So they're really not gonna bother giving a motivation for Russia to want to release something it wouldn't have any control over anyway? This is a fictional fantasy series, obviously, but thankfully that has nothing to do with the responsibility not to make the entire driver behind the season empty. Is coming up with an excuse for the season to exist really that hard of an ask, when you have full liberty to invent any fictional technologies or powers you want in order for it to make sense?
Anyway, despite that frustratingly lazy bit about this season's writing, this was a surprisingly more enjoyable season than I was expecting, and was actually very good. They used this season to massively improve in their range of film entertainment skills, tackling a-- err, well, this comment has gotten long enough. Point is: good season... More greatly visceral depictions of the strength of El's psionic training (thus more "oh yeah!"-style excitement); more full "hey look, I have emotional depth" displays; etc...
..Some of these stuff can get mildly irritating (Hopper's character, in general, in my case) if you're not the right audience fit for either of their scattered, positive attempts to use this season's existence as a growth opportunity to broaden the coverage of the standard & emerging sets of movie enjoyment features/tropes (romantic anxieties, growing up, etc.) and trends (eg. homosexuality occurences likely just for the sake of earning inclusiveness praise).
(Ps. "they're the evil Russians" doesn't work as an excuse, as Russia is an actual real life government... there's a huge difference between sociopathic self-interest (believable) and literally suicidally stupid & pointless maniacal behavior (the approach apparently used in this season))
