Nia, Lena and Brainy talk through the science of it all, but Brainy is in his head about Lex. He feels like he should have known somehow that Lex would get involved, still beating himself up about the time he spent in Lex’s clutches. Lena asks if the Legion could help but Brainy is afraid that knowing anything about the future could mess things up again.
Before they can even figure out how they would use the totems, however, they have to pass the courage totem’s gauntlet; and J’onn wants to try it this time. Going against my original theory that Kara was just supposed to face a moment she lacked courage and not try to change it, J’onn does indeed change the moment he lost his daughters, showing more bravery in the moment, but still losing them by fighting to the death. I’m unsure why, but this works and the courage totem unlocks for them.
Meanwhile, in a desperate attempt to get Nyxly to trust (?) him, Lex kidnaps Mitch and sends a message to her through him.
But luckily for our intrepid heroes, the race is on, because Nia dreamed up the location of the real love totem.
The team heads there immediately, but Nyxly drops in, too.
Supergirl uses the totems as a shield, but Nyxly is still too powerful and Kara is hit with weaponized dream energy, causing her to not only see Phantoms attacking her in her mind’s eye, but also imagining turning into a Phantom herself. J’onn talks her down from it and she recovers, but the totem is gone. The good news is, however, that Nyxly doesn’t have it. The totem seeks out true love, so with all that anger and fear flying around, it decided to find a new home.
After that encounter was not exactly successful, Brainy suggests maybe they should consider weaponizing the totems after all, an idea that Kara hates.
Kara walks out onto the feelings balcony to consider her options, where she runs into J’onn. She apologies for her plan not going well, and he tells her about his gauntlet, and how when she froze because of her nightmare vision, he was more able to recognize the feeling he’s been having for the past few years as the same feeling he had the night he lost his Martian family. He doesn’t want to lose Kara, or any of the Superfriends. They’re his family. Kara admits that she’s finding it hard to hold onto hope, especially with Lex being the one enemy she technically didn’t defeat, and his presence bringing up so much PTSD for her. Which is one of the bravest things she’s ever done, admitting she’s having a hard time finding hope. The paragon herself. But J’onn reminds him that they’re stronger together, and that he’ll fight like hell to not lose another family.
Realizing that she should follow suit, she decides then and there that she wants to use the totems as weapons. Anything it takes.
J’onn is afraid of Kara losing her humanity in the process, a Super without a conscience being the #1 concern of most anti-alien protesters and many volumes of various comic books, but Kara is going to have Lena protect her.
Lena, however, isn’t as keen on this plan. She doesn’t want to risk hurting Kara with her wild magic, but Kara levels with her; the nightmare she faced wasn’t just seeing Phantoms again, it was becoming cold and unfeeling. Hopeless. But the reason she’s changed her mind about not using the totems as weapons is because she realized she has something Nyxly doesn’t: her family behind her. Kara knows that the people she loves, the people who ground her, will pull her back from the edge if she starts to slip.
(And, let’s be honest, she knows the only person who could and would kill her if it became absolutely necessary as an extreme last resort is National City’s resident genius, Lena Luthor.)
Lena is nervous about losing control of her powers again; the last thing she wants to do is hurt someone.
But Kara gives Lena something to ground HER. Kara reminds Lena that the reason Lex used to be able to shake her off balance so easily is that for a long time, he was her only family. But not anymore. Now he can shake all he wants, but Lena has solid footing now, thanks to the Superfriends. Kara says THAT is what can fuel her magic now. Her foundation may have been cracked by the family who raised her, but that doesn’t mean she’ll never stand tall. She has a new family now, one that is filling in the cracks so she’s stronger at the broken places, and building support systems around her so no matter where she turns, she’s being held up. By her new family. Her found family. Her real family.
In another room of the Tower, Alex is sifting through papers, theoretically looking for an idea of where the Love Totem could have gone, but in actuality being distracted by the notion that she might have to postpone the proposal. Kelly and Alex were both engaged before, so she is putting a lot of pressure on herself for this to be right. Plus, Alex’s first engagement was a spur-of-the-moment decision, a rush of emotions, an impulsive response to her first real love. But that didn’t work out so this time she wants to get it “right.” She wants to plan the perfect moment. But the truth is, that one moment doesn’t matter, because what she and Kelly have is special. Their relationship is filled with millions of moments, so the moment of the proposal doesn’t necessarily have to be perfect, it just has to be the promise of a million more moments.
