Previously on Supergirl, Lex stole Lena’s Non Nocere code to brainwash half the world and almost murdered the other half, Eve was in love with Lex but he was using her and she eventually broke free of his metaphorical spell and helped the SuperFriends instead, Alex sucked the god powers out of Lex but Kara got sucked into the phantom zone in the process, and Alex is dead-set on getting her baby sister home.
We open on a scene that is not unlike the beginning of Season 3 of Buffy, in that the Scoobies are fighting without their Slayer, trying out some new cheesy catchphrases, and also it’s a vampire they’re facing.
“Do you think Kara is off somewhere waiting tables and going by Anne?”
But as it turns out, it’s not a vampire at all, but an alien named Silas from the planet Transylvane; his species is the origin for the vampire myth. Which is a fun bit of lore that I rather enjoyed. He tells them that unlike his cryptid counterparts, he’s not actually a violent creature and in fact prefers robbing blood banks for his meals, but they don’t actually care all that much who, if anyone, he’s eaten lately. They’re there to get information about the Phantom Zone.
I like the rogue hood but I am always a little sad when the wee blue braid is covered up.
The SuperFriends take Silas back to the Tower, where he tells them that his husband once got sent there for a crime he didn’t commit. Silas tried to break him out but failed. He tells them that the phantoms feed on fear and sopranos who can hit a high E, until slowly but surely your nightmares become a reality and you lose your whole damn mind. Which is what happened to Silas’s husband. They beg him to help them save Supergirl from the same fate, and he looks uneasy but also sympathetic to their plight.
Before they go into the Land of Nightmares, Brainy wants to train their Girl of Dreams, since he thinks she can use her divining powers to find Kara once they’re on the same plane, and also because I imagine the psychic power clash could be potentially brutal. She agrees, but first she has to save face at her day job, since she’s the only one holding down the fort as far as their civilian identities go.
“But what if I run out of dream-themed puns, Brainy? WHAT THEN?”
When Nia gets to Catco, Andrea is telling her staff that she wants to be the leading news source on everything that’s going down about Lex Luthor right now. The world’s leading man just got cut down to size and she wants to be the first to report his next moves. Since Kara is still “with Cat Grant” working on a story that even though she didn’t sanction it Andrea is just chill with happening, Andrea appoints Nia as the new Kara, even though I’m not 100% sure she’s ever written anything for CatCo, but apparently this publication works on The Bold Type rules. It’s fine. Anyway, she sends Nia to cover Lex’s case, tells her to do whatever she has to in order to get the story, and that either Andrea will literally bail her out or Supergirl will metaphorically bail her out, so not to worry. She wants to make sure Lex’s villainy is broadcast far and wide, and she’ll do whatever she has to in the process.
“I will shadow bamf into his apartment and slit his throat myself if I have to, but dry cleaning is expensive and I’m down to one business so if we could do it this way instead I’d appreciate it.”
Lillian goes to see her son in prison and asks him not to embarrass her by representing himself in trial, and to consider just pleading guilty and paying his dues, because Eve’s testimony is going to be damning and she doesn’t want him to tarnish the Luthor name any further. Lex is offended by the concept; his pride will not allow him to do something so pedestrian as be held accountable for his crimes, so he tells her he has every intention of walking out of the courtroom a free man.
Meanwhile in the Phantom Zone, Kara is having a bad time. Phantoms descend upon her, and at first it seems like she’s being taken into a nightmare, but then she wakes up in a cave. A shadowy figure accuses her of being a nightmare because he recognizes the symbol of the House of El on her chest, but when he turns around she realizes that standing before her is her father.
For some reason my brain translated this into a cartoony “Fahza?” and when I googled why I was disappointed in my monkey brain for retaining Austin Powers so subconsciously.
And it’s moments like this when I think things like, “Ooh I wonder if that vampire alien knows Supergirl’s father” that I remember why I love sci-fi so much.
Kara’s dad is surprised but relieved to learn that Kara and Alura survived, and he’s also grateful that probably when her pod got knocked off course, she was probably protected from the phantoms. But the truth is, she’s no stranger to reality-bending nightmares. Hers being that she was in the fortress of one of her enemies and everyone she ever loved was dead and there was nothing she could do about it. It was as visceral as a memory. And she’s not going through that again.
“Listen you might not be real but I’m hanging on by a thread here so I’m just going to roll with it, okay?”
Despite her father looking pretty resigned to his fate, Kara has already come up with a plan for escape attempt numero uno. Fort Raz is above them and there has to be a way for the phantoms to come and go and she wants to use it. Daddio says they have to stay put. They can’t provoke the phantoms. It might not be much as far as living but at least it’s surviving.
Next page: Back on Earth (though please don’t ask me which one)
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Am I the only one pissed we didn’t get to see Alex tell Kelly that Kara is Supergirl? Like, that’s quality heart-eyes, soft-forgiveness-and-understanding-that-Alex-desperately-needs content, and they just had it happen off-screen to make room for more scenes about straight white men?
You are not.
I guess Alex telling Kelly that Kara is Supergirl was dropped on the cutting room floor in favor of yet another CGI spectacle with the mid-episode fight.
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So help me Rao if Kara’s father is real, and survives, and she decides to move back to Argo with her parents for the finale.
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I’m disappointed that there Nia didn’t get to make a wink or a nod to Bit with her dream puns this episode.
