his mouth. There’s just something sort of…mushy about his voice. I don’t know what it is, but it’s a little distracting.
After the title sequence, we see what are presumably guards already possessed by Brainiac dragging Daron into the Politician Formerly Known as The Voice of Rao’s chamber. Noticeably, there’s quite a bit of blood on the floors, which two nuns are working on cleaning. I point this out because I never noticed any of the guards getting killed, and their was no blood around the entry wounds when Brainiac withdrew his tentacles. I’m not sure where that blood came from.
Daron tries to cover up his role in the coup, even though he was caught fleeing the city in a hovercraft. Brainiac rather quickly and easily tears apart his excuses. He then grabs Daron by the throat and tells him that there is no more Voice of Rao, only the Agent of Brainiac.
We then cut to Seg, Lyta, and the General, who are sneaking through the streets of the Rankless slums. The three are unaware of the attempted coup, and so are are perplexed at the number of patrols. To make matters worse, the General was wounded during the shootout in the catacombs. Two guards come across them, and Lyta gets around a corner with their gun. Seg tells them that the General is drunk, and the guards let them go with a warning about curfew. This may or may not be a result of them being drones of Brainiac already. I’m not positive.
Back with Daron and Brainiac, Daron asks if he’s here to destroy Krypton. Brainiac dismisses this suggestion, claiming that he is there to save them. He says that he is going to save Kandor from the threat of entropy. Given that this was Daron’s goal in the coup more or less, he quickly offers to serve Brainiac. Now, he probably is just trying to save his own skin, but to be fair, helping save Kandor and force it to progress was his stated goal. Brainiac asks Daron who was behind the coup attempt. Surprisingly, Daron immediately admits that he was behind it, as well as Primus Zod (Jayna) and five members of the Council.
He manages to convince Brainiac that he could be useful. Brainiac asks Daron how his co-conspirators should be handled, and Daron immediately suggests public execution. When Brainiac points out that this would include Nyssa, Daron hesitates and asks permission to handle the death of Nyssa personally, to which Brainiac agrees. Points for hesitating I guess?
Seg and Lyta have dragged the now unconscious looking General to Kem’s bar. At first Kem is rather frustrated with this, since it means closing early. But, to his credit, when he sees that the General isn’t drunk but badly injured he immediately offers what help he can provide, taking them to a hidden storeroom. Lyta attempts to radio for a medic, but Kem stops her.
This is when Seg and Lyta learn that there was a failed coup attempt. Apparently the whole city is on lockdown. Which is why Kem’s bar was full and the guards just warned Seg of the curfew. I’m not sure Kem knows what a lockdown is. Lyta learns of Jayna’s role in the coup, and, given her mother’s personality, Lyta of course does not believe it. Kem also tells Seg that Nyssa is under arrest and slated to be executed. So sheesh, both of Seg’s love interests have been sentenced to execution so far this season. Maybe Seg should take up celibacy, for the greater good?
We then cut to the Fortress of Solitude, where we see Adam by himself, contemplating Superman’s cape. All things considered, there’s a remarkably large amount of said cape left. I mean, we now know that Brainiac was always going to show up, but somehow Seg teaming up with the General doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact. Adam sighs and apologizes to the cape, taking a gulp from his flask. Val appears, and Adam asks him to fix his time travel device.
Back in Kem’s bar, a Rankless medic has been found to heal the General. Feeling better about leaving now, Lyta plans to go find her mother. At the same time, Seg wants to go save Nyssa. Lyta is…surprisingly opposed to this plan. Normally I’d chalk her reluctance to help Nyssa up to love triangle, but the whole series Seg has displayed zero romantic interest in Nyssa. None. And Seg’s main reason to save Nyssa’s life is that when he asked, Nyssa tried to save Lyta’s. So yay, unnecessary…cattiness? I think? I’m not sure what’s happening here, but it feels catty.
We then cut back to Nyssa, finally. Sorry, she’s one of my two favorite characters and the General’s unconscious. Daron enters her room to find her sitting on the couch. He walks up to her, expressing admiration for how fearless she is and says that she is his favorite child. Which, now that I think about it…where are her siblings? She’s expressly stated to be the youngest, and apparently from a legal standpoint she’s the spare. So they’re not dead…this is weird.
