Hello and welcome to the recap of another female-centric episode of Supergirl. I know that sounds like it should be a given, what with the name of the show being Supergirl and the second most important character in the show being her sister, but we got a little off track for a while there. But I have hope that these past two episodes are a sign of good things to come.
Okay, onward!
Previously on Supergirl, Lena threatened Edge the Shitticket, whose name I forget literally every time he leaves and come back until someone says it out loud, like my brain refuses to retain any information about him because he’s not worth my energy. Also, Sam admitted to Alex that she’s been losing time, Reign and Supergirl both separately found out that there were more worldkillers afoot, and one of them was activated.
We begin in Kara’s nightmares, where Reign is floating out of a cloud of angry red enemy with a new beautiful worldkiller by her side. Disturbed, she goes to the DEO to explain that she feels uneasy just waiting around for them to strike again and wants to know where they came from and why they’ve been dormant. They know Reign isn’t pure Kryptonian the way Kara is, and Kara remembers Reign saying she came from Krypton before it exploded, so the DEO decides they’re going to try to track down things that came from the sky as Krypton was destroyed.
Cut to a lab in L Corp, where Alex is going to give Sam an MRI to figure out why she keeps having blackouts. Alex drops a little line about her past life when she went by Lexie instead of Alex, assuring Sam they’ll figure out what’s wrong. Sam is worried but Alex’s voice remains calm and comforting the entire time.
Out on the street, Lena is taking James out for breakfast when they run into Edge, who is just a walking rusty barbed wire, but Lena stands fierce and unwavering in the face of his insults. He tells her she’s wasting away in her ivory tower and she tells him to burn in hell. It’s pretty satisfying, to be honest.
He takes off, smug and self-satisfied — that is, until his car goes into autopilot and starts speeding him toward the river. He manages to get out through the trunk because cockroaches have a very annoying survival instinct but he is NOT pleased with this turn of events.
At CatCo, Lena comes in talking about a benefit Gala she wants her favorite reporter to cover.
Just then, Edge comes storming in and whips his keys at Lena’s head in frustration. Kara catches it easily and both her and Lena stare Edge down as he accuses Lena of trying to kill him and ranting that he won’t rest until she’s taken down. Lena once again remains unflappable in the face of him going off.
Kara stands up for Lena, so he eventually storms off, and as soon as it’s just Lena, Kara and James in her office (his office? I’m actually not sure whose office it is anymore…you know what…CAT’S office), Lena looks a little stressed.
Lena is worried Edge won’t rest until she’s dead and she’s tired of this cycle of violence. This is exactly the kind of Luthor bullshit she’s worked so hard to avoid getting sucked into. But Kara assures her that she has something her mother and brother never had – friends. Good friends. Best friends. And they’ll help her, no matter what.
Back at L Corp, Alex reviews Sam’s brain scans and can’t see anything immediately wrong with her.
Sam asks what’s next and Alex remains as calm as ever, saying they’re going to send the images and some bloodwork to people with more focus on human biology than alien. Sam is still so stressed; she really wants to know what’s wrong because she hates lying to Lena every time no one can account for her absence. She’s starting to feel like a burden on everyone – on Lena, on Ruby, on Alex.
Alex draws some of Sam’s blood (easily; she’s not always steel-skinned like Kara) and reassures her that she’s not a burden. Lena is her boss, sure, but she’s also her friend. Kara is her friend. Alex is her friend. Alex says that she gets the impulse to put walls up, to keep people out and to deal with things on your own, especially if you are used to doing just that, as Sam is, as Alex was. But Alex says that after she and Maggie broke up, Kara busted down those walls and refused to be shut out, and it’s helping her tremendously.
And so she’s going to do the same for Sam, and keep those walls from keeping EVERYONE out. And then she gives Sam a lollipop. It’s very cute.
