And this is what she clings to as the kelpie gets all up in her face and she stands strong.
“I feel like in another life I owned a sickly dragon, maybe I can channel that energy.”
And then we’re back to the final checks again, this time following Brainy as he goes to Kelly and tells her that he appreciates her presence on this mission, especially as a new processor of feelings himself. The power surge happens again, and when it’s done, Kelly and Alex notice something going haywire with the q-wave interface.
Dansen sharing a frame, can you believe it!
They head deeper into the ship and find Nia and Dreamer near the Phantom’s containment unit…only they aren’t trying to re-contain it. In fact, it seems they’re trying to release it. As they turn around and start to speak in unison, Kelly realizes that they have been infected.
Of course Phantom Lena would still be hot.
Kelly turns to look to her girlfriend for help but Alex is turned, too. Kelly tries to talk to Alex through the Phantom’s thrall, but the trio keeps speaking as one, calling her weak and human, saying that they are heroes and they got taken over, so what chance does Kelly have of overcoming it?
And Kelly is so close to realizing what happens, but instead of realizing it’s happening to her and taking her own advice, she uses her grounding tactics on Alex. She reminds Alex of what’s real, of what adorable little things she remembers Alex liking, reminds her of how much Kelly loves her. She says Alex has called her her rock in the past, so let her be her rock now.
I am beyond ready for Guardian Kelly.
“Come back to me,” she pleads. And for a moment, it works. The kindness returns to Alex’s eyes and she leads Kelly to an escape pod. Alex says the rest of them are too far gone, and that Kelly has to leave to save herself. And then Alex Phantoms out again, and Kelly starts to panic.
And I think it’s really interesting, and almost sweet, that even though they were different scenarios and for different reasons, both Alex and Kelly’s fears involved them being separated from the group and, specifically, from each other. To not be able to save everyone. The key difference being, in Alex’s, she was a danger to everyone, and in Kelly’s, she was too ineffective. Different pieces of the same puzzle.
And then we cut back again to the power surge. But this time, it’s Nia’s fear, and at first she ends up in a dream. But also it’s a dream within a nightmare? This poor girl gets yoinked from reality enough, you’d think the Phantoms would have left her alone, but alas. Her nightmare dream is of the Phantom’s containment unit no longer having a Phantom in it, but instead a thimble with an image of the Tower, but with a crack in it.
When she comes to, Brainy tells her that everyone had fear visions, so for a minute it’s truly unclear what is real and what isn’t, which ironically is MY biggest fear. But then when they go to check the containment unit together and a big ol’ crack appears in the side of the Tower, it becomes clear this is Nia’s fear when Brainy starts speaking her real life doubts back at her in a way her supportive boyfriend never would. She tries to use the clues from her dream to fix things, but Brainy gets sucked out of the window because she couldn’t interpret in time.
Everyone’s nightmares were so realistic. Mine are usually like, I’m in charge of a kitten at my high school but it looks like my elementary school, or I’m on a runaway roller coaster and also there are dinosaurs.
And then we check out what’s happening in actual reality. When J’onn comes to post power surge, he realizes ten minute have passed he can’t account for. When he looks around, he sees his team all gripped by the fear visions, except Brainy who manages to come to despite being surrounded by balloons. I refuse to believe that this ninth level intellect who only just recently realized the depth and weight of his feelings is only encountering the admittedly terrifying anticipation of a balloon popping, but fine. Brainy helms the ship while J’onn gets the Phantom back in containment so that everyone can find their way out of their waking nightmares.
J’onn uses his brain powers to get into the Phantom’s head, and sees everyone’s fears, including Kara’s, but pushes them back until the Phantom is locked up again. Then one by one, everyone ends their own nightmares. Some just let it play out, like Alex telling Kelly to hug Kara for her as she sacrifices herself for the good of the team. Some face their fears like Lena and her Kelpie, who turns into a watery version of her mother when she looks at it straight on.
I’m so glad Lena has friends now so she can talk about how she dreamed about her drowned mom trying to drown her for letting her drown!
Kelly uses her burgeoning Guardian skills to protect her friends, Nia watches Brainy slip away.
Alex comes to first and hears Brainy and J’onn say they have a lock on Supergirl, but she isn’t sure she can trust this is real. And as someone who has had lucid dreams before, I understand this disorienting feeling.
After everything they’ve been through, it’s no wonder she’s hesitant, but the fact that she still has so much hope and drive is a testament to her sister’s influence.
The rest of the team slowly comes to and takes up their posts again, Lena readying the sun bomb.
And the team can’t arrive a moment too soon, because Kara is still sitting, alone, sad, crippled by something more insipid than just generic brand fear: hopelessness.
“I just remembered my arc on Glee.”
