The CW’s Supergirl wrapped up its fourth season tonight. The latest issue wrapped up the storylines involving Ben Lockwood’s anti-alien hate movement, Lex Luthor’s new attempts to kill Superman and take over the world, and the Black Kryptonite-created Supergirl clone, Red Daughter.
Like any show in the Arrowverse, this finale and the season preceding it were crammed with DC Easter eggs referring to previous series, movies, and the original comics. Here are some of our favorites.
The Title
The name of this episode, “The Quest for Peace,” was a nod to a past DC-adaptation film. This was the subtitle for the fourth Superman movie. This was an odd choice, despite the thematic similarities to the TV episode, since Quest for Peace is not one of the fan-favorite appearances of the Man of Steel. But maybe its lack of popularity makes this a better Easter egg.
And that’s not the only reference to this film we got on Supergirl this year.
Stuntcasting
DC adaptations have a longstanding tradition of inviting back familiar faces as fan-service. And spotting the connections is most of the fun.
The actors who played this year’s main villains, Ben “Agent Liberty” Lockwood and Lex Luthor, are familiar to people who have seen all things Superman. Jon Cryer, who plays Luthor, played a different member of the family in an earlier project. That was Lex’s obnoxious nephew, Lenny, in Quest for Peace.
Sam Witwer plays Lockwood. And he’s probably most recognizable for his work in the Star Wars universe, playing the main character in the Force Unleashed video games and voicing Darth Maul and Emperor Palpatine in various animated projects. But on the last CW series about Kryptonians, Smallville, he played Davis Bloome, a paramedic who happened to also secretly be Doomsday, the monster who will one day kill Superman.
Kara’s Earth mom, Eliza Danvers, barely made an appearance in the season finale. But hers is the best stuntcast on the show. That actress, Helen Slater, previously played Supergirl herself in the 1984 movie based on the character.
Red Daughter
Red Daughter was a perfect copy of Kara that came to be after Supergirl’s exposure to Black Kryptonite split off the clone. Lex Luthor trained her in Kaznia to use her powers as part of his plan to stage an invasion of the United States and kill Supergirl.
She’s a reference to two different stories from the comics. The first was the 2003 miniseries Superman: Red Son. That Elseworlds storyline takes place on an Earth on which the infant Kal-El’s escape pod landed in Soviet Russia instead of Kansas.
But the more literal source was probably Red Daughter of Krypton. This Supergirl arc from the New 52 era of DC follows Supergirl as she slowly loses control of her life. Eventually, she gives in to her anger and becomes the bearer of a Red Lantern Ring. These cosmic objects have all the same powers and abilities as their green counterparts, but they run on rage instead of willpower.
The TV version of Red Daughter was similarly furious, as Lex Luthor fostered her anger at the United States to manipulate her into his scheme. But she didn’t have the cool jewelry, which was too bad.
Malefic J’onzz
Just like in the Arrow and The Flash finales, the omnipotent Monitor arrives at the end of “The Quest for Peace” to help set up next season. On Supergirl, he does two things: resurrects Lex Luthor (presumably) and brings a mysterious Green Martian to Earth to get revenge on his brother, J’onn J’onzz, for his long imprisonment.
This character is Malefic J’onzz, who is also known in the comics as Ma’alefa’ak because that’s just how Martian names work. He’s the Martian Manhunter’s twin brother and one of his main nemeses in the books.
It was a bit hard to spot with the distortion effect on the voice, but the actor who plays the live-action Malefic is Phil LaMarr. LaMarr has actual hundreds of credits to his name, but he’s probably best known in the DC world as voicing Jon Stewart, the Green Lantern, on the Justice League animated series.