Back at CatCo, Eve gives Lena a coffee and she immediately passes out and starts foaming at the mouth after sipping it. James runs after the source of the poison and Kara kneels by Kara’s side. Outside, James chases down the faux barista but someone else out of sight shoots him down before James can find out who ordered the hit on Lena.
Meanwhile, Kara, secret identity be damned, flies Lena to the DEO faster than a speeding bullet.
At the DEO, Alex sniffs Lena and realizes it was cyanide in her coffee. She needs to induce hypothermia to slow her heartrate so Kara blows a gentle breeze onto Lena until her condition stabilizes. Relieved, the sisters remember that they are better together and hopefully vow to stop going on missions without each other.
Later, J’onn finds Kara out on the balcony and says that Lena will wake up soon and probably she should be at CatCo when that happens. He mentions about how she risked her identity to save her, that it didn’t go unnoticed. Using his Space Dad instincts, he can tell it’s not just Lena’s fate that’s bothering her. Kara admits that she hates that they’re just waiting around for Reign, that she feels useless. But J’onn says that there’s power in being the calm in a storm. A beacon of light in the dark. Hope.
When Lena wakes up on the couch in CatCo, and says she had the strangest dream that she was flying and Kara was carrying her. Kara nervously laughs and is like I WISH.
And okay, so I have a theory that Lena knows, but she’s just waiting for Kara to tell her herself. Like how sometimes a parent knows their child is gay, but doesn’t want to force them to tell them before they’re ready. So they’ll drop hints like “I had a dream that,” or “hey weird Supergirl finished a thought you started” but won’t ever ask outright.
But also, even if that’s not true, she should examine why she was having dreams where her gal pal is rescuing her like a knight in shining armor JUST SAYING.
Anyway, Lena is feeling like maybe Reign has the right idea and they should just take Edge out, but Kara and James say all they need to do is find someone who could make a futuristic disappearing bullet and then they’ll nail Edge the right way. Lena pretends to agree and for some reason her friends can’t see the gears turning in her head.
Once out from under the watchful eyes of her friends, Lena follows the clues to a place called ThunderCorp (which feels like a Black Lightning/Supergirl crossover fic waiting to happen) and there she finds the person who killed the person who tried to kill her: Lillian Luthor.
Lena asks what the heck she’s doing here, and Lillian says she’s here to take care of the scum trying to kill her daughter. And the thing is, she seems genuine. Because the mother/daughter relationship is complicated at best. Lena explains that if she wanted to “take care of” Edge, she would do it herself. And Lillian recounts a time little Lena exacted revenge on her fifth grade nemesis, and says if she channels that fiendish savviness now, she could be great. Lena sneers at her mother and says, “I am great.”
Lillian thinks Lena is wasting her talents but Lena isn’t LIKE her. Lena wants to be her own person, without her mother putting all her shit on her. But, knowing her mother, Lena understands that it’s easier to just agree with her and then do her own thing anyway, which gives Lena the opportunity to scope out her mother’s evil lair.
When she leaves, she goes to Kara to tell her everything immediately, but before she can, Alex and Sam come in and want to have a Fearsome Foursome meeting. They explain what’s been going on with Sam and Sam’s been afraid to fall apart, but Kara says it’s fine to fall apart when you have friends to pick up the pieces.
Sam says the thing is, she has Ruby to think of, and she’s scared to think about what will happen to Ruby if something happens to her.
But Kara says that nothing will happen to Ruby, because Sam isn’t alone anymore. Ruby has three badass aunts and a fierce af mom, so no matter what, there will be a village to help raise her baby girl.
Having these friends means so much to Sam, and hoo boy do I hope the power of three will set Sam free of Reign’s grasp without having to kill her.
After Alex and Sam leave, Kara asks Lena what she was about to say, and Lena admits to that one time she had a loaded gun and came thiiiiis close to blowing Edge’s brains out. Kara is a little stressed about it but Lena says that after her encounter with her mother, she realizes that her cunning doesn’t necessarily have to be a force used for evil, but instead can be turned against it. Kara is like pssh I could have told you that I’ve counted all your chess trophies and memorized the dates in case it ever comes up in casual conversation. Lena says she needs her wit and Kara’s help to foil her mother’s evil plan.