But the thing is, she fought off that hopelessness so long that her own relentless optimism rubbed off on Papa Zor El. He shows her that he made himself a crutch to prove he’s ready and willing to keep going, to keep trying. To keep fighting. She feels guilty for giving him hope for nothing. For making him believe everything will be okay when it simply won’t. And that’s so true to Kara, that her deepest fear is that someday her hope speech will be wrong. That someday her optimism will prove unwarranted, that someday her belief in herself and her team will get someone hurt, or worse. She calls herself naive and arrogant, and she laments that her friends will likely die trying to save her.
But her dad keeps returning that same hope speech right back into her and eventually she hears it, and her eyes turn from the cloudy blue of sadness to her regular bright hopeful baby blues.
As someone who just got to hug her dad for the first time in months because we’re both vaccinated now, I felt this hug in my bones.
So even though things look bleaker than they have in a while, with destruction from the explosion behind them and a horde of Phantoms in front, Kara is ready to fight her way out, to never give up. She’s ready to be Supergirl, til the bitter end if that’s what it takes.
Then all of a sudden, a bright light fills the space and Kara and her dad feel stronger; Kara recognizes Lena’s handiwork and knows this means her family is here to save her.
Does this mean “You are my sunshine” is Lena and Kara’s song now?
And it’s real and it’s true and it’s happening. Kara flies up and directly into the arms of her sister. Alex says, “I got you,” which I think is almost as much for herself as it is for Kara. It’s “I found you, I saved you, I got you back,” and it’s also, “I’m here, you’re safe, you’re home.”
“When your breaking point’s all that you have, a dream is a soft place to land.”
As they fly back, presumably having a raucous reunion that we will hopefully see some of in the next episode, we see that they have a little hitchhiker, the imp known as Nyxly.
And that’s all for the first half of the final Season of Supergirl. We’ll be back in August for the reveal of Kelly as Guardian, in an episode written by Azie Tesfai herself. See you then!
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The balloons are a metaphor, you see. Because tiny boxes would have been too on the nose, even for the Supergirl writers.
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Does anyone else feel like this episode was too short? Like, we got four rhyming stanzas of the women on board facing their worst fear – all having to do with failing to protect someone the love – and then a quick fifth stanza and an incredibly quick coda.
They just rescued the titular character from a literal hell and all we got was a quick hug.
Best case, they never intended this to be a midseason finale but the unplanned Superman and Lois hiatus screwed up the schedule.
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Lena: “…like there’s a whole part of yourself you’ll never understand.”
Is this queer subtext?
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So, if Lena was traumatized at such a young age by her mother drowning, did she ever learn to swim?
Your fanfic/fanart premise for the week is “Kara tries to teach Lena to swim.”
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After the break… CatCo shenanigans, Kara in a plaid blazer, and the return of the Super Armor?
Instead of narcisistically replying to myself, I’ll just narcisistically cut&paste my lengthy Recap/Analysis from here: https://tavernwall.proboards.com/post/2029/thread
As much build-up as this episode had (the entire season to this point), it was almost inevitable that it was going to be disappointing (and that’s before we get to the abbreviated promo for the rest of the season, returning ye-god-what-a-wait August 24)
I’ll try to summarize my disappointment:
1) It felt simultaneously rushed, and slow (repetitive!). The ending was particularly rushed: all this, and blink, it’s over. But perhaps worse was the repetitive nature of the narrative . . . in a format other shows have done, better. The episode was entitled “Fear Knot”, for the fear visions that each . . . well, some of the Super Friends had, in the Phantom Zone (who did, who didn’t? A word about that, to come!) I couldn’t help but remember that BTVS did this same format, TWICE. [Once, in late S1 “Nightmares; and once in S4, the aptly-named “Fear, Itself”] “Fear Itself” was set in a haunted house (on Halloween: the season the Scoobies are freshmen in college), with their fears appearing by a (summoned) fear demon. The haunted house setting enabled each Scooby to see their fears in various places around the house: the narrative literally flowed from room to room. “Fear Knot” was abrupt, choppy: repetitive! [ala the repetitive nature of the ST:TNG ep “Deja Vu”, where the Enterprise blows up over and over. It’s great the first time, not so much the 5th or 6th]
2) Parent Issues: I know that it’s a timeless theme (especially in our post-Freudian times), but here in the Arrowverse there’s starting to be too much of it (I made a remark about Daddy Issues over on the Batwoman thread). Kara and her dad! Nia and her mom! Lena and HER mom! It’s too much. These are adults: grow up already! [At least Alex & Kelly had fears about each other (appropriate I think, in a fear-based ep). What I wouldn’t have given, to see Kara’s fears re Lena, and vice-versa!]
