Previously on Supergirl, Lena Luthor bought CatCo for Kara, Alex and Maggie got engaged, and Kara was sad because she found out she couldn’t have gluten anymore and had to send her favorite loaf of white bread into space.
We open this week on a montage that involves Alex and Maggie rolling around in bed, the morning sun kissing their perfect faces and glinting off the gems in their engagement rings.
They’re making coffee and smiling and heading off to work together, happy, lovely. And I’m absorbing it like rays from the yellow sun to give me strength for when I need it most.
Juxtaposed with the two lovebirds is Sam and her daughter, Ruby, making waffles and heading off to school, and also Kara, who is alone and still pretty sad about it.
When Sam drops Ruby off at school, Ruby asks if her mom has superpowers, if that’s how she lifted the scaffolding off her at the waterfront, but Sam assures her that it was just mama bear adrenaline and nothing to worry about and sends her off to school so she can start her first day at her new job.
Also at her first day on the job is Lena, who is going to be at CatCo every day from now on, much to my delight and James’s chagrin. He was getting pretty used to being the head honcho around here and doesn’t know how he feels about this change in management.
Meanwhile, at the DEO, Alex and Maggie are having a very heated argument over a very serious issue.
The issue is: band or DJ? I think it was supposed to be funny that they were fighting over something so trivial, and it does get lighter when J’onn starts using alien logic to help them decide, but honestly seeing them yell at each other gave me belly rumblings.
Anyway, Supergirl shows up and the wedding debacle will have to wait because there’s an evil lady with a very pretty face robbing banks without even trying. Supergirl flies to the scene but the Petra-shaped lady uses her pretty voice to say pretty words and laughs evilly and dammit why am I always falling for the lady villains in these shows?
Not!Petra uses her brain powers to make Supergirl wobble a little and walks right out while Supergirl looks more and more afraid with each passing second. Maggie comes in to find her future sister-in-law all suited up and looking uncharacteristically petrified, pressed against the wall. She wisely makes sure no one else on her team sees it and goes to Kara to comfort her. It’s a really nice moment, however brief, and I hope we get a little more Maggie/Kara time this season.
Back at the lab, Winn determines that Kara is physically fine and J’onn says the psychic abilities the baddie displayed means she must be metahuman. Kara says she’ll be ready for the psychoblast next time and heads off to work.
Not at work is Sam, because Ruby punched another girl in the face, causing the principal to say some very rude things and make assumptions about Sam’s life that neither of us appreciate. A good kid has one bad day and all of a sudden you think there’s trouble at home? The principal didn’t even bother to get a story from the kids about what they were fighting about in the first place!
Anyway, later we find out that what really happened was that Ruby’s friend called Ruby a liar for saying her mom had superpowers so she punched her. So she didn’t exactly deserve to be punched, but that’s beside the point. Sam ends up snapping that she’s just a regular mom but even she doesn’t look like she believes what she’s saying.
At CatCo, Lena is sad that Kara missed a meeting she had that morning, but doesn’t care at all that James is butthurt about not being invited at all. And y’all, this makes me so sad. James was such a great character once. So great. He was a great friend to Kara, he was kind and patient and smart-souled and smiley. And now he’s pouting because Lena rightfully assumed he had more important things to do than attend a getting-to-know-the-new-boss meeting when he already knew the new boss. And whatever, even if it’s a meeting he should have been invited to, it’s Lena’s first day as the owner of a multi-media conglomerate. Surely there’s a better way to be like, “Hey, actually, I’d love to be involved in meetings like that in the future!” but instead he all but stamps his feet and pouts.
But James Olsen, despite being too far from his Season One self for comfort, is harmless, and mostly just annoying, so Lena smiles her best “I’ll let you think you won this if it’ll make you feel better” smile and tells him about her next meeting.
And listen, if they’re trying to set this up as a romance, and their way of flirting is asserting dominance over each other like this, I’m not sure I’m here for that. Then again, if they cut this out and it gets Lena invited to game night, I could potentially allow it. As much as I’m not generally a fan of boss/employee relationships, the idea of Lena dominating in Monopoly is too exciting to resist.
The next time Supergirl faces Not!Petra, she thinks she’s ready to protect herself against her brainwaves, but she goes all wobbly again. J’onn tries to make a psychic shield, but it’s no use. The delightfully evil woman muses that fear is a powerful tool and uses her power to take Kara back to the time she was most scared in her life, the moment her mother put her in that pod and sent her away from everything she knew and off to a new planet.
Alex calls out to her sister and Kara snaps back into her reality, but the blonde baddie is nowhere to be seen.
Winn has found out that her name is Gayle Marsh and that folks in the biz have been calling her Psi. Which is not what I (nor Cisco) would have gone with, but whatever.
Kara tries to play it off like she can’t figure out Psi’s deal, but she pulls Winn to the side and says that she knows Psi is feeding off fear, partially because of what she said to her own face but also because of what she’s felt both times she got hit by her beams. She doesn’t want Alex or J’onn to worry too much though so she wants to keep it a secret, which always works out well for everyone when dealing with life or death situations.
