Welcome to this humble recap of Supergirl episode 604, Lost Souls. This episode had some of my favorite scenes of the albeit short first half of the season so far, so let’s hop into our pods and hope we don’t get knocked off course, shall we?
Previously on Supergirl, a Phantom got loose on Earth and started spreading its Phantom-ness faster than syphilis in the Middle Ages, M’gann almost got Phantom’d, Kara got stuck in the Phantom Zone and found her father stranded there and also a fifth dimensional imp named Nyxly.
Speaking of the trapped trio, Kara, Nyxly and Father Zor-El use impy powers to portal to the anchor; the Phantom Chills are starting to get to Kara and dad is worried, but they’re almost home, Kara can feel it.
Kara Danvers IS love in a hopeless place.
Back home, M’gann is recovering in the Tower’s med bay and seeing a den of icicles and soul particles and Phantoms, oh my. Alex and J’onn come back to report that there are an increasing number of Phantoms and they have to stop the spread before it becomes…a global pandemic. Genuinely furious they included that line but they made up for it later so I’ll let it slide I guess.
Nia walks in with Lena in tow, having just completed the full tour of the Tower I wish we also got, and everyone officially welcomes Lena to Team Superfriends. M’gann tells the newly assembled team about her visions and that she thinks she’s connected to the Phantoms in a way that could lead them to Kara, and Alex and Lena are equally thrilled about this. Also, Lena was so excited about her official first day on the team, and casually built a long-distance phantom trap backpack. Brainy thinks it’s just like Ghostbusters but Lena points out that this is real.
“WHAT did you say about the 2016 Ghostbusters?!”
So Alex and Lena stay behind to monitor things while the Team goes out to stop more Phantoms. They get there in time to stop the original Phantom from getting away, but not before a woman is turned. They start to fight it but Nia gets distracted by another vision of Midvale High and the Prime Phantom shows up, bigger than ever for having feasted on so many souls. The Prime takes its newly sired Phantom and bamfs the heck outta there.
M’gann and J’onn chase the soul that left the woman’s body to try to find the Phantom Lair, but the closer M’gann gets to it, the more she runs out of steam, until finally she starts to fall out of the sky. Luckily J’onn catches her and brings her back to safety and the Superfriends decide they need to regroup.
In the Phantom Zone, Kara and her pops find the control room they were looking for, but the portal mirror is broken, because of course it is. Kara thinks Nyxly’s magic could fix it, but it doesn’t seem to work. Dad is ready to give up right then and there, but Kara thinks that’s the dumbest thing he’s ever said and he once said “you’ll be safe in this pod.” Kara points out all the unlikely wins they’ve already had; they found an ally, magic, each other. They can’t give up now!
“Please, if we don’t get back, they’ll make Superman the star of this show, too!”
Kara knows her mom and knows she would have had a backup just in case, so they go on a hunt for the emergency portal mirror.
The Superfriends are in a bit of a pickle. They have to find the Soul Chrysalis before the Roswell set needs it back it hardens and the Prime’s UberPhantom transformation is complete. M’gann wants to find Supergirl’s location first, but Brainy doesn’t think they have time. Alex says they’ll just have to do both at once.
:is distracted thinking about Kelly and Lena…at once:
Everyone looks a little panicky about that idea until Lena chimes in and agrees.
:recognizes a gay in CRISIS when she sees it:
Also, Lena has an idea of how to do just that. So Alex reiterates the orders and the team scatters again. Alex thanks Lena for having her back. It’s nice to have her support, and to not be bossed around by J’onn.
“I just don’t understand how hands can LOOK gay, but they keep saying it!”
Lena tells Alex all the sciencey mumbo jumbo she wants to do with the q-waves and the nanobots and she just needs some of Kara’s DNA. And Alex knows where they can find some.
“Where? I already did my laund—oh, uh, what were you going to suggest?”
Brainy and his emotional support donuts go to talk to Nia, who tells him that she saw Midvale again and can’t figure out what it means. He says she’ll figure it out, and she says that she’s just as worried about him. She asks him if the donut marathon he’s in the middle of has anything to do with his newfound excess of feelings and he says he’s fine he just really likes shoving sugar into his metaphorical wounds and is sure this will make him feel better. He’s a genius, just go with it. Prescription donuts. She smiles at him and says she’ll be here when he realizes the donuts are a stopgap not a cure.
Donuts and Dreamer sure would cheer ME up.
In the Phantom Zone storage rooms, the three lost souls split up, and when Kara runs toward the sound of her dad in distress, she finds him injured and Nyxly being a bit dodgy about what exactly happened. Even more suspicious is that once again Nyxly’s magic doesn’t seem to be working to do exactly what she did once for Kara. Father says to leave him behind, and Nyxly maybe-too-quickly agrees, but Kara thought she lost him once, she’s not losing him that easily now. He begs her to at least go bring the mirror back and get the portal working, begs her in Kryptonian even, so she relents but promises to come back for him.