3) Why TF was it that the only two Super Friends NOT beset by fears, happened to be the two males, J’on and Brainy [Brainy said he had fears re balloons—I think that was something of a comic relief line?—but he said he was able to compartmentalize his fear away. Which is weird, as much as he’s been stressed out this season, AND how he was supposedly dispensing (along w/ Lena) w/ Lena’s “little boxes” technique]. Kelly begins the episode w/ her grounding technique (to cope w/ the PREDICTED fear visions), how is she not able to truly subdue her fear w/ it? (she makes an effort, in telling “Alex”—her fear delusion version of Alex—who she is, but it doesn’t ultimately work). Nia is the one who has her calming song (“9 to 5”!), how come she doesn’t try that? Instead, Brainy compartmentalizes, and J’on prevails in mental combat w/ the Prime Phantom. Meanwhile, Kara is losing hope (I actually predicted this part, before this episode), and it’s her DAD who restores her faith! Good googly-moogly, all these heroines would sure be in real trouble w/o their menfolk, huh? >:-/
At any rate, Super J’on defeats the Phantom, breaks the visions (strangely, he credits each Super Friend w/ doing it themselves, but it sure looked hopeless w/o J’on’s efforts), and they arrive at Kara’s location.
Then, if I may single it out, was really the ONE example that one could call “Supercorp” (if they tried hard enough—raises hand!): dropping Lena’s “Yellow Sun Bomb” (they don’t call it a bomb), which annihilates the phantoms closing in on Kara and her dad, and powers them up (Kara realizes that this is the Super Friends’ rescue effort). Zip, and into Alex’s arms!
Seriously, I was fine w/ a hug just between Kara and Alex: I will NEVER resent these two their closeness. I call the Danvers Sisters the “soul” of Supergirl. But in terms of heart: Alex’s heart got a moment, through Kelly’s profession of love (during her fear vision). But Kara’s? As the Super Friends take their battle stations (after J’on’s rescue of them from their visions), we never see Lena again. [We don’t see Nia or Kelly either. After Kara and Alex embrace, it’s just J’on “Brainy, get us out of here!” (I’m not sure we even see Brainy piloting the ship here). But we do see, in the background of K&A’s hug, Kara’s dad: Yes, he was Real&Rescued! And finally, we see Nyxly, stowing away on the outside of the (“Tower”) ship: setting her up to be the final eps’ Big Bad.
So that was “Fear Knot”, and no more eps until late August.
OK, the promo: Kara and Alex (looks like Kara’s in the infirmary, as one would expect after her PZ ordeal). [There are several S5 shots, just for filler] But mainly . . . they’re focused on Kara’s Dad.
Argh, I DO NOT CARE ABOUT KARA’S FATHER!!! Not now! There’s not enough time left for this!
Admittedly, this could just be from an ep or two, not dominating the final 13 episodes. But oy vey, just ANY more time devoted to him bothers me. Send him to Argo to be reunited w/ Alura (Kara’s mom), and fuhgeddabouthim! Besides this, though: in one of the new shots (I think that, besides the infirmary scene, they were ALL at CATCO?), there he was (blurry): William. }-0<<<
And no new shots of Lena. Yes, there was an extremely limited # of new shots: maybe only a half dozen, mostly focused on Kara's dad. (Being at CATCO, Nia is in a couple, too).
But seeing William, and not Lena—along w/ all the time-wasting re Kara's dad—just left an extremely bad taste in my mouth.
*****
Now, off to read others who will talk me off the ledge . . . OR who will be even madder than I am, who I have to avoid!
Knowing me, I will be back on the Supercorp Hope (which some call "Clown") Train, shortly. And I have to remember: we'll always have 6.4! "I have to get Kara back": Lena, you succeeded. Now go get your girl!
“It felt simultaneously rushed, and slow (repetitive!)”
I totally agree… I found it boring, and then the end was rushed!!!
I suppose they didn’t have all the actors on set with Melissa to film a proper reunion with all the team. Strange choici for an episode of the last season, just before a hiatus.
I really hope the next episodes won’t give to much time to Lex, Willia or Kara’s dad :-(
Time loss, time loops, time running out… wheee, it certainly didn’t make for neat story telling, but a showcase for everyone’s fears. Nothing we hadn’t heard about before though, so not sure we really needed a full episode about it.
Either way, those little character moments between Nia and Lena were great or Kelly trying to remind Vampire Alex about their life together, or Dad Zor El being touched by Kara’s hopes and beliefs.
And then there’s Nyxly, ready to cause some havoc. Hope this story line will not dominate the second and final half of the season, and not allow for some proper Danvers sisters time as well as some kind of closure for Kara/Lena (something, anything, writers?!)