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I think you’re underselling it with L-Corp being the worst victim of the Crisis, Valerie. I think Lena’s entire arc was derailed by Crisis. She’s spent years trying to rebrand the Luthor name, only to have the rules changed on her.
And for that crime, she should send Lex to the Phantom Zone.
The CGI fight was better than the moments of watching William watch the trial on TV.
I disagree. With a few exceptions (mostly Supergirl v Reign), the fight choreography and staging has always felt a little low budget. She’s been doing this for five years, when are they going to stop with the “get knocked into a wall because you were standing still” action beats?
* Also start of Buffy S6 (“Now w/ More Gay!”)
* “she was in the fortress of one of her enemies and everyone she ever loved was dead”: this is near the end of S3, right? Reign’s Fortress of Dirt? And then (IIRC) Kara had to go back in time to appear at the right time (to save everyone), but then that somehow created Kaznian Kara? IIRC?
* “Listen you might not be real but I’m hanging on by a thread here so I’m just going to roll with it, okay?” Photo-captioner, you&me, same. I was sure Papa was a Rollin’ Delusion. But he kept grabbing her, so I guess he really is of the real.
[Argh, I wish I remembered to hit “All on One Page” FIRST!]
* “Kelly tells her girlfriend to let her handle it and goes to lend an empathetic ear, widowed to widowed.” This scene was teased in the promo, and really psyched (so to speak) me out. Having conflicted, if not angry, feelings. More on that below…
* “Across town, Nia shows up late to training because it’s “impossible to get away from William” which is exactly how I feel, too.” Brainy had a great rejoinder that now escapes me! Something like “That’s enough William” or something? It was a So Say We All moment, fer shur…
* Oh, you didn’t mention Nia’s Geek-Out “Just like the holodeck on Next Gen”! LOL Combined w/ the line about “Xena Warrior Princess” at the end of “The Flash” (thank you, early starting DVR) AND your line about S3 Buffy above: am in a very happy 90s place, thanks much!
* FWIW, I think Nia is even cuter sans mask. The Power of Her Adorbz could neutralize any phantom, IMO.
* Give the devil his due: Lena WAS going to try to brainwash people. It didn’t work, and she abandoned it, but facts is facts [Post-Crisis Lena was not quite so maniacal. And pre-Crisis things like Lena essentially murdering Eve by overwriting her w/ the “Hope” AI went right down the memory hole]
* The thing that’s pretty obvious here: Lex is Doing Trump {just vomited typing it}, and the National City jury pool is stupider than the 2020 U.S. electorate (which is really, REALLY sad).
* “Kelly says that she doesn’t have to give up on Kara yet, it’s barely been a day.”
THIS! This is the thing which is the thing about this ep. That we were teased something different, which didn’t happen. When Kelly says “we’ll get Supergirl back” in the promo, you THINK she’s saying this to Alex. And you THINK Alex has just told her that Kara=Supergirl (and versy-vicey).
But instead, Kelly’s in the start of the ep, at the Tower, where they’re talking about getting *Supergirl* back. And then at the end of the ep, in Alex’s (and Kelly’s?) apartment, they’re w/ all the Chinese food boxes that say “Welcome Home *KARA*” . . . so Alex MUST have told Kelly ***OFF-SCREEN*** that K=SG. WTF show??? Don’t you think we, the viewers, would have wanted to see THIS, and not another, say Lex&Lillian scene? Much less Lex&Otis?! Damn!
* “perhaps because he’s a figman of her imagination” Ah, so you’re still here. Are you spoiled in some way? [Don’t answer that!] I thought the repeated scenes w/ him proved he was real, but you’re starting to raise my doubts. [I’m terrible at these things: I didn’t realize the daughter was dead in S1 of AHS, until reading an (AfterElton?) recap which was like “of course the daughter is dead”, and I was Wha???]
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Sigh, while there was some good stuff in this ep (and my expectations were low, because I knew going into it there would be no Supercorp), overall, it really felt like it wasted our (precious, precious final season) time. Next week looks better, however, if for no other reason than it shows Lena in the Tower. Listen, show, you have no reason to NOT show Lena as an integral part of the Super Team each and every week! Get to it!
…and please get Kara back from the Maternity Leave Zone ASAP/PDQ/RightTFNow???
***JCF fantasy: at the bottom of the Scotch bottle, Andrea: “LOL, remember prep school, and our ‘experiments’, and we thought we were gay?” Lena: “Were?”
They had us focus so much on Alex needing to tell Kelly about Kara being Supergirl, only for that important moment the audience has already become so invested in to never happen on screen. I’m not surprised, but I’m so annoyed. Giving Lex all that screen time made this episode border on filler to me. Considering this is the final season, they could’ve given more screen time to Alex AND Kelly, who are central to Kara’s story and Alex’s story, respectively. Hopefully the CW doesn’t f up this final season much.
The best line in this episode was Nia saying how impossible it was to get away from William. Girl, we know!
Thanks, Valerie Anne, for the excellent recap as always!
Why do they keep William? He is the boring character ever! meh
Also, I’m so angry that they cut the scene of Alex telling Kelly that Supergirl is Kara…disappointing. They continue to ignore that Dansen has a big fanbase and instead, they focus on straight males
And Lena would never be so calm knowing that Kara is in danger.NEVER.
Lena would be devastated!