In the Tower, Alex brings Lena the Legacy Download crystal. She plays it for Lena, specifically the part where Kara talks about how last names and blood don’t make a family, that her friends are her family too. Lena missed Kara’s voice and looks on with wonder as Kara says, “In the end, we always come back together, stronger than ever.”
“Do you think her bangs have grown out by now?”
And honestly I don’t care if it’s cheesy, but I love a good found family speech. Gets me right in the feels.
Alex gives Lena the crystal to use for the locator they need to make, since Kara would have had to upload her digital DNA into it, but Lena points out that if she does that, the recording will be gone, and there’s no guarantee it will work.
Every time these two made eye contact my heart did a full backflip. Don’t tell Kelly and Kara.
Lena doesn’t want to be the reason Alex loses this actual piece of Kara. But Alex trusts her with her sister’s life, quite literally, and Lena can hardly believe her ears. That’s two whole people that she loves and respects who have said to her face that they trust her.
I know I joke a lot about AgentCorp and I do low-key accidentally ship it because I’m a trash panda but I also am genuinely so excited for Lena to have FRIENDS again. As soon as Kara’s back, we NEED a game night.
Lena tells Alex what her plans are and Alex smiles at her like “I’m not leaving you silly” and says she’s staying to help. Lena tells her to “suit up” and gives her some safety goggles and dear GODS they are adorable.
“Obviously you would be Cosima and I would be Delphine.” “Please tell me you’re kidding, Alex. You have that quite backwards.”
And this is all I’ve ever wanted for Lena! She’s a fully integrated, wholly trusted part of the team! She’s such a huge asset and she shares the biggest core value that is a requirement for Team Superfriends: She loves Kara Danvers. Even if in the canon of the show it’s just a best friend kind of love, it’s something she shares with all of them.
M’gann and Nia work together to use M’gann’s residual Phantom knowledge and Nia’s new ability to astral project and after another brief Midvale glitch, Nia sees the chrysalis and notices that they still have some time to find it before it hardens, but not very much. In fact, after she tells Brainy what she saw, he calculates they might have as little as an hour to destroy it.
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Ugh yes this recap. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to miss more – this show or your amazing recaps and captions. (love the Frozen reference by the way).
I feel very validated by your feelings about AgentCorp. Like obviously, I want SuperCorp to be cannon, but I was certainly having the feels watching Alex and Lena (the Orphan Black caption got me omg). All in all, I’m glad we didn’t have Lex, and I just want Lena (and Katie McGrath) to be gay.
As always, SO grateful for your contributions to Autostraddle.
AgentCorp would never work romantically because the biggest thing they have in common is loving Kara Danvers more than life itself, and they can’t make Lena’s love for Kara look platonic. They were great in a platonic way worrying about Kara though.
The Lena arc this episode is one of the things we’re going to cite as one of the show’s biggest queerbaits when they throw Kara with some (male, ofc) loser to end the show.
omg honestly you are so right about why AgentCorp wouldn’t work!
Lena’s face this episode killed me every other second. It just kept changing and killing me again.
I loved how happy she was to be with the team, even between missing Kara deeply, she was more open than we’ve ever seen her. Like we’ve seen Lena geek before, but this episode there was just a level of child-like giddiness with it that I feel like she’s never been able to show before because in the past while her inventions were always genius she was also always gearing up for someone to accuse her of wanting to do something bad with it. She couldn’t show all her pride and excitement over the things she made because it’d be too revealing and she had to be ready to defend herself.
That wasn’t there this episode. I think Lena is finally beginning to trust that the team trusts her (especially Alex). And ugh, that mix of desperation and devastation over Kara with this new, fragile side of Lena that’s just peeking its head out nervously was playing havoc with me.
Sooo many good Alex and Lena talks. I’m kind of relieved Kelly is there (not that we ever actually saw her this ep) because then the Agentcorp would be too much and I’d have to ship it, even tho I’m hardcore Supercorp.
Also, anyone else here Brainy say “Finally!” When they were welcoming Lena to the team? You really hit it on the head Valerie. He IS the voice of the audience this season.
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alex alex alex. how can you say you trust lena then just rip the device from her hands like that? you were trying to convince her with your words but then you didn’t bother to see if it worked before you just took what you needed. alex says she can’t take no for an answer but she didn’t wait for an answer at all. that really bothered me more than anything else has in this season maybe in this show. alex’s whole speech to lena means nothing if she is just going to take the device like that.
Yes, yes, yes. I know they’re probably not going to bring that up again, but personally I loved it because it gives my headcanon so much to play with.
It says a lot about Alex, and how Alex feels about Lena, mostly that she’s still harboring some of her old mistrust, which could just be bad habit, or something more.
