For a recap of last week’s episode, click here

This post contains major spoilers for episode 1×03 of Krypton, “The Rankless Initiative.”

This weeks episode starts off in the fortress with Adam, Seg and a hologram Val-El after finding Brainiac’s probe at the end of the last episode. After running a scan of the probe, Val-El confirms that once the shell is taken off the probe, a parasite will be released from the sentry and take over a host body, however the sentry is missing from the probe. Adam and Seg come up with a plan to find the missing sentry, they split up and head out.

At Kem’s watering hole, Kem provides a meal for a poor woman named Rhom and her daughter Ona. Rhom tells Kem shell pay him back for the meal because she starts a “glamorous new job,” in the morning as a salvage worker. On the site. Rhom finds the sentry Adam and Seg are looking for.

Seg goes to Lyta to ask for help finding the sentry but ends up finding Nyssa-Vex first who tells Seg about Lyta’s new position. Lyta then tells Seg why she killed Quez, she did it for the rankless. He then thanks her for making the sacrifice.

Back from the salvage mission, Rhom sells the sentry to a merchant on the streets.

At the Saggitari Headquarters, Jayna-Zod gives Lyta and her squad their first mission in tracking down members of Black-Zero, however, its in Sector 19 where Seg is from and Jayna thinks Seg could know members Black-Zero. Jayna reminds Lyta that the higher you rise, the more eyes that are eager to watch you fall. Dev-Em also talks to Lyta about following orders and doing what is necessary for the team.

Lyta gives an empowering speech to the Saggitari about what this mission is about. She tells them its not about thinning the herd but finding Black-Zero.

Adam heads to sector 19 to find the missing sentry. Eventually, he finds the missing item and tricks the man into giving it to him and then takes off. Adam takes the sentry back to Kem’s bar where Seg is. Seg suggests they take it back to Val-El at the fortress to reverse engineer it to see how far away Brainiac is but before they can leave the Saggitari’s storm the area. Lyta tells Seg that this attack was going to happen with or without her at the helm but because she is leading, she can make sure no harm is done.

Back at the Fortress, Val-El runs an analysis of the sentry but there’s bad news, the sentry has already found a host. Adam jokes about running an analysis on his zeta-beam which is broken. Meanwhile at Kem’s, Rhom starts transforming from Brainiac’s parasite. Kem hides Ona to keep her safe while Seg is on his way.

While interrogating one of the rankless, Koldar, a member of Lyta’s squad kills an innocent man amongst the crowd of people. Lyta stands up for the rankless, however, which may cause a chism in the Saggitari. Koldar will be put on trial for her crime.

Rhom, as Brainiac’s agent, connects to a computer source to download information from the planet. Adam tells Seg that they need to do something about Rhom or a lot of people are going to die. Seg goes to Lyta to ask for an electrostatic discharge grenade. Lyta thinks he wants the ESD because he is Black-Zero, but he convinces her to trust him because if she doesn’t, many more Saggitari will die.

Lyta gets an order from Jayna to keep infiltrating sector 19 which she disobeys in order to give Seg more time. In the communication tower, Seg finds Rhom, however, she immediately chokes him with over-hanging wires. Brainiac’s agent tells Seg that Rhom is dead, however, Seg mentions Rhom’s daughter Ona which distracts Rhom enough for Seg to detonate the ESD which blanks out all of the power in the sector and knocks out Rhom. Seg runs her back to Lyta. Seg then informs Lyta that his grandfather was right and that there is something out there that is planning to take them over. Lyta tells Seg to bring it to the council’s attention but he doesn’t agree to that.

Back at the fortress, Val tries to save Rhom, but he realizes that whatever Brainiac did is keeping her alive and if they try to reverse it, it may kill her. Adam thinks they may have stopped Rhom from transmitting the signal to Brainiac, once again, Val immediately has bad news, the transmission has already been sent.

As the episode concludes we get our best look at our ferocious villain Brainiac, who claims Krypton is coming to an end.

Thoughts:

Positives:

Lyta, by far has become the best character on the show throughout the first 3 episodes. She’s a warrior, has a strong sense of what’s right and handles everything very strategically and level-headed. This episode proved again how strong a character Lyta is.

We got our best look at Brainiac yet, and my lord does he look comic book accurate. Props to the makeup department and designers.

They’ve continued to build up Brainiac’s arrival on Krypton. While this episode was more mission-focused, we know that Brainiac is ready to start doing damage, Krypton has officially run out of time.

The CGI and visuals of space continue to be top notch for television standards. The one shot of the cosmos at the beginning of the episode was brilliant.

Negatives:

Brainiac showing up at the very end again. It’s been 3 episodes and we’ve gotten less than 12 seconds of our season-long baddie. While Brainiac does look spot on and intimidating, it’s the 3rd time Brainiac has popped up at the very end while not doing anything during the episode.

It seemed way to easy to break Rhom from Brainiac, even if it was for only a second. While we don’t know how strong Brainiac is currently, I have a hard time believing Seg did enough to make Rhom come back for even a second. There are many better ways that scene could have been done.

Another episode that slowly gets us where we need to go. While I’m interested in the story and most of the characters, Krypton needs to develop a little quicker. While the build-up to Brainiac is fine, the time it spends on dialog and forcing us to care about the guilds is starting to bring the show down. It’s time to pick up the pace.