“Supergirl” Series Finale Recap: I Hope You Dance

Hey, you. Welcome to this mega Supergirl series finale recap, which will cover season 6, episodes 19 and 20, “The Last Gauntlet,” and, appropriately, “Kara.” And while this will be my last ever Supergirl recap, I promise it’s not the last time this show will appear in my writing. After six years, these characters have woven their ways into my life in an inextricable way.

But we’re not done yet. So let’s pick up where we left off, with everyone still in their bachelorette party finest, standing in the Tower, the dead body of a reporter and the devastating lack of Esme making the air tense. Before they can decide what to do next, Lex’s voice cuts through the thick air and Alex immediately starts threatening his life if anything happens to her daughter.

“Not my daughter, you bitch!”

But it’s just a recording, and Lex promises Esme won’t be harmed if the Superfriends fork over the five totems they have PLUS find the Destiny Totem for him. They’ll make the exchange on a bridge that is a dead zone for magic and tech, a safe space for the swap. Alex is desperate, ready to burn the world down, but Kara promises Alex and Kelly that she’ll fix this.

“PS you look really pretty right now.”

Lena sets off to find a spell that will help her track Lex, Nia tries to dream the location of the Destiny Totem. Alex doesn’t care if they use the decoy totem or just give them the real totems, whatever will get Esme back, but Kara thinks they can use the totems to power her up instead.

All Alex needs to do is trust her.

Luckily, trusting Kara is the easiest thing Alex knows how to do.

In the villain lair, Nyxly is surprisingly sweet with Esme, her heart breaking a bit when she realizes the little girl is resolved to her fate because even at such a young age, she’s no stranger to bad things happening to her. Nyxly takes her hand and says the totem’s magic word, pretending like it’s a game meant to cheer Esme up, but all that happens is Esme’s totem tattoo loses a few petals.

Lex is ready to just cut the totem out of her but Nyxly won’t let the little princess be hurt, especially not at the hands of some man. And for now it seems Nyxly not wanting Lex to hurt Esme is enough for him to hold back.

Across town, a Shadow woman slips into the Tower but gets caught by Lena. Andrea sees the reporter’s body lying on the ground and thinks Lena was wrong about her; maybe she IS a monster. She blames herself for stealing his byline, but Lena is quick to reassure her that this is Lex’s fault.

Andrea can’t fix this, but Lena says it’s not too late to be a better person. Lena has made missteps, and in another timeline has done worse things than this, so she knows better than anyone that redemption and forgiveness is possible. Andrea can still make amends. She has to actively choose to be better, to acknowledge and fight back the darkness, not pretend it doesn’t exist. Keep doing the next right thing.

Just two shadowy babes, fighting the darkness with in, choosing the light every day.

As predicted, Kara feels like this is all her fault for taking a night off. She says it’s her job to keep her family safe and even though she’s tired and stressed she’ll do whatever it takes to make this right. She’ll use the AllStone herself if she has to. She just has to fix this.

“Straighten the spine, smile for the neighbors. Everything’s fine, everything’s cool”

In the villain’s lair, Lex is playing with himself (chess, to be specific) when the one and only Lillian Luthor strolls in. She schools him on chess and asks him what the deal is with all this murder and kidnapping nonsense, and when he says he’s in love she rightly laughs in his face. But when she finds out he’s in love with an alien, her face grows cold and angry. After all he’s done in the name of human supremacy, after all THEY’VE done, now he’s in love with an imp?

Big King Triton, “He’s a human, you’re a mermaid,” vibes.

Lillian wants him to plead insanity and dump Nyxly so that the Luthors can be a perfect evil human family again, but Lex knows Lena isn’t coming back, and he’s not going anywhere without Nyxly. So Lillian storms off.

Back in her room, Esme is drawing a picture of her moms, and is dubious when Nyxly says she’ll see them again. Nyxly tells a story about her dad ruining her colored pencils, and says that just because scary things happen doesn’t mean scary things are always going to happen. We are not the bad things that happen to us. Esme looking somewhat calm now, Nyxly tries the password again, but more petals fall from the totem tattoo.

