Before the interview is over, the lights go out and pink energy flows through and the mystery attacker goes for Andrea again, but Supergirl flies in just in time. Supergirl tries to get Andrea to back off the launch but she’s sacrificed too much (namely, Lena’s friendship) to give up now. And so she’s grateful for Supergirl’s help because she knows that together they can get this tech off the ground.

Can I just say, I love Andrea’s lil scar on the bridge of her nose. (The rumors are true, chicks dig scars.)

In prison, Steve’s bully is nice to him, but suddenly Steve is overcome and he looks like he wants to punch Toby but he can’t so he has a seizure. Lena is by his side when he wakes (THE DREAM) and he says that he has an insatiable hunger for vengeance now that he never had before; Lena feels awful.

I wish Kara had somehow walked in on this moment. To see the real fear and sorrow in Lena’s eyes when she realized she caused someone harm.

Alex and J’onn somehow still find their way to the barn without Brainy’s help, and they find schematics for a modified gauntlet that the alien seems to be using as a weapon. The alien in question shows up (I would say what kind they are—it sounded like Chlorophyllian—but I can’t be sure of the spelling. That was just my best guess based on my knowledge of Latin roots and their sun/plant powers.) The alien sucks up J’onn’s powers and renders him to weak too fight back, and sets the barn on fire as Alex throws a crowbar at them, having to improvise a weapon in absence of her gun. The alien zips off and Alex presses her Supergirl button.

Portrait of an Alex on Fire

Hearing the call, Supergirl interrupts Andrea’s latest event and swooshes her to the DEO, leaving her there while she goes to put out the barn fire. They realize that the gauntlets were modified to help this alien use their powers of absorption against other aliens.

Meanwhile, Lena is trying to science her way to an answer as to what happened to Steve.

I just think Alex’s science/medicine background could really help her out.

Lex comes in to check on her, and Lena is saying that maybe she’s delusional like Lex was, maybe her idea IS bad, maybe she is taking free will away, like Supergirl thought, even though that was never her goal. Maybe she is going down a dark path. Which is just so pure and definitely not something Lex ever considered about himself. Lex reminds her that his downfall was his obsession with beating Superman, and he encourages her to beware of her downfall being her obsession on what Supergirl thinks of her.

“Technically, it’s Kara’s opinion I’m obsessed with, but point taken.”

Back at the Tower, Alex is feeling weird because she was so helpful in that fight without powers or a weapon. She never had to worry about being a mere human before, because she had a team by her side. What if the DEO was her power? But J’onn promises her that she still has a team behind her, and that it’s only her first day; she’ll figure things out as she goes.

Alex! Buck up! You’re your own damn weapon!

Amongst the debris of the barn, Supergirl finds a box with Obsidian credentials and a suicide note. In the note, a man named Todd admits that he was obsessed with escaping in Obsidian because he was finding it impossible to adjust to Earth after leaving their home planet. He writes about not being able to cope, and once he got caught using the lenses he was fired and denied access to them, and he couldn’t bear to live without it. At first they wonder if he’s the attacker, but then they realize he died a year ago. So instead they suspect his wife, Amy, and figure she’s seeking revenge for taking her husband away from her.

Supergirl flies to Obsidian, where Amy is on a rampage trying to find Andrea. Amy absorbs Supergirl’s powers, knocking her out, and even Dreamer’s powers don’t stop her for long.

At the DEO, Andrea is telling Brainy about all the failsafes, and they’re worried about explosions, so Brainy says he’ll go to Obsidian to turn them off. Andrea wants to help, but Brainy says it’s not safe, so he orders her put in a holding cell.

Meanwhile, Amy is attacking everyone, including Kelly when she tries to reason with her. But Alex swoops in like a lesbian in shining armor just in the nick of time.

Okay show good yes THIS but MORE.

Andrea, frustrated, starts banging around her cell, and ends up accidentally falling through her shadow and ending up in her office to help Brainy shut down the failsafe.

Amy makes her way to the servers and starts to absorb energy from them to try to shut down the launch. Supergirl realizes she’s no physical match for these gauntlets, so she tries to talk to Amy instead. They talk about Todd, about his dark spiral, and Supergirl points out that Amy is on a dark spiral of her own. Supergirl understands her frustration, her pain, but if Amy continues, more people will die, which she knows isn’t what Amy wants. She just wants people to connect. She tells Amy she’s in control of her future, and Amy stops supercharging the servers, and Obsidian launches as planned.

Amy isn’t mad anymore, just sad. Tired. She says she misses him so much, and Supergirl understands. More than Amy could know.

“I, too, have suffered many, many tragic losses. But how good do I look in this light, be honest.”

Supergirl asks how Andrea got here so fast, but Andrea lies; she eventually puts together that it was the medallion that gave her those powers, but she tells Supergirl she just convinced agents to take her. Supergirl expresses her concerns about VR addiction, but Andrea says that it will help far more people than it hurts. That it can be used in trauma healing, and coping. Not just for escapism. She says that Supergirl has to remember that when it comes down to it, all Andrea wants to do is help people. Just like Lena.

At the Tower, J’onn asks Alex how she’s feeling after her first day, and our little overachiever is bummed she hasn’t solved the Lex mystery and mastered non-weaponed fighting in one day. To cheer her up, J’onn gives her a weapon. At first it looks like a gun, but he shows her that it’s a Martian weapon called the Hand of the Soldier, that can turn into any weapon she chooses as long as she can picture it.

Yes, I did immediately start chanting, “SWORD SWORD SWORD!” thanks for asking.

She’s gonna make it after all.

After talking to Lex, Lena figures out that the vengeance part of the brain is different from general violence, so she reworks Non Nocere to help rid Steve of his icky feelings. He calls her a hero, and she says wistfully that if her plan works, there won’t be a need for heroes.

“And if there are no heroes, there is no Supergirl. Only my best friend Kara Danvers.”

The Danvers Sisters settle into Kara’s loft for some dinner (sitting in front of the couch like a coupla gays) and Alex tells her sister about her new weapon. Kara gets a text from William and for some reason Alex yet again encourages Kara to try going on a date with him, even though she has made it pretty clear she doesn’t want to.

“Listen as we’ve well learned, even geniuses can have bad ideas sometimes.”

But this time, Kara relents. Maybe it’s because she realized that he was going to be in the line of danger by nature of his job anyway, and dating her wouldn’t put him in any more danger than usual, or maybe she’s just tired of the pressure, I don’t know. But she asks William to go to dinner with her, and looks medium amounts of happy about it.

“This is fine.”

Across town, Brainy is questioning Lex’s leadership but he has his eyes on the Leviathan prize and can’t worry about a few civilians he was sure Supergirl would save anyway. Now that he proved he was useful to Leviathan, he asks Gemma if he can meet them, and Gemma says she’ll think about it. :yawn:

Next week looks very Nia-centric, and frankly, it’s about damn time.

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