Welcome back! I hope you’ve enjoyed your hiatus and filled it up with your favorite fanfics and gifsets galore. I’ll confess to you that this hiatus has not been a great one for me, personally, so I was finding it hard to cling onto the mustard seed of hope I had that this show could find its way again. And while there’s still some work that needs to be done, I’m hoping the overall message Kara learned this week is a metaphor and the show itself is telling us it knows now what it has to do. That it’s remembering what it is, what it’s meant to be, and is getting back to it.
And speaking of getting to it, let’s, shall we?
Previously on Supergirl, Maggie and Alex broke up, Lena and James kissed, the Legion came back from the future, Sam turned into Reign and knocked Supergirl out of commission, and everything was, generally, pretty terrible.
Kara wakes up in her bed, fully clothed, and hears a knock at her door. A blue figure stands behind the door, and after a moment of being (rightfully) starstruck, he quickly introduces himself as Brainiac 5. He’s part of the Legion, and he’s talking to her telepathically to check her brain functions. The good news is, her brain is fine. The bad news is, she’s technically in a coma.
IIIIIIII’m sorry. Did you say COMA?
Brainiac 5 reminds her of her trauma and she starts to remember things; her sister’s voice, Reign’s mask, her own fall. She also remembers now that there’s a fight to be won, so she tries to march out the door…but despite opening easily for Braniac 5 moments ago, now the door won’t budge.
Back on our plane of reality, Brainiac reveals to the DEO that he’s talking to Kara and them at the same time, and that Kara is mostly fine, except pretty pissed about being trapped inside her own mind. Relieved Supergirl isn’t in immediate danger, everyone goes back to the Reign-y problem at hand. Alex is still worried but she’s ready to focus that worry into getting punchy.
Alex was being tactical af in this episode and I’m HERE FOR IT.
Then in a kind of cheesy but kind of amazing move, we’re momentarily lead to believe Ruby is running and hiding from her mother…and technically she is, but her and Sam are just playing with dart guns. A horn honks outside and Ruby has to go to a playdate, and in her rush she doesn’t notice her mother start to twitch at a story about a “rogue Kryptonian” on the front page of the paper.
Reign re-emerges and she goes to talk to her hooded figure who tells her some creepy cult shit like “the world must be cleansed” and that it’s time for “the awakening.” But the thing is, the thing that makes it hard to see Reign as a bad guy outright, is that the first person she goes after is someone stealing a van in broad daylight.
At CatCo, Lena sees her supposed love interest James and immediately asks after Kara. She’s feeling a bit squicky about keeping their kiss from Kara and wants to tell her as soon as she comes in the office. Both of those sentences are 100% true and are not told through my gay girl goggles. It’s just what happened.
Here lies Valerie Anne. Cause of death: SHOULDERS
Before James can inquire about Lena’s pressing interest in Kara, Reign busts through the windows, drops the bad guy at their feet, and forces them to film her giving her message. Sin and apathy will be punished in kind. She says she’s here to deliver justice. She’s here to help.
SEE HOW HELPFUL I AM?! BE CAREFUL OF THE GLASS FROM THAT WINDOW I JUST SMASHED THROUGH.
The DEO is worried that she’s taking the law into her own hands, meaning she’ll probably also not see current law enforcement, including the DEO, as being on her side. The problem is, she’s very strong, and they don’t have their strongest asset. Winn points out they have a self-appointed Legion of Super-Heroes and Imra’s 100% down to get into the fight, but her husband is hesitant. He’s afraid they’ll endanger the future if they die and he says that from what he knows, Supergirl survives Reign’s…well, Reign.
Imra explains that in the future, there was an Event that resulted in the entire loss of culture on Earth. And apparently her husband was the only insight they had into the ways of Earth, and this was kind of brushed over, but this means they were SCREWED and all they could learn was what he remembered from his FEW MONTHS on Earth. So he taught them some Bon Jovi songs and called it a day.
J’onn says they don’t need the Legion anyway because they have a plan for rogue Kryptonians called the Sundown Protocol and they can use the leftover kryptonite from Byron Montgomery’s cult.
But Alex wants to talk to Byron before they go that far, so she goes to prison to do just that.
