“Supergirl” Episode 310 Recap: We’ll Make It, I Swear

Welcome back! I hope you’ve enjoyed your hiatus and filled it up with your favorite fanfics and gifsets galore. I’ll confess to you that this hiatus has not been a great one for me, personally, so I was finding it hard to cling onto the mustard seed of hope I had that this show could find its way again. And while there’s still some work that needs to be done, I’m hoping the overall message Kara learned this week is a metaphor and the show itself is telling us it knows now what it has to do. That it’s remembering what it is, what it’s meant to be, and is getting back to it.

And speaking of getting to it, let’s, shall we?

Previously on Supergirl, Maggie and Alex broke up, Lena and James kissed, the Legion came back from the future, Sam turned into Reign and knocked Supergirl out of commission, and everything was, generally, pretty terrible.
Kara wakes up in her bed, fully clothed, and hears a knock at her door. A blue figure stands behind the door, and after a moment of being (rightfully) starstruck, he quickly introduces himself as Brainiac 5. He’s part of the Legion, and he’s talking to her telepathically to check her brain functions. The good news is, her brain is fine. The bad news is, she’s technically in a coma.

IIIIIIII’m sorry. Did you say COMA?

Brainiac 5 reminds her of her trauma and she starts to remember things; her sister’s voice, Reign’s mask, her own fall. She also remembers now that there’s a fight to be won, so she tries to march out the door…but despite opening easily for Braniac 5 moments ago, now the door won’t budge.

Back on our plane of reality, Brainiac reveals to the DEO that he’s talking to Kara and them at the same time, and that Kara is mostly fine, except pretty pissed about being trapped inside her own mind. Relieved Supergirl isn’t in immediate danger, everyone goes back to the Reign-y problem at hand. Alex is still worried but she’s ready to focus that worry into getting punchy.

Alex was being tactical af in this episode and I’m HERE FOR IT.

Then in a kind of cheesy but kind of amazing move, we’re momentarily lead to believe Ruby is running and hiding from her mother…and technically she is, but her and Sam are just playing with dart guns. A horn honks outside and Ruby has to go to a playdate, and in her rush she doesn’t notice her mother start to twitch at a story about a “rogue Kryptonian” on the front page of the paper.

Reign re-emerges and she goes to talk to her hooded figure who tells her some creepy cult shit like “the world must be cleansed” and that it’s time for “the awakening.” But the thing is, the thing that makes it hard to see Reign as a bad guy outright, is that the first person she goes after is someone stealing a van in broad daylight.

At CatCo, Lena sees her supposed love interest James and immediately asks after Kara. She’s feeling a bit squicky about keeping their kiss from Kara and wants to tell her as soon as she comes in the office. Both of those sentences are 100% true and are not told through my gay girl goggles. It’s just what happened.

Here lies Valerie Anne. Cause of death: SHOULDERS

Before James can inquire about Lena’s pressing interest in Kara, Reign busts through the windows, drops the bad guy at their feet, and forces them to film her giving her message. Sin and apathy will be punished in kind. She says she’s here to deliver justice. She’s here to help.

SEE HOW HELPFUL I AM?! BE CAREFUL OF THE GLASS FROM THAT WINDOW I JUST SMASHED THROUGH.

The DEO is worried that she’s taking the law into her own hands, meaning she’ll probably also not see current law enforcement, including the DEO, as being on her side. The problem is, she’s very strong, and they don’t have their strongest asset. Winn points out they have a self-appointed Legion of Super-Heroes and Imra’s 100% down to get into the fight, but her husband is hesitant. He’s afraid they’ll endanger the future if they die and he says that from what he knows, Supergirl survives Reign’s…well, Reign.

Imra explains that in the future, there was an Event that resulted in the entire loss of culture on Earth. And apparently her husband was the only insight they had into the ways of Earth, and this was kind of brushed over, but this means they were SCREWED and all they could learn was what he remembered from his FEW MONTHS on Earth. So he taught them some Bon Jovi songs and called it a day.

J’onn says they don’t need the Legion anyway because they have a plan for rogue Kryptonians called the Sundown Protocol and they can use the leftover kryptonite from Byron Montgomery’s cult.

But Alex wants to talk to Byron before they go that far, so she goes to prison to do just that.

