Rachel wrote us an email, explaining her thoughts on Brainiac-5’s physical appearance and how it connects to Supergirl‘s series canon.
A few weeks ago, when the new trailer for “Legion of Superheroes” surfaced, featuring the first official look at Brainiac-5, his appearance was widely criticized. People were talking about how he should be green with blonde hair instead of blue with white hair, how badly his makeup was applied, his hairstyle/the appearance of his wig, and so on and so forth.
It is only fortunate that Jesse Rath is such a great actor, and brought Brainy to life so well, otherwise his character would have as many detractors as how he looks. But, I’m here to say a few things about why his look may have been chosen, and why parts of it actually make sense in terms of this series and its canon.1. Coluans are blue in the Supergirl universe. In season 1’s “Solitude”, Kara describes Indigo to Kelex as part of “an obnoxious, blue alien species that works with computers”, to which Kelex responds with “Your description matches the Coluans”. Assuming not much has changed about them in the last 1,000 years, Brainy matches this description as well, minus the obnoxious part so far.2. While Brainy does say he is ‘all Coluan’, he also tells Kara he is half-organic lifeform, and gives his real name as Querl Dox. The only other Dox we’ve seen so far in this universe is Vril Dox from the Adventures of Supergirl comics, who far more closely resembles the traditional Brainy design.While I cannot defend everything about Brainy’s design, I would say that it does not deserve as much negativity as it gets, and should be given a chance as it may even get better as season 3 progresses.– Rachel
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