Olivia Benson would be proud of this look.
Byron tells Alex that Supergirl failed her test and that she lost and Reign will prepare them for “what comes next” but Alex is pissed and she leans forward all tough and looks him in the eye and says, “Never. Underestimate. Supergirl.”
Alex just subverted the bury your gays trope by bringing me BACK TO LIFE
Back at the DEO, Lena confronts James about how weird he was earlier when she mentioned telling Kara about their kiss and she was like, “It’s fine, we’re not a match is all.” And James panics because that’s not what he meant but she seems ready to drop this relationship like a hot potato before it even starts.
Someone better loop Lena into the SuperSitch soon because I can’t take much more of her being sidelined in a romantic subplot.
James mutters something about him being weird because Kara has a really bad flu and Lena SPRINGS INTO ACTION and has to go over to see her IMMEDIATELY and James can’t stop her. He can only stall her by telling her to stop for soup first, which gives him enough time to call Winn, who asks J’onn to impersonate Kara again to keep Lena from putting together that both Supergirl and Kara are missing.
Brainiac 5, called Brainy by his buddies, says that Kara is physically fine now and ready to wake up, so Alex goes to her glass pod to talk her little sister out of her coma.
Hush little sister don’t say a word, Alex gonna kill you a Reign-shaped bird
But Kara tries to open the door to her loft to no avail. Brainy thinks maybe something is holding her back, like fear, but she insists over and over again that she is not afraid. Like a kid in a nightmare, just yelling, “I am not afraid!”
“I do believe in fairies, I do! I do!”
She destroyed the inside of her imaginary loft with her heat vision but the door doesn’t budge. Even Brainy is stumped.
Reign attacks a meth lab, which sounds great, but then she also attacks the first cops on the scene, so the DEO knows they can’t wait for Supergirl to wake up before they make another attempt to stop her.
Imra pleads with her husband again; they can help, they have the skillset. Please, please can they do the right thing and help. He explains about their mission, about how the answer to a race of aliens called The Blight is in their DNA, that they can’t die, so they can’t help. He wishes they could help, but if Kara doesn’t wake up and Reign kills people, I think Alex might kill him herself, DNA be damned.
“I COULD kill him with just my pinky finger, for style…”
J’onn shapes himself into Kara in a big floofy bathroom in her loft and puts on his best sick Kara impression for Lena, who arrives with soup in hand. Lena thinks Kara is acting weird, but blames the fever. And she has to get something off her chest RIGHT NOW. So she talks about kissing James and him acting a little weird and her thinking that it’s because she’s a Luthor.
Melissa Benoist does some really cute/funny physical things in this scene, trying to imagine the big, sturdy J’onn trying to position himself like the small, lithe Kara, and what he might think that does or does not look like. Which gets us a really great Slouch.
Love a couch slouch.
When Lena says the thing about worrying about James not liking her because she’s a Luthor, J’onn forgets for a minute how uncomfortable he feels and goes into Space Dad mode, saying that he’s sure whatever awkwardness there might be, it isn’t because she’s a Luthor. He doesn’t really have a good basis for that knowledge, but it’s exactly what Lena needed to hear, so she leaves Kara to her rest and heads back to work.
Across town, Reign stops a bank robbery, but it’s quickly revealed that actually it’s a trap that Alex and the DEO set up. Alex rips off her mask like something out of Atomic Blonde and gives the best smirk I’ve ever seen and says, “Catch.”
At this point, because of Alex, I’ve died and come back to life more than Sara Lance.
I love Alex Danvers.
The team uses lead chains and kryptonite to weaken Reign but she lashes out at Alex and breaks her leg. But Alex can’t be taken down that easily; she already has a new plan. She wants to concentrate the kryptonite and put it right in her bloodstream. Alex gets this fire in her eyes when she says, “The carotid would do,” and on paper that’s just a line but DAMN her delivery got me ready to go all Grey’s Anatomy on someone.
They need someone strong enough to deliver said jab, and Supergirl is out of commission. Imra begs her husband AGAIN for them to help, to do the right thing. She even quotes Bon Jovi at him.
“Imra dreams of running awa-a-ay…”
But he’s still hesitant.