Olivia Benson would be proud of this look.

Byron tells Alex that Supergirl failed her test and that she lost and Reign will prepare them for “what comes next” but Alex is pissed and she leans forward all tough and looks him in the eye and says, “Never. Underestimate. Supergirl.”

Alex just subverted the bury your gays trope by bringing me BACK TO LIFE

Back at the DEO, Lena confronts James about how weird he was earlier when she mentioned telling Kara about their kiss and she was like, “It’s fine, we’re not a match is all.” And James panics because that’s not what he meant but she seems ready to drop this relationship like a hot potato before it even starts.

Someone better loop Lena into the SuperSitch soon because I can’t take much more of her being sidelined in a romantic subplot.

James mutters something about him being weird because Kara has a really bad flu and Lena SPRINGS INTO ACTION and has to go over to see her IMMEDIATELY and James can’t stop her. He can only stall her by telling her to stop for soup first, which gives him enough time to call Winn, who asks J’onn to impersonate Kara again to keep Lena from putting together that both Supergirl and Kara are missing.

Brainiac 5, called Brainy by his buddies, says that Kara is physically fine now and ready to wake up, so Alex goes to her glass pod to talk her little sister out of her coma.

Hush little sister don’t say a word, Alex gonna kill you a Reign-shaped bird

But Kara tries to open the door to her loft to no avail. Brainy thinks maybe something is holding her back, like fear, but she insists over and over again that she is not afraid. Like a kid in a nightmare, just yelling, “I am not afraid!”

“I do believe in fairies, I do! I do!”

She destroyed the inside of her imaginary loft with her heat vision but the door doesn’t budge. Even Brainy is stumped.

Reign attacks a meth lab, which sounds great, but then she also attacks the first cops on the scene, so the DEO knows they can’t wait for Supergirl to wake up before they make another attempt to stop her.

Imra pleads with her husband again; they can help, they have the skillset. Please, please can they do the right thing and help. He explains about their mission, about how the answer to a race of aliens called The Blight is in their DNA, that they can’t die, so they can’t help. He wishes they could help, but if Kara doesn’t wake up and Reign kills people, I think Alex might kill him herself, DNA be damned.

“I COULD kill him with just my pinky finger, for style…”

J’onn shapes himself into Kara in a big floofy bathroom in her loft and puts on his best sick Kara impression for Lena, who arrives with soup in hand. Lena thinks Kara is acting weird, but blames the fever. And she has to get something off her chest RIGHT NOW. So she talks about kissing James and him acting a little weird and her thinking that it’s because she’s a Luthor.

Melissa Benoist does some really cute/funny physical things in this scene, trying to imagine the big, sturdy J’onn trying to position himself like the small, lithe Kara, and what he might think that does or does not look like. Which gets us a really great Slouch.

Love a couch slouch.

When Lena says the thing about worrying about James not liking her because she’s a Luthor, J’onn forgets for a minute how uncomfortable he feels and goes into Space Dad mode, saying that he’s sure whatever awkwardness there might be, it isn’t because she’s a Luthor. He doesn’t really have a good basis for that knowledge, but it’s exactly what Lena needed to hear, so she leaves Kara to her rest and heads back to work.

Across town, Reign stops a bank robbery, but it’s quickly revealed that actually it’s a trap that Alex and the DEO set up. Alex rips off her mask like something out of Atomic Blonde and gives the best smirk I’ve ever seen and says, “Catch.”

At this point, because of Alex, I’ve died and come back to life more than Sara Lance.

I love Alex Danvers.

The team uses lead chains and kryptonite to weaken Reign but she lashes out at Alex and breaks her leg. But Alex can’t be taken down that easily; she already has a new plan. She wants to concentrate the kryptonite and put it right in her bloodstream. Alex gets this fire in her eyes when she says, “The carotid would do,” and on paper that’s just a line but DAMN her delivery got me ready to go all Grey’s Anatomy on someone.

They need someone strong enough to deliver said jab, and Supergirl is out of commission. Imra begs her husband AGAIN for them to help, to do the right thing. She even quotes Bon Jovi at him.

“Imra dreams of running awa-a-ay…”

But he’s still hesitant.