Lena comes in to ask Kara to do something, but for the second time today, Kara brushes her off. Lena asks if this is about her break-up, and if she needs more time off, but Kara snaps at her and says it’s personal and she doesn’t want to talk about personal stuff at work. She realizes now how spoiled she got working first for someone who barely noticed when she came and went, and then for someone who knew about her Supergirl gig.
Lena then does what’s hard to do as a friend-turned-boss and tells her friend that she’s taking advantage of their friendship. Kara is missing meetings and shirking assignments. Kara realizes that Lena is right.
Kara gets an alert that Psi is at it again and runs off to stop her, but she gets as far as the elevator and the shirt rip. As soon as the doors on the elevator close, Kara’s vision blurs, her chest tightens, time slows down. She eventually gets it together enough to bust through the ceiling and take a deep breath in the wide open sky, but it’s too late, Psi got away.
Kara is sure Psi got to her somehow, but Winn checks her out and said she just had a regular, run-of-the-mill panic attack. Kara doesn’t think she’s capable of such a human thing, but Winn reminds her that she was just forced to relive the most traumatic time in her life, of course she’s having panic attacks.
Alex comes in and asks what’s wrong but Kara skitters out. Winn tries to maintain everything’s fine but a stern glare from Alex has him spilling his guts in a heartbeat, much to her delight.
After learning about what’s bugging Kara, Alex goes to Kara’s apartment to find her doing a Kryptonian meditation to try to strengthen her mind against these panic attacks and Psi’s intrusions. Now that Alex knows the truth, Kara lets it all come out, tears and all. She feels broken as Kara, this human part of her life is shattered and painful. Her boyfriend is gone, she now has to lie to her best friend every single day…being Supergirl was her escape from all that, but now Psi is taking that from her, and on top of all that, she’s being forced to relive the scariest moment of her life.
Alex tells Kara that it’s okay to be afraid, but that her fears don’t define her. What she’s afraid of isn’t who she is. And no matter, what she’s not alone. She has Alex, always.
Alex then scoots over to her and they hug.
Wait sorry I know I don’t usually do this but my friend Nic sent me a gif of this and it’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen so I have to include it.
Across town, Ruby sees Psi come in like a wrecking ball and decides to be a little shit and texts her mom to save her then walks directly into the center of the danger. Before Sam has a chance to prove whether or not she has powers, Supergirl swoops in to save them.
Supergirl tries to use the tech Winn gave her to deflect Psi’s brainwaves but it doesn’t work and she is hit with yet another bucket of cold, wet fear. By the time Alex gets to, Kara is sobbing and wide-eyed and saying things like “I killed him” and lamenting sending this person she cared about off in the same way that haunts her nightmares to this day. Alex promises her/threatens us that he’s not dead, that she did the right thing, and Kara slowly realizes it’s just the fear talking.
Psi is amused; Supergirl, steeled with a new resolve thanks to her big sister, goes to face Psi one last time. Psi is amused that she’s back for more, and wonders aloud what the Kryptonian hero saw when she was crippled by fear. But this time when Psi sends her panic-juice Kara’s way, she barely falters. She walks closer to closer to Psi, and for the first time, the Petra-shaped gal is nervous. Confused. Why isn’t Supergirl afraid anymore?
Kara uses Psi’s words against her, headbutts her and says, “Mind over matter.”
As Psi is taken into custody, Alex checks in on Sam and Ruby, and Maggie is impressed with Alex’s kid-charming skills. Alex says it’ll come in handy when they have kids, and Maggie says she has never seen herself as a mom.
This is definitely something that should have come up before they got engaged, but it was kind of a spur-of-the-moment, post-life-or-death-event, pre-actor-contract-discussions decision, and they have some things to talk about now.
Back at CatCo, Kara apologizes to Lena about her behavior earlier, explaining that there was a lot of shit going on that she wasn’t really dealing with before. Lena tries to apologize back, because she’s new to this whole having friends thing, but Kara assures her she did everything right, and they hug.
Lena then introduces Kara to the new head of L Corp—totally unnecessarily since they’re at CatCo and Kara has no connections to L Corp now that Lena’s gone but that is neither here nor there— and it’s Sam. Who Kara is pleased to meet and I don’t know I guess Lena is proud to introduce them?? Is she proud of picking a new bosslady? Is she proud to introduce people to the adorable Kara Danvers? I don’t know! But look at her face!
When Sam goes home, she finds a crowbar and on a whim tries to bend it but when nothing happens, she shakes her head at herself for even trying.
Back at Kara’s apartment, Kara and Alex are having a sisterly movie night, and Alex will hopefully remember her own advice down the road, remember that she will always have Kara. She will always have this.
In the tag for this episode, M’gann appears to J’onn as a Martian vision and implores him to come back to Mars, post-haste.
