"Mercy" – Krypton S02E08 Review

in case you didn't see the previews, "Mercy" features the Black Mercy. It was first seen in the comics in Superman Annual #1 in 1985, when alien warlord Mongul attacks Superman on his birthday by slapping the Black Mercy plant on Supes. The Mercy gives Superman a hallucination of a Krypton that wasn't destroyed and where Kal-El became a leading scientist there. Batman, Robin, and Wonder Woman were along for the ride and ended up fighting Mongul and removing the Black Mercy from Superman and putting it on Mongul.

The Black Mercy has shown up very occasionally since then, and the original story (by Alan Moore, with pencils by Dave Gibbons) has been adapted for both Justice League Unlimited and Supergirl. So it's not surprising it eventually showed up in Krypton. It's a lot grosser, in a 2019 body horror sort of way. And its target isn't Seg, but... Lyta!

Because, yes, Lyta is back. Her return isn't exactly a surprise: Lyta is a main character in the show and her death two episodes or so ago was far too brief to be a permanent sendoff. The reason she's alive is because Zod has had Lyta imprisoned in the Mercy for months. The "Lyta" he sent to Wegthor to get her throat cut was a clone. Because clones are a thing on Krypton. I don't recall them being mentioned before, and the repercussions of making "realistic" clones of anyone strikes me as something that would be world-moving. Instead, it's tossed off here as a way to bring Lyta back. Everyone shrugs, and that's it.

As for the rest of the episode, without the Lyta parts, "Mercy" is yet another "Confront Zod, Zod growls and looks ominous, captives get taken away, captives escape" plot. Seg and Nyssa get most of the way into Zod's fortress, which makes the Sagitari look like a joke once more.

Before they break in, Seg and Nyssa chat about their missing son Jor. There's nothing bad here, but you wonder where they're going with it. Krypton is a pretty insular show: the show is set on... well, Krypton. Or the moon of Wegthor, which might as well be a desert on Krypton as much as a nearby moon. Even if it was the standard Canadian forest, Seg and Adam spending some time on Colu at the beginning of the season gave the show a more "open" feel. Now it's all the same corridors, Zod's office, tunnel, and unpaid electrical bills. Occasionally, we get the rebel underground base thrown in, but that's about it. It's hard to imagine Seg questing across the universe to get Cor back.

Meanwhile, Zod is demanding Lis-Ser (Aoibhinn McGinnity) find a way for him to control Doomsday. He eventually leads her to the Mercy, which has attached itself to Lyta (dum dum dum!). This is all intercut with scenes of Lyta living her "perfect" life: she and Seg go to Kryptonopolis (is there a city called Earthopolis on Earth?), get Bound, and have all their relatives and friends over to celebrate. Including Val and Kem, who are dialogue-free this week.

Lyta's fantasy soon grows dark as the Priestess Anda scans Lyta and Seg's son Dru-Zod and cheerfully announces he will wipe out millions in the future. Then Dev confronts Lyta about how she sacrificed him. Then Dev's wife Nyssa tells Lyta everyone who loves Nyssa dies to protect her. Lyta runs out, and eventually we find out she went to confront Zod, and he knocked her out and put the Mercy on her, and that's when Lyta's fantasy reset.

Eventually Lyta gets the wind beneath her wings and disbelieves the fantasy. She breaks out of the Mercy's spell, takes out a guard, and finds Jayna and Dev. Seg and Nyssa have either let themselves been captured or just got captured, and are taken to Zod for another one of those interminable conversations where someone tries to get through to Zod, Colin Salmon bugs his eyes and makes it clear he's having none of that, and his prisoners get dragged off. The funny thing is this time around, Seg tells Zod he's immune to Somatic Reconditioning so Zod tells him he'll put Nyssa through it. The look on Seg's face--"Doh!"--is well worth the price of admission. I guess Zod's smarts come from Lyta's side of the family.

Dev rescues Seg and Nyssa from their cell by the simple expedient of hitting the force field over the door until it breaks. He then takes them to Lyta and Jayna and Seg have a touching reunion. This also seems to spell the end of the Seg/Nyssa relationship, which seems a shame. I've liked Cameron Cuffe and Wallis Day together. Season 2 has been good to Nyssa's character, so it's a shame to see her sent back into the role of secondary female lead.

In the end, Zod discovers everyone has escaped. He presumably has enough of the Mercy toxin Lis-Ser has extracted to control Doomsday, and vows to wipe out the Rebels on Wegthor.

"Mercy" is a nice, average episode of Krypton. It doesn't make much of the Mercy, which is a shame since it's a "character" in a seminal Superman story. And the episode doesn't make much of Lyta's fantasy world. The wedding sequence is good, but it either involves characters that have been off-screen far too much to feel much of anything for--Lyta herself, and Jayna--or relegates characters Val and Kem to background. Dev does get a chance to shine, and Aaron Pierre is a good actor when they give him the chance to act. Too much of season 2 has been him running around with Jayna and acting all loyal to her and such, and not much of Dev the character.

Everyone else is good acting-wise, and we finally get Jayna as a proud parent. Granted, it's Lyta's fantasy, but it does show how far Jayna has gone since season 1 when she was the hard-as-tacks Primus who kicked Lyta around to make her "stronger". The "real" character has slowly become the "fantasy" character Lyta hallucinates. It'd be nice if they make something out of it. But we've only got two more episodes to go until the season finale.

Overall, "Mercy" is an okay episode. The Mercy only serves to bring back Lyta and give us a cool wedding/hallucination scene, and provides a way for Zod to control Doomsday. The rest of the plot--"Let's stop Zod's fleet from attacking Wegthor!"--goes nowhere and ultimately fails, but no one seems to notice or be too bothered about it. Maybe next week.

But that's just my opinion, and I get paid the big bucks to write it out. What do you think?