In her mind prison, Kara quotes Sherlock Holmes like the precious nerd she is and has an idea; her mind created this version of the loft, so maybe there’s something in it she needs to see. Brainy is impressed; he didn’t even think of that. But that’s our girl for you. Stronger than Superman, smarter than Brainiac 5.

Outside her healing pod, Alex is apologizing to Kara, blaming herself for encouraging her to forget who she is. She went back on her first statement, but it’s the truest one: Kara Danvers is her favorite person.

Anyone else always sing “The Danvers Sisters” to the tune of “The Schuyler Sisters”? Just me? Cool.

Kara finds a picture of a young her and her cat, Streaky, which is a callback to the comics. Streaky was a stray cat Kara found when she first got to earth. She was afraid to touch him at first, but she practiced being gentle until finally she could pet him. When he purred beneath her hand, she finally started to feel a little bit human.

In the DEO, the alarms go off the Reign has attacked the prison, where she will kill everyone inside that building, and they can no longer wait for Supergirl to wake up. Imra gives her husband one last pleading look and finally he relents. The Legion suits up and tries to summon Captain Planet and when that doesn’t work they head off to stop Reign.

Inside the prison, Reign finds Byron, surprised to hear him saying his Kryptonian prayers. He begs her to let him serve her, and she decides maybe that’s not the worst idea anyone’s ever had.

Just then, Reign hears Livin’ on a Prayer blaring from outside and stalks to the roof, which makes for a hilarious montage, though I’ll never forgive them for how long this song has been stuck in my head. Reign starts to fly so Imra and her husband light their rings up and start to fly themselves and Imra is pretty darn cute.

I’d watch a Saturn Girl spinoff.

Brainy uses their spaceship to shoot her down, but doing so is making it hard for him to focus on Kara’s virtual predicament. She insists he gives 100% to the fight so he’s going to leave her to her own devices to figure out how to leave her own mind. He says Supergirl had a nice life, and she points out it’s Kara’s life. Brainy tells her what Alex said about Kara being her favorite person and leaves her. Thinking on on this, Kara dusts off her glasses and puts them back on. She’s been fighting being human for a while now, fighting it because being human meant feeling the full extent of her broken heart, but hiding behind her bulletproof Kyrptonian skin meant she didn’t have to deal with those feelings. But it’s time now, her own body knows it, her subconscious has finally had enough. As soon as she stands resolute in her Kara get-up, a key appears on the table and she’s able to leave her brain loft.

Back at the fight, the Daxamite runs at Reign with the syringe of kryponite but she freezes him. J’onn joins in the fight but things are seeming chaotic, especially with the syringe stuck in an ice ball.

But then Supergirl appears. Reign says she thought she was dead, but she says she got better. Which reminded me of Monty Python and made me giggle.

“I may be dead, but I’m still pretty. And…actually you’re really pretty too.”

Supergirl jabs Reign with the kryptonite needle, sending her to the ground, screaming in pain. Seemingly defeated. I’m a little unclear on what happens to her next but I guess they just leave her there? And Byron takes her away? Because next time we see her, she’s talking to her hooded figure, who is saying there are more people like her. Presumably more sleeper agents like Sam? It’s all very unclear but I’m excited to see who they dig up.
Back at CatCo, Lena talks to James and apologizes for assuming his weirdness was about her.

I wonder if she has to register that clavicle as a weapon.

She says she doesn’t want to push her away and she wants to let herself forget what Luthor means to some people.
Back at the loft — the real loft — Kara signs Alex’s cast and they laugh imagining J’onn as Kara talking to Lena about kissing James.

Their laughter clears my skin and waters my crops.

Kara says she’s starting to remember who she is. She says it hurts, a lot, but that she’ll be stronger for it. And I hope this revelation holds true. I hope this is a metaphor for the show as a whole. The Daxamite landed on Earth and hurt us all. But I’m hoping we’re all ready to move past it, and that the show remembers who Kara is, and that we’ll all be stronger for it.

Alex will drink to that, so they clink their glasses in celebration of another battle won.

Cheers to moving on.

Well. Until Reign’s supposed friends show up.

Next week it looks like we’ll see the return of who I have in my notes as Electric Boogaloo but surely that can’t be right. Hold on…Livewire! I’m excited for her return and I’m really counting on her to be the first to point out how Lena and Kara act like girlfriends not best friends or bosses. Don’t let me down, girl!