In her mind prison, Kara quotes Sherlock Holmes like the precious nerd she is and has an idea; her mind created this version of the loft, so maybe there’s something in it she needs to see. Brainy is impressed; he didn’t even think of that. But that’s our girl for you. Stronger than Superman, smarter than Brainiac 5.
Outside her healing pod, Alex is apologizing to Kara, blaming herself for encouraging her to forget who she is. She went back on her first statement, but it’s the truest one: Kara Danvers is her favorite person.
Anyone else always sing “The Danvers Sisters” to the tune of “The Schuyler Sisters”? Just me? Cool.
Kara finds a picture of a young her and her cat, Streaky, which is a callback to the comics. Streaky was a stray cat Kara found when she first got to earth. She was afraid to touch him at first, but she practiced being gentle until finally she could pet him. When he purred beneath her hand, she finally started to feel a little bit human.
In the DEO, the alarms go off the Reign has attacked the prison, where she will kill everyone inside that building, and they can no longer wait for Supergirl to wake up. Imra gives her husband one last pleading look and finally he relents. The Legion suits up and tries to summon Captain Planet and when that doesn’t work they head off to stop Reign.
Inside the prison, Reign finds Byron, surprised to hear him saying his Kryptonian prayers. He begs her to let him serve her, and she decides maybe that’s not the worst idea anyone’s ever had.
Just then, Reign hears Livin’ on a Prayer blaring from outside and stalks to the roof, which makes for a hilarious montage, though I’ll never forgive them for how long this song has been stuck in my head. Reign starts to fly so Imra and her husband light their rings up and start to fly themselves and Imra is pretty darn cute.
I’d watch a Saturn Girl spinoff.
Brainy uses their spaceship to shoot her down, but doing so is making it hard for him to focus on Kara’s virtual predicament. She insists he gives 100% to the fight so he’s going to leave her to her own devices to figure out how to leave her own mind. He says Supergirl had a nice life, and she points out it’s Kara’s life. Brainy tells her what Alex said about Kara being her favorite person and leaves her. Thinking on on this, Kara dusts off her glasses and puts them back on. She’s been fighting being human for a while now, fighting it because being human meant feeling the full extent of her broken heart, but hiding behind her bulletproof Kyrptonian skin meant she didn’t have to deal with those feelings. But it’s time now, her own body knows it, her subconscious has finally had enough. As soon as she stands resolute in her Kara get-up, a key appears on the table and she’s able to leave her brain loft.
Back at the fight, the Daxamite runs at Reign with the syringe of kryponite but she freezes him. J’onn joins in the fight but things are seeming chaotic, especially with the syringe stuck in an ice ball.
But then Supergirl appears. Reign says she thought she was dead, but she says she got better. Which reminded me of Monty Python and made me giggle.
“I may be dead, but I’m still pretty. And…actually you’re really pretty too.”
Supergirl jabs Reign with the kryptonite needle, sending her to the ground, screaming in pain. Seemingly defeated. I’m a little unclear on what happens to her next but I guess they just leave her there? And Byron takes her away? Because next time we see her, she’s talking to her hooded figure, who is saying there are more people like her. Presumably more sleeper agents like Sam? It’s all very unclear but I’m excited to see who they dig up.
Back at CatCo, Lena talks to James and apologizes for assuming his weirdness was about her.
I wonder if she has to register that clavicle as a weapon.
She says she doesn’t want to push her away and she wants to let herself forget what Luthor means to some people.
Back at the loft — the real loft — Kara signs Alex’s cast and they laugh imagining J’onn as Kara talking to Lena about kissing James.
Their laughter clears my skin and waters my crops.
Kara says she’s starting to remember who she is. She says it hurts, a lot, but that she’ll be stronger for it. And I hope this revelation holds true. I hope this is a metaphor for the show as a whole. The Daxamite landed on Earth and hurt us all. But I’m hoping we’re all ready to move past it, and that the show remembers who Kara is, and that we’ll all be stronger for it.
Alex will drink to that, so they clink their glasses in celebration of another battle won.
Cheers to moving on.
Well. Until Reign’s supposed friends show up.