At the Tower, Kelly follows the sound of crashing to find her fiancée crying in the weapon’s room. She’s so worried about Esme, and she feels so… powerless. It’s something Alex has struggled with in the past, being the only non-powered human on the team, and she calls it her kryptonite. But the thing is, she’s not alone anymore.

I hope Kelly gets all her friends and family therapists for Christmas.

Kelly is also just a human with training and tools, doing her best. And she is there to pull Alex out of her emotional quicksand made of what-ifs and worst case scenarios. Kelly reminds Alex that their little family has so much love they literally attracted an ancient elemental energy, and that’s how Kelly knows that they’ll be together again. And that they’ll do whatever it takes to make it happen.

:cue Degrassi theme song:

Brainy makes Nia a bracer for her Dream Totem, but she’s afraid that she’ll dream that something terrible will happen to Esme, like when she dreamed about Brainy having to go away. But Brainy says no matter what she sees, they’ll face it together… which gives Nia an idea. She decides to take him into the dream world the way she took her sister, so they can quite literally face it together.

“Dreams to dream in the dark of the night. When the world goes wrong, I can still make it right.”

When they go back to the team, they tell them they know Esme’s safe but not where she is, but they do know where the Destiny Totem is. Supergirl flies off to Prague to a statue of the Fates and plucks the thread of life, says the password, and sees a possible future. As she’s considering that future, and how much the statue of Clotho looks like Sara Lance’s friend Charlie, Alex shows up and takes the totem from her. Whatever it takes to get her daughter back.

I hope in the ARMAGEDDON crossover someone points out that Alex’s hood is an even worse disguise than Kara’s glasses.

And Kara is the fastest person on Earth, and the strongest. And as Alex just mentioned, she’s technically powerless, but for her magic glove. Kara could just take it back. But she doesn’t. She tries to talk her sister into giving it back, telling her of the future she saw. The wars, the destruction. But Alex is willing to risk everything for Esme.

Alex puts the final nail in Kara’s plan’s coffin when she points out that if Kara fails, she’d never be able to forgive her. And Kara would be willing to risk just about anything to stop Lex and Nyxly, but she won’t risk her relationship with her sister. Especially since it’s not like Kara’s 100% sure HER plan will work.

“I’m actually surprised Kelly sanctioned this but fine.”

So Kara doesn’t move to stop Alex as she portals back to National City, totem in hand.

Meanwhile Nyxly, arms full of stuffies for Esme, finds herself face to face with Lillian, sitting like some kind of Lena Luthor on the couch.

“This is how apex predators sit.”

Lillian doesn’t think Lex can love anyone but himself, and she’s not shy about her xenophobia. She tells Nyxly that Lex is just using her, a pawn in his game, and says so with enough conviction that Nyxly starts to doubt her boytoy’s intentions.

Kara goes back to the Superfriends to tell them that Alex took the totem, and how she had to let her go. Kara looks tired in an existential way, and it seems to be breaking Lena’s heart a little.

“I know places we won’t be found and they’ll be chasing their tails trying to track us down.”

Kara knows she can’t face the AllStone on her own, but she’s not on her own. So she wants to use a combination of science and magic to stop them. Brainy has an idea that would supercharge Supergirl, making her able to go higher, further, faster, baby. Kara asks why this was never presented to her as an option before, and Brainy says that between the satellites they’d have to hijack and the energy they’d take from the sun, it would take things six months to get back to normal.

Lena is horrified at this; she knows what kind of devastation this could bring to the Earth. Kara would be playing god, and at a great cost.

“Oh so it’s only okay if you do it?”

Kara knows it’s not the best option but it might be their only option. She has to take the big swing. She has to fix this.

A baby’s gotta do what a baby’s gotta do.

