Back at the Tower, the Superfriends follow a magical energy spike and follow it downtown while Mxy watches on their button cameras. Nia is really feeling the guilt as a giant cat stomps around the city. The lesbian knows exactly how to deal with this, and immediately whips out…a rocket launcher. Has she been able to do this the whole time? And she chooses pew pew pistols??
Anyway, the rocket launcher doesn’t work against the kitten, neither does freeze breath, nor Nia trying to lasso it into the dream realm. Brainy has an idea and needs Supergirl to distract it so she flies up and uses her heat vision as a laser pointer. At which point I wonder, did the writers room have a joke wall where they put all their weird suggestions that don’t fit the vibe of the show and now that it’s the last season they’re just using them anyway? Like if this was going to happen there needed to be way more joking and laughter about it. In my humble opinion.
Brainy traps it, and Nyxly is impressed with the Superfriends.
She just wants Mxy, then she’ll leave them alone. She pinky swears.
Andrea calls Lena to tell her that she found the third woman in the picture, Florence, who went off the grid after Peggy’s dad’s mysterious death. Lena thanks her but says she’s not going to do anything with that information because she’s feeling a bit demoralized being yelled at by complete strangers about the things a woman she barely even met supposedly did.
Andrea encourages her to stay with a series of phrases she found in the wrappers of the Dove candies she was eating alone in her office because her only friend is Back East, including things like, you can’t deal with the past until you face it, and my personal favorite, “Information doesn’t hurt people, secrets do.” Which is a BOLD statement to make to Lena, who she kept secrets from for decades. And she wouldn’t know this but Lena knows full well the true cost of secrets.
As they return to the Tower, Brainy scolds Nia for almost deleting herself from this reality but she’s so desperate to clean up this mess she made. She begs her to tell Kara but she still hesitates. Mxy welcomes them all back and shows them a copy he made of himself he wants to use as a decoy to get the power dampening cuff on Nyxly. Alex and Kara consider it.
But then the copy glitches and that falls slips through their fingers, too. Kara walks off to be alone, hoping that if she doesn’t go to the Feelings Balcony no one will follow her, but Nia does anyway.
Nia has to tell Kara the truth, that it’s her fault Nyxly is here, not Kara’s. She apologizes and Kara says she understands, because Nyxly fooled her, too. Nia looks at her with her big sad eyes and asks the question I ask my friends in my head every time they say something nice to me, “You don’t hate me?” And Kara laughs.
Nia made a mistake, but Kara knows it would be hypocritical to punish her for that. They’ve all made mistakes, all they can do is learn from them and move forward. And fix it, together. Which is reason #925600 that Kara is such a strong leader and one of the best superheroes to ever don a cape. (Or a hood. Looking at you, Arrow and Flash.) Like Nia, I was holding my breath for an overreaction, or at least a disappointed lecture, Nia because of how much guilt she was feeling, me for different reasons we won’t get into right now, but Kara is just like, “Okay yeah that was a bad idea, but you didn’t do harm on purpose, you’ve apologized, and you’re willing to work with me to fix it, so let’s do it!” It’s lovely.
Nia wishes aloud that she could dream up a better Mxy clone and Kara has an idea.
Over in Ireland Lite Newfoundland, Lena is following the clues Andrea sent her and finds a cave entrance in the middle of an open field that’s about as hidden as Willa’s treehouse. And then she just strolls right in! She finds a woman who is creating a smoke raven for some reason, and when she realizes a stranger is in her cave, she points a shotgun at her. But when she realizes the woman in front of her looks just like her former best friend but with better hair, she lets her guard down and Lena confirms that she’s Elizabeth’s daughter.
Florence says that Elizabeth told her that Lena would show up someday, told her to be precise in answering her daughter’s questions, because Lena is a scientist. Florence asks for a drop of Lena’s blood and Lena all but laughs in her face. She doesn’t believe in magic.
But Florence tells her to treat this as more of a science experiment so she agrees to a drop of blood. Using visions as a guide, Florence tells the tale of their coven, how they learned the language of nature and how Lena’s mom’s spark was powerful.
But then, in trying to scare Margaret’s abusive husband, they girlbossed too close to the sun and killed him dead. The town turned on them and threatened them, and Lizzie didn’t trust herself anymore, so she treated Mr. Luthor like a lead box to keep her magic from hurting anyone else. But Florence wants Lena to know that Elizabeth sees Lena, and is very proud of the woman she is, which is all Lena has ever wanted a parental figure to say to her.
Meanwhile, Kara tells the team their new plan: Nia is going to use Brainy’s image inducer to be a Mxy decoy and get the cuff on Nxy. Alex credits Mxy for the idea and it’s actually very sweet. She’s such a good big sister. But when they get to the park to enact the plan, the inducers fail when Nia gets too close to the crystal, and Nyxly is onto them. And furious.
Alex, Brainy, and J’onn show up with the Phantom Zone projector but Kara stop them. She still thinks she can get through to her. But in their hesitation, Nyxly magics them all onto tinfoil stakes and summons a kryptonite-breathing dragon to kill them all.
The real Mxy shows up and apologizes to the Superfriends for getting them into this mess; the truth is, he could have helped Nyxly all those years ago and he took the coward’s way out. So he’s changing that now.
Kara tries one last time to appeal to Nyxly’s humanity, hoping it exists. She says that her anger is valid, that Kara is angry about what happened to Nyxly too, but that they can be stronger together.
But Nyxly isn’t moved. In fact, she says “nah” which was hilarious to me. Fighting ensues and Kara holds up the Phantom Projector regretfully but Mxy says he can help and he manages to get the power dampener on her like it’s a snap bracelet from the 90s on his way to being sucked into the crystal. As soon as she’s depowered, though, the glam rock spaceship beams her up to safety.
Kara is sad she didn’t listen to Mxy, that she took the Phantom Zone option off the table too soon, but Alex reassures her that it’s never a bad idea to have hope in someone, even if it doesn’t always work out.
Nia has an idea for how they can still save Mxy, and echoes Kara’s words back to her for inspiration. Kara stands up, ready to try, try again.
In the magic candle cave, Florence is showing Lena more pictures of her mother’s bad hair. She says that Lena has her mother’s gift and Lena scoffs. She barely believes in the magic she just saw, let alone that she HAS magic. She says all Lena has to do is embrace her gift to employ it.
teen years?”
Nia dreams about Nyxly’s plans and Kara decides that she needs to find the totems first. And this time, she’s not going to pull any punches.
And y’all even though I was very disappointed it wasn’t a proper musical episode, I loved this? This is the kind of episode I wanted all last season instead of a certain bald maniac. It makes me wish even harder that we had more time. I can’t wait for Lena to return to the Superfriends and tell Kara about how she’s the answer to all the problems that arose while she was gone since, as Nyxly said, only magic can defeat magic.
Oh! And one more thing. They actually have a preview for next week’s episode! Guardian will rise again!