Which, using the convenient media footage on the office TV, she now knows in detail.
And so, Lena and Kara get dressed up, presumably together, zipping each other’s dresses and tucking the final strands of hair up into their neat little buns, and head to the gala together.
Kara immediately struts off to distract the security guard with her quirky charm and Lena is impressed and knows she brought the right girl for this mission.
After Lena walks through, Kara tries to follow, and when the guard tries to grab her and calls her sweetheart, Kara lays him out and puts him in his place.
Lena approaches Edge and tries to explain that she’s trying to save him from his mother, that a drone is coming for him, but he’s arrogant and disbelieving. She quirks a perfect eyebrow at him and tells him that her offer to help expires any second now.
But he still hesitates so the drone starts to attack. Lena struts after his scurrying form, tape recorder in hand, and Edge admits to everything. Once she has her tape, Lena takes his badge and throws it, removing the target from his person.
But Lillian won’t be thwarted quite that easily, and when she appears some of the drones lock around her like she’s some kind of Iron Woman. Supergirl appears to fight her, but the suit comes with a Kryptonite blade. She gets some help from the DEO, and Guardian shows up to stop Edge from running off with Lena’s tape, and good gives evil a swift kick to the face yet again. (Literally, Lena kicks Edge. It’s amazing.)
Edge and Lillian are arrested, and Lena tells Kara that it’s friends like her that keep her from murdering everyone. And honestly, same.
James appears to chat but Lena just laughs him off, tells him he missed all the fun, and bounces. She goes and tells her mother about her plan to use her Luthor genius for good, but Mama still isn’t convinced she won’t come over to the dark side eventually.
The Fearsome Foursome gather together again at the Loft and Alex gets the call that there’s nothing medically wrong with Sam. Which, on one hand, is great news.
But, on the other hand, can be extremely frustrating. Because if the doctor’s don’t know what’s wrong, but something definitely is wrong, what does that mean? Hopefully this group of humans who regularly deals with out-of-this-world issues will turn to a supernatural explanation next instead of twiddling their thumbs until someone sees Sam’s eyes gleam red, but honestly who knows. All they do know is that they’re in this together, which Sam is extremely grateful for.
Kara goes back to the DEO to find that they’ve uncovered some women who have survived impossible things, and Kara immediately recognizes one of them from her nightmare, so they’re off to find her.
And that’s all she wrote. Literally she. Now, my only source is Wikipedia, but I believe this is only the 8th time (in 54 episodes) a woman has directed an episode, and the third time a woman has directed an episode AND two women were credited for the teleplay. I think this is a step in the right direction for this show. And I’m so here for women doing more shit in 2018.
The four main women on this show were everything this week. They were strong, they were sassy, they were talking to each other about things that weren’t their desire for a love interest, they were sharing things instead of keeping secrets, they were working together, they were They were being vulnerable and smart and kind and strong and sassy and they were working together and leaning on each other and not keeping secrets and asking each other for help. And the way that Kara helped the most in this episode had as much to do with her being Supergirl as it did with her being Kara Danvers. Kara was there for her friends, Supergirl just helped out with a little flying and punching here and there. Both were important. I loved every scene with any combination of the four women. I loved seeing adult non-romantic friendships. Friendships like mine.
Now, listen, the show is not without its flaws. It still has some problems and 99 of them start with M and rhyme with “hell.” But this show is better when it focuses on its women, and I think it’s finally starting to understand that. And the more it leans into it, the better the show is getting. Because Space Dad was right, Supergirl is more than just a superhero who fights bad guys. At least, it could be. It has the potential to be a light in the dark abyss we’re currently trudging through. It should be, at least in broad strokes, a window into the world as it could be.