And she’ll fix the sun problem later. Not wanting to be part of this, Lena goes to the bridge to help Alex and Kelly, and Nia joins her.

Once they’re gone, Brainy starts setting up the satellite, and tells Kara she’ll need to charge for four minutes to reach peak power, and that they’ll likely meet resistance from the governing bodies.

With 21 minutes to go until the agreed meeting time, Esme’s tattoo is down to its last petal. Lex mutters his plans to cut it off her himself out loud, which Mitch overhears and runs to get Nyxly, who stops Lex from using her crystal ball on the little girl. So now Mxy is gone, Nyxly feels betrayed, and Esme is scared. Nyxly puts her body between Lex and Esme, and with this surge of love for the little girl, the totem pops out of Esme and into Nyxly’s hand.

Now that they have it, Nyxly is going to bring Esme back to her mommies and she’s so, so done with Lex. All he is to her now is another power-hungry man who tried to take advantage of her.

When Guardian and Sentinel get to the bridge, they’re pleased to see Dreamer and the Wicked Hot Witch of the East join them as backup.

“I’ve got friends that will run through walls. I’ve got friends that will fly once called. When I’ve nowhere left to go, and I need my heroes, I’ve got friends that will run through walls.”

Nyxly brings Esme to the bridge, and Esme lets out a joyful squeal when she realizes her moms really came for her. Everyone starts walking toward each other on the bridge when a storm starts to crackle.

Because across town, Supergirl has begun to charge.

When it’s time to make the exchange, Alex puts the box of totems down and Esme runs into Kelly’s arms. As soon as all the totems are near each other, they whirl together to form the AllStone, but before Nyxly can grab it, Lex and Lillian show up to explode the bridge.

High above National City, Supergirl is charging and the world is going dark, causing the people to start to panic.

As the timer ticks down and it’s almost time for the final surge, Kara sees the fear in the eyes of the people she was trying to protect and realizes that Lena was right; this isn’t the way. This is exactly what she has stopped people from doing for years, seizing power for themselves, no matter the cost. This isn’t right. So Kara stops the process and the sun gets back to normal.

Kara drops down into the street among the people, her heart breaking a little as she realizes they’re cowering away from her. She apologizes and says she realizes now what she was about to do was wrong. But that she’ll fix it.

Imagine actually being willing to and able to apologize when you made the wrong choice? A wild concept.

So Kara flies to the bridge to fight by her family’s side. And fight they do. Esme hides while the Superfriends, Nyxly, and Lex & Co. all play a deadly game of keepaway with the AllStone.

Eventually the stone rolls toward Esme’s hiding spot and she picks it up, seeing it causing all this grief, and shouts, “Leave my family alone,” before punting it to the ground, shattering it.

I wonder if she borrowed a little of her aunt’s super strength for this one.

It splits into three, and Supergirl, Nyxy, and Lex all grap a piece. They start to use the AllStones powers against each other, and at firstUPShe looks to Lena for help, so she starts whipping out some magic, causing a storm to swirl around them.

“Ah say anto pi, alpha mae be upendi!”

Lillian is surprised to see Lena doing such strong magic, but then turns to her other child in time to see Nyxly about to zap him with some AllStone energy. Using up her last shred of maternal instinct, Lillian leaps in front of Lex, falling to the ground as Lex and Nyxly continue to fight, turning into lizard people for some reason.

Lena, the only good Luthor to ever Luthor, runs to Lillian’s side and holds her, because despite their differences and despite what some would even call abuse, this is still the woman who raised her.

“But you’re too beautiful to die!”

As Nyxly and Lex continue their titan tirade across National City, the Superfriends regroup at the Tower, watching the news report that they’re sucking energy, power, and all the totem’s elements like humanity and hope from the world.

Kara still has her piece of the AllStone but she doesn’t want to use it to fight; she doesn’t want to be like them. She needs to find another way to fix this.

“Lights will guide you home and ignite your bones. And I will try to fix you.”