Also despite literally no one caring about Lex and those of us who do usually care about totems shmotems barely clinging to one last fuck to give to these literal totems, still those two villains persist, Nyxly going to Lex for help she doesn’t need to fix her crystal ball and find the Love Totem.
Back to the good stuff. Alex shows up to Al’s bar, and slowly she realizes the reason she couldn’t book it for her and Kelly’s anniversary is because Kelly had already booked it. Because it turns out that the moment Alex always says is the moment she knew she was in love with Kelly also happens to be the moment Kelly realized she loved Alex, too. Esme thinks this whole thing is quite hilarious, declaring the fact that they had the idea is fate, single-handedly attempting to get me to believe in love again.
Kelly starts a beautiful speech about how great Alex is, and how perfect their family is, and how very in love she is.
But when she pulls out a ring to start to propose, Alex interrupts her. As delighted as she is that they are so in sync they accidentally participated in one staple of queer culture, the accidental tandem proposal, she wants to make sure her ring is out too. But when she reaches for her ring box, she finds the love totem there instead.
Which is both great news, because even a mystical alien artifact can tell how pure and beautiful the love these lesbians have for each other is, it’s also bad news because Nyxly shows up. Esme yells for Supergirl, and she’s there faster than The Flash could ever, and they go through with the plan to weaponize the totems with Lena in Kara’s ear telling her when it’s safe to blast Nyxly with the humanity totem.
It seems to be working but in the fray, the love totem gets blasted with one beam of energy or another, turning it black.
When the coast is clear, the Superfriends wonder if the love in the world is diminished, but Alex doesn’t think so. She still feels love for them all; for her sister, for her girlfriend, for her daughter, for her family. She believes that love is not a lie, totems be damned.
She calls Kelly to her and holds her hands and admits that she wanted a perfect proposal but also one thing fighting alongside her again reminded her is that the proposal doesn’t matter, the relationship does.
And with everything they’ve been through that only made them stronger, she knows she’ll love Kelly Olsen to the end of the universe and back. So Alex proposes right then and there, the dust from their fight barely settled, down on one knee.
And of course, Kelly says yes. And they kiss and it’s beautiful and with only three episodes left of this show, nothing makes me happier than the organic growth of Alex Danvers into a mother with a wife on the way.
Esme rushes in to hug her moms and it starts up a big ol’ group hug that fills my whole heart right up. Moments like this are what this show means to me. These found family moments of joy.
They go back to the Tower to celebrate, I guess feeling more secure there than the literal bar they were in moments ago, and J’onn even makes Esme a Shirley Temple. It’s all very sweet. Brainy is hung up on Lex acting irrationally and knows something about him changed in the future, but Nia tries to reassure him that they’ll figure this out, together.
Back in the party, Kara stands around holding an extra glass of champagne, probably blowing on it ever so slightly with her freeze breath now and then to keep it cold, until Lena finally shows up.
Kara thanks Lena for using her magic despite feeling uneasy about it, and Lena thanks her back for not only gently pushing her out of her comfort zone, but also for trusting her. Though, to be honest, that second thing is what made the first possible.
Lena thinks that the fact that she could remain cool and collected during a fight Lex was involved with proves she’s free of her trauma, but the thing is it’s probably not that easy. But at least now she knows that she CAN overcome it when push comes to shove. For Kara.
Meanwhile, Andrea is so desperate to find out more information on Lex that she dusts off her Shadow spandex and sneaks into his lair, finding a journal with a love poem in it. I imagine she’ll use this against Lex somehow, which is fine by me. I was just happy to see Andrea use her powers again.
Lex isn’t in his lair because he’s busy giving Nyxly the Hope Totem, because turns out you can break the vessels all you want, but totem energy cannot be created nor destroyed, and it simply transferred into a new object. Nyxly realizes that this means the Love Totem turned into something new, and as they voice over that knowledge, we see a rose tattoo spread across the back of little Esme’s neck. She is the Love Totem now.
And joke’s on Nyxly if she thinks anything will come between Sentinel, Guardian, and their baby girl.
Next week, fancy dancy times?? An engagement party perhaps? If we get another queer wedding on the CW in this, the year of our Beebo 2021, I will have no choice but to believe in love again. Or at least believe that people out there really do believe in love and it’s not just a practical joke being played on me by Hollywood and Heather Hogan. Three episodes, two weeks, and one last hoorah left. Lezgo!