A Few Brainiac-Related Thoughts (Supergirl)

I’ve already written ample evidence of my love for Brainy, included a Favorite Characters write-up and a Relationship Spotlight on his dynamic at the DEO with Alex. It’s time to come around and talk about Brainy again, though, because I’m still thinking about the end of season 4. Brainy-related spoilers for the episodes “Red Dawn” and “The Quest for Peace.”

The basic set-up: Brainy, Nia, and J’onn are investigating the Department of Alien Affairs, where detainees are being funneled to a secret facility run by Lex Luthor for nefarious purposes (aren’t they always?) Nia talks Brainy into trying the old Wookiee Prisoner routine, and they’re of course caught and captured. (Side note: bonus points for Sam Witwer’s excellent acting of Brainy using his holographic image inducer to pretend to be Ben Lockwood.) The two are separated, and Brainy is taken away for interrogation, where he’s tortured and the baddies threaten to hurt Nia next.

Between the repeated electric shocks the bad guys are giving him, a hard crack to the head, and Brainy’s general state of distress at the whole thing, he’s “aligned,” essentially restored to the factory settings of his techno-organic ancestors. The show has given us previous hints that Brainy comes from highly-villainous stock – I admit that I knew nothing about Brainiac-5 before he appeared on Supergirl, but evidently, the original Brainiac is a big-time Superman villain – but this is the first time we actually get a glimpse of it. In a tour-de-force scene, actor Jesse Rath knocks it out of the effing park as Brainy glitches, breaks down, and reboots. He goes from such desperation/mania/fury/terror to utter, blank coldness. The newly-aligned Brainiac-5 (it just doesn’t feel right to call him “Brainy” when he’s like this) ruthlessly dispatches the henchmen holding him and returns to his friends, who don’t initially realize how he’s been changed.

This is a classic sci-fi scenario. Though it has multiple iterations – possession, body-swapping, mind-control, sudden loss of soul (hey there, Angel!), and in the case of AIs like Brainy, hacking/malfunctions – the basic premise is simple: a hero temporarily becomes evil. And for sure, this Brainiac-5 kills without compunction, knocks out J’onn, and ensures Nia’s continued capture. He’s most definitely not a good guy.

But for me, what really sets this storyline apart from other scenarios like this is the simple fact that, aligned, Brainiac-5 isn’t purely a villain. He hasn’t physically become his ancestor. Rather, he’s become like him: completely logical and entirely without emotion. While this isn’t good, it doesn’t mean he automatically switches sides and teams up with Lex, and he doesn’t decide to go off on his own and take over/destroy the world either.

Instead, he remains ostensibly on the side of the good guys, as everything Brainiac-5 does in his aligned state serves Team Supergirl’s ultimate goal of figuring out what Lex is up to and stopping him. That’s exactly what Brainiac-5 does, only he does it with mercenary efficiency. Putting Nia in danger to achieve his aims doesn’t matter to him, because that sort of “collateral damage” doesn’t effect his equations. I really love that, that Brainy doesn’t just suddenly turn into an evil killer robot. This dark gray, dangerously-logical Brainiac-5 is so much more interesting than that.

I’ll admit I’m happy that Brainy is turned back by the end of the season finale, because I just love that techno-organic. However, the aligned Brainiac-5 fascinates me, and now that the door has been opened on that side of him, I certainly wouldn’t say no to a reappearance for a later arc.

And because it needs to be repeated, how awesome is Jesse Rath in that initial alignment scene? Every now and then, I just pull it up on YouTube to relive how much I love it. It’s the kind of scene that’s so amazing, it makes me freshly bitter over how the Emmys are mostly-dismissive of genre shows. I know that Supergirl will never, ever get Emmy love, pound for pound, are there any supporting actors in a drama who demonstrated such a range of emotions in a single scene this past year?