Kara dons her Supergirl suit and flies up over National City to clear her head. (And this is neither here nor there, but in case you were wondering, this is the first place I teared up during this two-hour finale event. I wish I knew why! Even writing about it without watching it is making me emotional. Supergirl flying over National City for one of the last times. Her theme swelling softly in the background. I don’t know! It’s all downhill from here re: my ability to hold in the waterworks.)

Supergirl hovers there in the sky and listens to the people crying, calling out; she hears their fears and their pain.

Up and up. But never away.

But then she hears something different stand out against the murmur of agony. She hears Orlando giving a hope speech of his own. The people he’s talking to start out being so sucked dry of everything they had that they were literally black and white, but he puts the color back in them. He reminds them that they have power within them that no one can ever take away, that they still have the ability to fight. And a hope speech is exactly what Kara needed too, and she knows exactly what to do.

As we transition into the final episode, Lena is at Lillian’s bedside, mourning her dying step-mother and the fact that humanity itself is fading.

Honestly how dare she look this good during an apocalypse.

Before she goes, Lillian has something she needs to tell Lena. She’s known her whole life that her mother was a witch, and that Lena was too. She just gaslit her into thinking she was powerless. She pushed her to science, turned her into a Luthor, tried to snuff out her light. But here Lena is all these years later, a Luthor in name only, having found her own way, and her own power. Lillian says that Lena is free now, and that she has to really own that power. Forget about Lex, and Lillian, and everything they tried to make her. She needs to live the life she chooses.

“Kiss the aliens you want to kiss.”

Supergirl goes back to the Tower and realizes she’s been going about this all wrong. Supergirl doesn’t need to fix this. Kara doesn’t need to fix this. Everyone needs to fix this. The Superfriends don’t have to save everyone, they have to empower the people to save themselves. So they come up with a plan: Brainy is going to use a Legion crown to project a Supergirl hope speech into everyone’s mind. The problem is, he can make everyone hear it, but he can’t make them get it.

Lena comes in and tells them Lillian is gone but she barely liked that woman anyway and at least she got to say goodbye. Still, Kara hugs her because it sucks to lose even a mostly shitty family member.

Loss of a bad thing can still feel like loss.

Lena’s ready to distract herself with work though, and has an idea of how to help open people’s hearts to Supergirl’s message. While J’onn, Guardian, Sentinel, and Dreamer go try to contain Nyxly and Lex best they can, Kara, Lena, and Brainy use their powers combined to inspire the world.

Science, magic, alien tech, and hope. With our powers combined.

Supergirl gives one last hope speech. Quite literally a hope speech to end all hope speeches. She tells everyone that they have to work together, that they have to believe in themselves and lift each other up to stop this. They can defeat this darkness, but only if they all come together.

And little by little, everyone starts to regain their color, and the people aren’t just taking their power back metaphorically, they’re literally taking it back from the AllStone.

The rest of the Superfriends arrive at the final boss battle, and Nyxly and Lex call back some of their big hitters, including but not limited to the Nightmare Monster and a shadow version of Red Daughter.

But with hope and her family by her side, Kara Zor-El is not afraid.

She does not bend, she does not break, she does not back down.

And so they fight. They each lean into their strengths, they work together, and just when it seems like the tide is turning against them, reinforcements appear. First the Legion reinforcements from the future, then James in his old Guardian suit. At one point, Lena finds herself face to face with her brother…

“Will the nightmare of this man never cease?!”

But Andrea in her Shadow form appears right on time to save her.

Hell, even Mitch gets tired of being bossed around and helps the Superfriends.

Nyxly wants to really get into Dreamer’s head and starts to attack her using Nia’s mom’s dream owls, but as if to reject the idea of using a good mom’s energy as a weapon, Best TV Mom Ever Eliza Danvers appears.

I wasn’t mad about the Original Supergirl jokes even though they were cheesy and more meta than this show tends to get.

