In Review: Supergirl (S6 – EP14) Magical Thinking

Synopsis: In Magical Thinking. Nxyly gets hold of the Humanity Totem, causing chaos throughout National City. Meanwhile, Esme meets her new foster family and Lena attempts to cast her first spell.

The Story

Having managed to successfully gain one of the totems in last week’s show. Nyxly sets her sights on the Humanity Totem and manages to get hold of it. But when a spell casting from Lena Luther goes wrong. It causes the totem to amplify most of humanity’s compassion and empathy in Nyxly’s direction. Which causes her to feel all of their pain and sorrow. However, something about the totem is causing many human beings to embrace their more primal urges, which causes chaos throughout National City. Having figured out where her spell went wrong. Lena has another go and manages to help the super friends to get hold of the humanity totem when Nyxly drops it.

The Acting

Peta Sergeant puts in a strong performance this week as she gets to show us a more sympathetic side to Nyxly. The scenes where she is overcome with all the emotions of humanity are brilliantly performed, but also quite funny in parts due to the randomness to some of what Nyxly expresses. I loved the line about the snow tigers and how out of context that seemed with everything else that was said. But it also felt like something Nyxly would care about. This is the Imp that set a giant cat on National City after all.

We also get a strong performance from Katie McGrath as a Lena Luther who is less sure of herself because she is still trying to get out of her head enough to indulge in the magical thinking that is needed. We get a nice little bit of conflict between Lena and Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) in which Lena has to redefine the boundaries of their friendship.

Overall

Magical Thinking is a solid episode that builds on Lena and her newfound magic and Supergirl’s excitement at helping Lena use these new skills. However, the episode does feel a little too formulaic. In that, there wasn’t really anything to throw the cat among the pigeons.