WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for "Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., Part Two," the Stargirl Season 1 finale.

The season finale of Stargirl was, for the most part, excellent. It managed to resolve many if not all of the show's ongoing storylines while still dropping hints as to what Season 2 would tackle. Those resolutions also involved many a villain meeting their end. Dragon King was killed by his own daughter (Cindy Burman), the perfect end to the combative relationship the two characters shared this season. Yolanda executed Brainwave in an act of revenge that left the character shaken and questioning her own morals. But the biggest bad of them all, Jordan Mahkent, aka Icicle, didn't quite receive the same caliber of exit his teammates did.

In the climax of the final episode, Courtney and Jordan fall from the top of the American Dream headquarters. Yolanda leaps off the building and catches Courtney, saving her from the fall in a callback to the one thing Yolanda couldn't do when she first joined the team -- take a leap of faith. Icicle hits the ground and attempts to rise, but is smashed to pieces by Mike driving the Dugan-Whitmore family truck. This might have meant something if Mike's arc this season had been about being able to join the Justice Society or prove himself to his father, but that wasn't a part of his character. Instead, Mike's arc this season has been about learning to accept personal responsibility and go from being a child to being a teenager, which he fails to do at this moment when he steals the truck.

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Mike sitting in the driver seat of a white pickup truck with a bulldog in the passenger seat.

This is especially disappointing because it's a betrayal of the kind of character Icicle had been portrayed as up until now. He wasn't a two-bit villain meant to be defeated by a last-second deus ex machina and a one-liner. Icicle and the wider Injustice Society of America represented a complex question of what it means to effect political change. They were mind-controlling hundreds of millions of people, but they were doing it in order to create a better world that they felt couldn't be accomplished under the current system.

The defeat of the other members of the ISA spoke to the cruelty they had committed in their lives. The Dragon King was killed because of his horrible mistreatment of his own daughter. Brainwave was executed because Yolanda had no qualms about doing so after seeing what he did to his own son. Their failures as parents and as people were exactly why they were unfit to rule a new society. Solomon Grundy is beaten into the ground by Rick, the son of the couple he had killed nearly a decade ago. Even the Gambler, who was merely humiliated instead of being killed, lost his own fight because of his greatest flaw -- his greed.

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Jordan Mahkent half-covered in ice, his mouth stretched in a scream of rage

But Icicle's death doesn't speak to that overall theme of ISA members being defeated due to their own personal flaws. Courtney's last words to Jordan are that he can "never save America because [he's] filled with too much hate." The part about saving America fits, given Icicle's overall God complex and dreams of fixing the world, but the indictment of Jordan about being filled with hate rings hollow. While that sort of flaw might have been true of Brainwave, who saw humans as monsters, it wasn't what laid at the core of Icicle's character.

Jordan's sin wasn't hate so much as it was cold-hearted. He saw the deaths of 25 million people as an acceptable price to create his New America, even though it was born of his own grief over the death of his wife. He was indifferent to the suffering of others so long as his own loved ones were safe. Being killed by one of those people (like say, his own son or Barbara) would have been fitting. It could have been a meaningful metaphor for how those enacting change only care about those close to them instead of those they govern. Instead, he anticlimactically gets run over by a truck.

DC Universe's Stargirl stars Brec Bassinger as Courtney Whitmore (Stargirl) and Luke Wilson as Pat Dugan (S.T.R.I.P.E.). The series will return for Season 2 on The CW. It also stars Amy Smart, Yvette Monreal, Anjelika Washington, Cameron Gellman, Trae Romano, Jake Austin Walker, Hunter Sansone, Meg DeLacy, Neil Jackson and Christopher James Baker.

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