(For those keeping track, this is when my tears started to trickle out a little. One by one, still few and far between.) Alex is happy to see her Mama and they make a joke about how she was a Kryptonian in the movies, because it’s the last episode and there are no rules.

Realizing how very outnumbered they are, Lex opens a portal to the Phantom Zone, but his foes won’t back down. He summons some Phantoms, but when the Phantoms fly out and assess the line of Superfriends Superfamily, now backed with the full support of National City, the Phantoms turn on Lex and Nyxly. Because, as it turns out, they were the ones with the most fear.

The Phantoms scoop up Nyxly and Lex and take them to the Phantom Zone, and Lena is amused that hubris did end up being Lex’s downfall after all.

“Don’t let the dream portal hit you on the ass on the way out.”

And while I think this was an appropriate ending for Lex, I sort of wish they had found a way to put Nyxly in her crystal ball or something. She went through enough in the Phantom Zone by circumstances out of her control. But I suppose this was easier.

The battle done (they kinda won), they have a funeral for the reporter, and I have to assume also Lillian, two notable casualties in this war.

To thank them for ending the reign of terror, and perhaps realizing they almost made things worse instead of better, the government offers to let J’onn and Alex restart the DEO, but in their own way now. Not in the name of alien oppression, but just in specialized alien support services.

Alex isn’t so sure she wants to go down that road again.

“I’ll come back as long as we don’t also have containment cells for sentient humaniods.”

But Kara thinks she should. Starting the DEO up again would give them the ability to teach and train and empower more people. This isn’t a make-a-big-swing-then-sit-back situation. They have to fight every day, they have to keep doing the work, and the more the merrier.

And as she explains the importance of keeping up the fight, of spreading the hope, we catch a glimpse into the future of the Superfriends. Alex and Kara do start up a brand new DEO. Lena starts a new Luthor foundation, and helps Andrea set up a journalism school. Dreamer and Kelly start a Dreamer center for LGBTQ+ outreach (and City Councilman Orlando is there for the grand opening.) It’s all very beautiful.

They can’t just swoop in and save the day as vigilantes or heroes; it’s not sustainable. But they can be civil servants, teachers, leaders. They can be friends, to each other, and to the citizens of National City.

The future folks go home, Mon-El stopping to tell Kara that she did good. Not just well, she did GOOD. And her speech made the history books; what she did here today will echo through time. She’s an inspiration.

Nia says goodbye to Brainy, he’s sad he can’t even stay for the wedding. He leaves her with two whole cheesy dream sayings, including that she’ll always be the girl of his dreams. And frankly that’s relatable.

I don’t know how you leave this sweet girl behind.

And then we cut to three weeks later, the day before Alex and Kelly’s wedding. Kara’s apartment is full of flowers and she’s assessing her next task when the news reports about a kitten up a tree. She takes her glasses off and is ready to help when the reporter gets the breaking news that local business leaders got together; she doesn’t need to fix this.

“Supergirl” Episode 618 Recap: “Dance, Dance, Revolution”

Goodday and welcome to this recap of Supergirl season 6, episode 18, “Truth or Consequences” aka the one that was entirely too much about Lex Luthor.

We drop into this episode without a previously on, with a reporter telling the Superfriends about Lex’s plans for a Lexosuit army. Nia, cleverly, says the fact that they got this info could be a trap in itself, but Lena says they can just track the Lexosuits and it’ll be fine. Besides, she has important news: she used her rich girl connections to book a VIP suite for Alex and Kelly’s bachelorette party…but it has to be tonight.

I want to know the *exact* nature of Lena’s relationship to this suite-having friend.

Alex feels like it’s short notice, and they JUST learned more about the threat at hand, but Kara reassures her that if she’s waiting for everything to be perfectly good and safe, she’s going to be waiting forever. You have to mine your own joy, however and whenever you can. So after an adorable chant of “do it” from the Superfriends, Alex gleefully agrees.