And for Lena (cuz I love me some angst) it also puts doubts in her own head about herself. She didn’t even argue or look offended when Alex took it, probably because she doesn’t believe she has the right to demand Alex’s trust (which she does, but Lena is old friends with guilt).In addition we’re seeing her shaky on her convictions for the first time ever. Gone is the confident CEO who certainly weighed options, but once she made a decision believed in it and herself wholeheartedly. Now that confidence in herself is gone, and she’s trying to figure out what’s okay again.
And also, emotions are messy. I like when characters backtrack or seesaw on emotional growth because that’s what it’s like in real life. You may have full trust in someone one moment, but then something scary or upsetting happens, and you no longer feel comfortable being that vulnerable. It’s not right, and sometimes its unhealthy, but its also true. When you’ve got forgivness and redemption coming into play, I don’t like when things are cut and dry. I like them messy. And that force-grab was messy AF.
You caught the part where they had (now, under) an hour to, essentially, save all humanity? There are desperate times, and then there are DESPERATE Times! [As we saw it play out, all the Super Friends were taken down except Alex, and then she BARELY outlasted Phantom Prime long enough break that bleeping chrysalis]
Long story short: Alex Completely Justified. I’m sure Alex apologized to Lena *again* over the 2nd glass of Scotch…
I love the Alex and Lena friendship, but I, oddly, think they are too similar to work romantically. I love their mutual love for Kara though.
I always felt Kara is the sun and Lena the moon. Alex and Kelly have a similar dynamic.
I have to say in general this season thus far has been a waste, especially for Kara. They should have pushed filming back and avoided this Phantom Zone storyline, mostly because they are not using it for Kara character growth. Everyone other character has great moments and growth going on and they forgot about Kara years ago. And the rest of the characters are circling a plot that felt drawn out from jump. It especially hurts since this is the last season.
I fear this season will end with use aching at the wasted potential and character development.
I love that Lena got so many moments. She should have been a superfriend years ago and Kara should have told her at end of Season 3. This show just has so much wasted potential.
I know they are never going to do SuperCorp in cannon, though everything about this show’s narrative is just screaming for that to happen.
Kara is just never so open and happy as she is with Lena, it was never platonic.
“The Prime takes its newly sired Phantom and bamfs the heck outta there.”
Just wanna say that I have just been to Urban Dictionary, to find out that there are not one, but TWO meanings to “bamf”: 1) bad @ss mo fo, which I had (vaguely) heard of . . . and 2) as a sound effect for a certain kind of travel (teleportation?) that I had not. I was also told that the latter meaning is now “standard speech”. This has been JCF’s Daily Lesson in Feeling Inadequate. }-p
“She has to bring Kara back. Lena then admits she blames herself for this; it was her brother who did it, it was her experiments that lead him to that point, it was her war with Supergirl that set all this in motion. This is her chance to make it right.”
Legit killed me…but not before screaming “Supercorp Endgame!!!” at the top of my lungs. [It was nearly 2 am, I just hope my walls/windows were adequate containment!]
“The past is in the past and Lena doesn’t have to conceal not feel anymore.”
“Conceal not feel”: LOL, now we’re bringing “Frozen” into the mix? [Very appropriate, I might, as Nyxly TOTALLY Prince Hans’d me. Seriously, if the episode had begun w/ Nyxly and Kara singing “Love is an Open Door”, I could not have been more pwned. So embarrassed! (Though every moment the ep continued I had more and more doubts. Until Nyxly said “honey”, and that (ironically) sealed the deal: Evil.)
Alright, I was a bit miffed about the previous episode, but then they turn around with so many good ‘ship moments. I guess, I needed a good pep talk by the Danvers sisters ;)
Alex and Lena – it’s been way too long since these two teamed up. And that speech on the feelings balcony. Oof, my heart, plus the scotch. Ditto.
Kara being Kara wherever she is, and whoever gets in her face. I thought that Nyxly was kinda stand-offish towards SuperDad early on. So yeah, that didn’t end well.
Nia’s newfound powers are so handy! Yeah for time-travelling SuperFriends!
Just dropping this here:
‘Supergirl’s Melissa Benoist & Chyler Leigh Look Back on the Danvers Sisters and Ahead to the Finale
These two…
https://www.tvinsider.com/995076/supergirl-season-6-finale-kara-alex-danvers-melissa-benoist-chyler-leigh/
Nice interview with Melissa and Chyler:
www(.)tvinsider(.)com/995076/supergirl-season-6-finale-kara-alex-danvers-melissa-benoist-chyler-leigh/
Lovely interview with Melissa and Chyler on tvinsider com (can’t post the link unfortunately)
Haha, SORRY for the spam, thought it didn’t post, and then it did, oopsie