REVIEW: My Adventures With Superman S2, Ep 6, “The Machine Who Would Be Empire”

My Adventures With Superman Episode 6, “The Machine Who Would Be Empire” opens up as Clark awakes as a prisoner on the Kryptonian ship after he was taken hostage or kidnapped I should say by his long lost cousin, Kara. 

There is something very innocent about this version of Kara, yet she’s so sinister at the same time! When we first meet her, she is all about conquering Earth to create a new Krypton, whilst Clark is all about defending it, with the need to get home. When he tries to escape, he realises just how far away Earth is and this felt like a bit of a parallel between Earth and Krypton, how different they are and how far he has come. 

He eventually gives in to learning more about Krypton, after all he doesn’t know much, and neither do we, so this is a great episode for us viewers too, as we get to see more about this version of Krypton and I have to say, so far… it seem excellent! I love the style of it, all the technology – it feels really fleshed out! Here we realise how lonely Kara really is despite being with her ‘father’ and this episode is all about trying to get through to her. We learn of her and Clark’s childhoods and the difference is staggering.

Despite the seriousness of it all, we do also get to see some really fun family moments between Kara and Clark, which is lovely to see. There’s a really great sequence where Kara really shows Clark what Kryptonians are made of and what they are capable. This moment plays on the fact that Clark always holds back and it also reveals more about his mysterious powers, which Kara confirms is not a usual Kryptonian thing. With this she decides to show him some of the incredible planets that she’s been to, the first one being Thanagar, here is where she comes to realise exactly what her ‘father’ means when he says conquer a planet. Here we also that she is being incredibly manipulated as we see her struggle with her memory and actions.

What she doesn’t know, is that her father is not who she thinks he is… Clark actually saw Zor-El (her real father) and knows that something is seriously wrong when we get the shock reveal of who is really calling the shots. In this moment Clark is put to the ultimate test and it’s pretty dark compared to the rest of the series. With that said, we see some excellent emotion and display of powers from him, which he doesn’t realise is actually putting him at more risk.

My Adventures With Superman, Episode 6, “The Machine Who Would Be Empire” is a brilliant, riveting and rather emotional episode that is unlike any other we’ve seen in this series so far. This series is fast becoming one of my favourite pieces of Superman media right now.