The reverie is interrupted when Alex’s phone dings because she’s a mom now so her phone is always on a too-loud setting. The message is from Kelly; Esme had a tough day at school so she’s going to go help with mom duties.

This is neither here nor there but I own this outfit with a slightly cooler-toned plaid and I am here for this representation.

After she leaves, the rest of the team gets a news alert so they turn on the TV. Turns out Andrea took Lex’s journals and published them under someone else’s byline, which is a reporting no-no.

Up in the glam rock spaceship, Nyxly is watching the news, too, and she’s grumpy that they called her a psychopath even though they don’t even know her. And I do love that Nyxly doesn’t ever quite react the way a “typical” villain would. She’s not angry, her ego isn’t hurt, she’s just genuinely confused why and how they came to that conclusion. But anyway she can’t be bothered with all that right now, she needs to find the truth totem.

Back at the Tower, Brainy tells the team that he talked to the Legion in the future. He’s pretty somber as he tells them that in the future, Nyxly and Lex are a power couple, Which everyone is grossed out by, especially Lena, who can’t imagine him caring about anyone besides himself.

I need someone to make me a line graph to see if Lena’s buttons are inversely proportional to her hair. Because I feel like we might have a buttons up/hair down, buttons down, hair up trend on our hands.

Brainy goes on to say that in the future, they did complete the AllStone but something happened and Nyxly died, so they figure that’s why Lex is back.

Just then, Lena gets a ping that her algorithms have tracked the Lexosuits, so Team Alien goes to the glam rock space ship to get the totems back. Brainy gets his hands on one, and Nyxly yeets them through a dream portal, but Nia makes one of her own and gets them back to the Tower safely, Hope Totem in hand.

Since this is the totem they originally threw into the sun, they realize now that totems can’t be destroyed, which means the Love Totem is still out there somewhere, too.

“All of us are in the same episode for once, surely nothing will go wrong today!”

Brainy sulks off, suggesting perhaps he learned more about the future then he’s letting on, but that’s a problem for later.

Back at Casa Dansen, Alex and Kelly are cleaning Esme off after she accidentally used rage powers on a bully who made fun of the treat she plans on making for a baking competition? Unclear on what exactly this is for because Esme is in the age range of kids I taught for a while and typically we don’t expect children who aren’t tall enough to see the top of the stove to know how to cook. But anyway, as Alex and Kelly are cleaning Esme off, they notice the flower tattoo on her back that wasn’t there the last time they bathed her, and wonder what it means.

Once Esme’s adoption is final can I be next?

Meanwhile, Brainy finds out from another Brianiac that he has to return to the 31st century and merge with the Big Brain to save the future of his alien race. Brainy is upset; he has a family, he is in love. He doesn’t want to abandon the Superfriends, or Nia. He wants to find another way. And since apparently they can’t just wait 60 years and then have Brainy go to the 31st century for timey wimey reasons I don’t understand, Brainy is left feeling very, very sad.

Over in VillainVille, the crystal ball shows Nyxly where the Truth Totem is, so she heads to a vault and picks up an old timey camera. She says the magic word, and Sir Totem the Great asks her to reveal her inner truths. She starts by just rattling off the easy things; her goals, her plans, her surface level feelings.

Did I miss them say whose camera this is? I tend to zone out when Lex is on screen but if this was culturally significant, I missed it.

When that’s not enough, she also admits she’s afraid of possessing the bad parts of her father, and also that part of her still wants his approval. Which honestly I think is so interesting and relatable and could have been explored further but instead she also says she doesn’t want to be alone and wants to get past her trust issues. The Gauntlet Giver tells her she did great, and the Truth Totem will now act as a lie detector for her. She promptly uses it on Lex, and learns that not only does he really love her, but also he has no plans to betray her.

Alex and Kelly take Esme to the Tower, and Esme is so happy to see Aunt Kara, it’s very cute. They tell her about Esme’s powers going wackadoodle and that they’re going to run some tests to make sure she’s okay.