Anyway, Daron apologizes, claiming that ‘this’ is the only way, then pulls a gun and shoots Nyssa. Only for it turn out to have been a hologram this whole time, as Nyssa quickly reveals herself by putting knife to her father’s throat. Down in the Rankless slums, Lyta is walking around, and wow, I think this is legitimately the first time we’ve seen her with her hair down. She soon encounters a disguised Dev, who tells her that yes, her mother tried to pull a coup. This is also when Lyta learns that the Voice of Rao has been supplanted by Brainiac, naming him for Dev. The two then set off to find Jayna.
Back with Nyssa, she has the gun to her father’s head, stating that she really didn’t think her father was going to kill her until he pulled the trigger. Daron tries to justify himself, but Nyssa isn’t having it. She’s pissed, laying out everything she sacrificed for her father and how she hoped he wouldn’t betray her. And now that he has, she prepares to kill him. Before she can, she hears Seg yelling at the guards outside her door. One of them almost shoots him, but Nyssa forces Daron to radio the guards and make them let Seg in.
Seg interrogates Daron. Nyssa very much wants to kill him, but Seg points out that they need Daron to get out of the Guilded areas. Daron pretends to go along with this…for about three seconds, after which point he slaps Nyssa’s gun away and calls for the guards, escaping the room. Seg and Nyssa manage to defeat the guards rather quickly, considering it can’t have been more than twenty four hours since he almost died of exposure and she’s a privileged lawyer.
With Val, Adam has slipped into a depressed funk, having already given up. Though it should be noted that he hasn’t given up on Krypton, or on saving Superman. He just wants to go back to Earth and get someone more experienced. Seg and Nyssa, meanwhile, have stolen some guards’ armor, and are escaping. Out in the wastelands, Dev and Lyta find Jayna at an old Zod memorial. Dev reveals that he is now a Brainiac drone, giving up subtlety rather quickly honestly. Particularly given that he still doesn’t know how Lyta knows about Brainiac. Despite the powers Brainiac gave him though, Lyta kills him pretty quickly.
Speaking of Brainiac, he does not kill Daron, despite his failure to kill Nyssa. He even agrees to carry out a religious ceremony, for appearances’ sake.
Down in the Rankless slums, Lyta and Jayna have a long overdue conversation, with Jayna finally telling Lyta why she wasn’t executed and admitting that she’d give up her honor to save her daughter again. Emotions are quickly pushed aside in favor of tactics however, and we cut to Jayna meeting the General. For some reason, Lyta and Kem look convinced that the two are going to kill each other. The topic of the General’s father is brought up, and he says he has no idea who he was, and then the three set out to find Seg.
Seg and Nyssa, we soon see, have safely made it down to the Rankless slums. Seg questions how Nyssa knows how to fight, and we learn two things. One, that she learned it from a lover in the military guild who was a combat instructor. And two, that said lover was a woman! Whoo hoo, two canon queer characters in this show (Adam has been shown openly ogling naked men in a previous episode. They’re both either bi or pan, so we’ll go with queer for now.) Seg doesn’t seem to care that Nyssa has had a female lover, which is nice. They have a nice moment, followed by a kiss to distract some guards, and then a fight breaks out.
The two escape while the Zod Squad look for them. Jayna isn’t happy that the General went to Black Zero instead of her. Eventually the two groups meet, Lyta saving Seg and Nyssa. They regroup in Kem’s bar, where Jayna and Lyta protest that Nyssa should not be trusted. Seg counters that none of their hands are clean, and that they all need each other. Also, apparently Nyssa’s sisters live in a different city state, which is curious since the cities don’t seem to like each other much. Is the Vex family the only one to branch out, or are there other Els and Zods around?
Jayna wants to go to other city states to attempt to build an army, while the General believes there’s no time and wants to go now. Seg comes up with a surprisingly good plan—shoot Brainiac in public and attempt to provoke him into showing his alien nature to the crowds. Sadly, it’s derailed by some good theatrics on Brainiac’s part, as he uses pyrotechnics to appear divine and promises to abolish the divide between Rankless and Guilded.
So…that was “Transformation.” Things are heating up, but in a good way. It has its issues (Dev’s death is rather sudden and insulting for example), like most of Krypton does frankly, but all in all, I think this was a good episode. Here’s hoping it stays good!