Next week it looks like we’ll see the return of who I have in my notes as Electric Boogaloo but surely that can’t be right. Hold on…Livewire! I’m excited for her return and I’m really counting on her to be the first to point out how Lena and Kara act like girlfriends not best friends or bosses. Don’t let me down, girl!
I din’t like this episode. I’ve found everything in it so messy and forced that couldn’t enjoy it. Specially Imra begging for that guy to help HIS FRIENDS. I mean, I understand his caution but it was his friends! And heroes don’t hesitate to help, which brings me to the conclusion of what we know for a very long time: he might dress like a hero, be in a group of heros but he’s no hero.
But the highlight of the episode for me was Melissa impersonating J’onn impersonating Kara. She really knocked that out of the park in my opinion!
And Alex’s attitude telling Reign to catch the granade had Sara Lance written all over it! Loved it!
Awesome recap, as usual. I’m still laughing at the “I wonder if she has to register that clavicle as a weapon.” So true.
I hope the moving on thing and the fact that his DNA is needed in another time and place means that Mon-El will leave for good.
Too bad it also means losing Brainiac 5, who was great, and Imra.
About next week team up, it’s a pity Alex won’t be part of the girl band. I guess they’ll use the fact that she’s sidelined to justify her babysitting Ruby (is it just me or are they all acting like she’s much younger than she looks ?)
I hope they’re not really going in the direction of Alex adopting Ruby by the end of the season (because Sam is gone) because that would be a little too much too fast (again – and also too convenient. And lazy).
However, if they want to introduce some romance between Alex and Sam which, at some point in the future, would make her Ruby’s second mom, I’m all for it.
I feel like the writers went a smidge too hard on the Bon Jovi joke and not hard enough on the logical and emotional beats of everything else. Meh.
I’m happy to have Supergirl back. I liked this episode. It gave me enough good to great moments that I was able to overlook the less strong elements…like any support Lena had for the girls in that dress. Alex swaggering into the prison. Alex smirking through the Reign bank heist fight. Kara reaccepting Kara and her “humanity”. J’onn impersonating Kara and the delight the sisters had that the conversation he had to carry was about kissing James. I even liked that we can more organically see James as a journalist again.
Testing, testing. Am I still spamblocked?
Why do I keep getting blocked when I try to make a normal comment?
One of the things that so great about “Supergirl” is how prescient it can be in regards to political topics. Both the Alien Amnesty Act and Maggie’s father’s speech were both extremely timely. But now something funny has happened. The show indicates that Reign has gone too far in her pursuit of justice when she beguns to hold bystanders complicit in the crimes that they witness. However, today we have Sen. Booker railing at the Secretary of the DHS about her “Silence & Amnesia” concerning Trump’s “Shithole” comments.
“When ignorance and bigotry is alive with power, it is a dangerous force in our country,” Booker said. “Your silence and your amnesia is complicity.”
It’s the first time I’ve seen “Supergirl” go against the moral wave in America.
You are reaching in this instance, or at least i hope you are. What is happening in America and what Reign is doing, is not comparable. Like we get to know about her and the reports are shown that she killed 11 gang members. Not sent them to jail or handed them to the police, killed them. Like why would you think bystanders to a crime are complicit in it? You were present during a robbery and instead of being a victim or a bystander you are now complicit? And that is not what people are aiming for, straight up executing people or convicting people who are said to be in the wrong, without any due process.
I think there’s a difference between calling people out to use their positions of power to hold others in power accountable (real life) and threatening to kill everyone who doesn’t take the actions one lone person deems reasonable (Reign).
Wait, who’s Byron Montgomery? I thought the dude’s name was Coville?
Oops sorry Chad Lowe played Byron Montgomery on Pretty Little Liars and I called him Byron in his first episode because I didn’t think he would be around very long and forgot to learn his real name. Now that it seems like he’ll be sticking around, I’ll try to remember to call him Coville. No promises, though.