My mom used to leave my Wishbear or American Girl doll in the car when we went inside places that weren’t home so I appreciate Esme’s moms letting her keep Lovey with her all the time.

Kara tries to be supportive of Alex, and she has an idea to maybe make Esme little lead-lined glasses to help keep her powers at bay so she can fit in at school. This advice INFURIATES Alex, who says Esme has had her powers dampened enough in her little life and she won’t ask her to hide who she is. She just has to understand her powers, not stifle them.

“Not all of us are comfortable in our closets, sister mine.”

Kara thinks perhaps Alex misunderstood her; she’s just offering a solution that she found useful, as an alien herself, an experience Alex couldn’t possibly understand. But Alex doesn’t want parenting advice from Kara, so she storms off. And I wish we had seen more one-on-one conversations between Kara and Alex about Alex becoming a mother in the past few episodes, maybe Alex asking Kara what she herself did that helped Kara feel more welcome when she was first adopted that maybe she didn’t realize was so impactful. Because I think then it would have been even more clear that this is Alex lashing out in that way siblings (or even close friends) sometimes do when their emotions are running high and they know they can react first and apologize later. On one hand it’s sort of nice we didn’t need it…we know Alex Danvers well enough to know that she’s lashing out at Kara because a) it’s a safe person to let her yucky feelings out on because a sister’s capacity for forgiveness is a deep well, and b) that it stems from Alex’s insecurities about being a mother to an alien baby, and about how she and her sister both had to keep secrets about themselves that ate away at them a little. But on the other hand if we spent less time with Lex and more time with the Danvers sisters, we’d all be better for it.

If we don’t get one more Danvers sisters couch scene before the end of the series, I will riot.

On the other side of the Tower, Nia is trying to use the Dream Totem to find Nyxly, but has a vision about Brainy instead. She storms off to find her boyfriend and demands to know why he’s going back to the future and, more importantly, why he didn’t tell her. He promises he was going to tell her soon, that he only just found out himself, so Nia declares that she wants to go with him.

“You know Alex’s ears turn red when someone mentions Sara Lance but I will ask for her number and find you in the future myself!

Unfortunately, that’s not how time and space work, so instead they just have to be sad together. And one idea I had after this conversation, not a new idea by any means, is that once Nia’s journey with the Superfriends is over, perhaps she can become a part-time Legend. That way she’ll live outside of space and time, and she can both continue her life as Nia Nal and continue Dreamer’s legacy, but also be able to visit Brainy. And then we’d get to see her on Legends of Tomorrow now and then. Free idea, CWDCTV!

“Supergirl” Episode 617 Recap: Love Hard

Hello lovebirds, and welcome to this recap of Supergirl, season 6, episode 17, “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” aka the one that was somehow both the gayest and the straightest episode of all time.

Previously on Supergirl, Nyxly was on a quest for the totems but Supergirl threw the Hope Totem into the sun, Nyxly had a secret admirer who turned out to be Lex Luthor, and Alex and Kelly adopted little Esme.

We open with Nyxly, a little annoyed that her latest totem find spat out a human man, and when Mitch points out that the man is Lex Luthor, Nyxly immediately starts to rage. Supergirl might be her enemy, but she has no love for men who send women to the Phantom Zone. She rightly calls him arrogant and narcissistic, and promises they’ll never be friends.

Oh what an episode this would have been if Nyxly had just killed Lex right here!

Back at the Tower, Kara tells her friends that she quit being a reporter for CatCo. And her friends are very concerned. Lena perhaps most of all, knowing how important being Kara Danvers alongside being Supergirl was to her.

“Wait you were still pretending to be a journalist?” “Yeah I thought you quit weeks ago. We’re using your desk as a snack table.”

But Kara insists this is the right choice, so she can focus on stopping Nyxly. Speaking of, Brainy needs three of his smartest gals to plan, so he pulls Lena, Kelly, and Nia away.

