First Thoughts on 'Supergirl' Season 3 (Episodes 2-4)

Okay, after poor start to this season, Supergirl suddenly took off in its second episode 'Triggers'. While 'Girl of Steel' had been repeating story beats from The Flash, 'Triggers' was very much a Supergirl episode, in which Kara had to face both a physical and mental threat in the form of villain-of-the-week Psi. Gone was the general doom-laden melancholy of Episode 1, and while subsequent episodes have proven that the show is striving towards character drama, the sense of fun isn't being pushed to the side. Supergirl has never been gold-standard television, but it doesn't need to be. If it aspired towards that...well, look at Man of Steel - is that the kind of Supergirl show you want?
'Triggers' is possibly the best episode of Supergirl for a very long time though, with an interesting story exploring a Kara who's trying to be Supergirl, but is threatened by herself, suffering from panic attacks that heighten the powers of Psi, weakening her. It's a surprisingly dark story for Supergirl to tell, but it works really well for this character, and of course has a happy ending - and one that felt earned.
'Far From the Tree', meanwhile, was a much more adventurous Supergirl episode with Kara and J'onn travelling to his home on Mars to fight the White Martians. What intrigued me about the episode was how it was going to handle the Mars backdrop, but in true Doctor Who fashion, it all took place in some Martian caves. Classic. I've always found David Harewood's J'onn to be the MVP of Supergirl (or, second to Kara herself at least), and getting an episode focused around him and his father was great to see. Harewood really got to shine here, and certainly improved the episode above its admittedly underwhelming production values and often clunky pacing.
And then 'The Faithful' came along - an episode about religion and belief that somehow managed to be both the strangest episode of Supergirl and the most original. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything quite like this, especially given that the episode had no villain - it was simply a character-study of how people react to Supergirl, and its easy to see something like this happening in real-life.
Three terrific episodes of Supergirl in a row is nice to see, but what interested me more so was the themes each episode tackled: 'Triggers' was about Kara suffering anxiety attacks, 'Far From the Tree' was about estranged father-child relationships and racism, and 'The Faithful' was about religion. The way these themes were implemented into the episode's sub-plots worked really nicely too. We have three main sub-plots this season: Lena taking over CatCo, Alex and Maggie's struggling relationship, and new character Samantha and her daughter Ruby. This season has several strands running through it, but it doesn't feel cluttered, it feels busy - and that's nice to see, especially when its this good.