Well never thought this would happen, but its the first time that i am kind of disagreeing with your recap of this show. Like I’ve hated that jar of mayo since they introduced him, but at least now he is doing his best impression of an adult. The reasoning and delay between the legion physically helping against Reign was typical CW DCTV, so i kind of let that go. However I liked how this episode kind of made this entire seasons arc (up to this point that is) of Kara being how she dealt with her emotional vulnerability. I also liked the Danvers sisters being there for each other once again, as wonderful as that brief Sanvers ship was and as terrible as that Karamel was one thing they had to get rid of for those scenes was the scenes between Alex and Kara which used to be among my favourite so i am happy to see that again.
What i didnt like this episode or rather in the last couple of episodes has been how they are pairing up Lena with Jimmy, I absolutely Hate it now when writers keep pairing women with their male co-stars, like Lena could be a gold mine of story moments, like she is a goddamn Luthor, a fucking genius and CEO of major fucking companies, she could be making boss moves but NOOOO lets pair her up, cant have women being single and doing shit.(UGH) But thats more of an issue with entertainment industry in general and not just this show. Also Reign flew away after getting up off the ground following the neck kryptonite stabbing.
Hey we were bound to disagree eventually! :) I just hate that they tout the “jar of mayo” (that made me lol) as a hero without actually showing him doing anything particularly heroic without a lot of hand-holding. I did like the things you mentioned, too. And do wish they’d use the power of Lena Luthor in all her glory.
I see that, but i’d rather they just mention in passing how mon’el created the legion of superheroes and how he ‘inspired’them instead of giving me flashbacks and wasting the remaining 3 episodes of supergirl before legends of tomorrow comes to take this shows place. Like I really really desperately want Lena to be in the know about supergirls identity instead of going as it is, like at this point its insulting towards Lena, she is supposed to be a genius she cant be surrounded by people with dual identities and not figure it out, especially because she was raised as a Luthor. She double crossed her adopted mother so well which goes to show that clearly she knows deception, I genuinely pray that they just use that story line instead of giving us Monel’s flashbacks or that Lames ship.
But yeah, I get where you are coming from with regards to Mon’El. But like honestly I’ve liked how so far the writers have taken the trope of the weird love triangle plot point and completely disregarded it, like Imraa seems to be totally aware about the history between Kara and her husband, her husband is not being the typical male lead here and then pining after kara while still being in a fulfilling relationship and Kara finally seems to have accepted the loss of her love and is being really mature about the situation, so this fact alone makes the presence of Mon’El so much more bearable, and then you pair it with the fact that since he has been on, the story hasn’t completely shifted focus and become about him instead of Kara and since he is on screen so little the writers dont get the chance to mess up further and make him act like a complete tool towards Kara. So at least this has worked out in the shows favor, at least for the last couple of episodes.
But really, I am not sure how I feel about Braniac 5 considering that he and Kara are a thing in the comics. Like I dont want Kara to be in a relationship too just so the writers can complete their nohomo bingo :/
Reign flew away. :)
While I felt both Mon El and Imra were right in their own right (he was a commander and had to think of the future; people still don’t know how the future is like and what they are risking), I thought what it showed best was that Mon El had really moved on from Kara. The little eye talk between Mon El and Imra from time to time especially showed that. Even the last conversation that Kara and Mon El had seemed to show that.
I hope what this actually means is that unlike what people on the internet are saying, they are going to go with Mon El and Imra as a stable couple and Kara will not backtrack either. I know soap operaish love triangles and drama are standard CW fare, but hey, they can still do that if they make poor Alex fall for Sam (I hope not; it would be heart breaking). I am still hoping for eventual Alex and Lena.
It may be that, given how much CW (rather than the writers; I am going to finally go with the speculation that it is n/w mandate rather than the showrunners/writers) likes Mon El, they may go for a new show next year. Though, I don’t think they have the space for it.
Also.. .am I the only person who found it amusing that they seemed to mix and match job-specifications as the plot demands. Whenever they want, Alex can be a tech genius (season one with that train), field agent, doctor, geneticist or whatever. And now, Brainiac 5 who is a supercomputer, is also a physician and can fix up Alex’s leg?
Melissa is a really gifted actor.
Thank you for the recap Valerie Anne. I hope the show will get better for you and you will start enjoying it more.
“Here lies Valerie Anne. Cause of death: SHOULDERS” – Priceless. Bless you for always making me giggle. These recaps are often better than the show itself – and I love this show.