As they leave through one door, Alex enters through another and looks around to make sure Kelly isn’t around. Alex’s smile widens and she pulls out a ring to show an ecstatic Kara and J’onn. She tells them about how she’s going to set up Al’s bar for the proposal and Kara makes her tell the story of why again, because every time Alex excitedly tells Kara about how happy Kelly makes her, the further away those nights of Alex crying on her shoulder about past love lost feel.

And besides that, the story is cute. The moment she realized she was in love with Kelly is when they had the same Die Hard-related answer to a question.

Alex being such a badass at work and such an unbelievable DORK in her personal life will never not delight me.

With her sister and Space Dad’s blessing, she rushes off to set up the bar with Esme, Kara promising to call her when they need her.

But when Alex and Esme get to Al’s, he has to apologize. The gaylien bar was already booked for the night in question. Esme tries to help, making her big eyes look as puppy-dog-like as she can, pleading, “Don’t you believe in love, Al?”

Me: Love is a lie.
Also me: I would do a murder for this fictional child because I love her.

It’s very cute, and I would have built an entirely new bar for her, but Al has to say no.

Lex goes back to his lair and tells Otis that he was hiding out in the future, where he and Nyxly are in love, which sounds fake since sociopathic narcissistic megalomaniacs like Lex aren’t the best in relationships but I guess technically Nyxly is no peach either.

Anyway, back to the important people. The plan is for Lena to make a fake love totem and draw Nyxly out into a trap.

My question is, did Lena have all this business casual wear in one of her closets just waiting for someone to ask her to a cocktail bar someday or did she buy a whole new Tower wardrobe when she joined the SuperFriends?

They decide to set this trap on Lover’s Lane, so clearly the best option for the stakeout is Alex and Kelly. What’s hilarious is they go dressed as Sentinel and Guardian, furthering my headcanon that the city just ships two of their local superheroes and are just waiting for confirmation that they’re dating.

It’s like quietly and casually shipping two mutuals on twitter or the baristas at your local coffee shop.

Alex and Kelly talk about how lucky they are to have each other AND Esme, and Alex looks like she might propose right then and there, but Nyxly shows up to spoil the mood.

Lena does magic from the cover of night while the rest of the SuperFriends fight. They’re just about ready to take Nyxly to confinement when Lex shows up out of nowhere to save her.

Lena is so furious at the sight of her brother that she accidentally burns the fake totem and when her brother spots her in the trees and asks if she missed him, her rage burns brighter. Though honestly maybe it’s also because Lex blasted Kara with Kryptonite. Again.

If Lena had flipped Lex off to spark that fire I would have thrown her a damn parade.

Nyxly is pretty pissed too; she didn’t need some MAN to save her. Especially when she finds out the reason he knew to save her was because of a creepy little drone he has following her around.

When Kara wakes up from her yellow sun nap, Lena is nervously standing by her bedside, relieved Kara seems okay, amused when Kara is barely conscious before asking if Lena is okay after seeing her brother.

What healed her faster, the yellow sun lamps or some subconscious Lena magic, who’s to say.

Lena admits to Kara that the reason she accidentally blew up the totem was because her magic is linked to her emotions and she lost control when she saw Lex again after thinking she was free of him after a full season of him tormenting us.

She tells Kara that it’s what happened to her mother, something she had held back for fear of being judged or worse, shunned, the way everyone Back East did despite once loving her mother. But Kara doesn’t blink before offering her genuine sympathy. And when Lena says maybe she should take a step back from magic for a while, Kara readily agrees; Lena was vital to the team before she knew she was a witch, and that hasn’t changed. The proof is in the tanning bed.

You know that TikTok sound that’s like, “Yo bro? Who got you smiling like that?” That’s all I hear when I see this.

When Kara goes back to the war room in the Tower, Alex immediately greets her with a hug. It’s one of those moments that is so small but meant a lot to me, personally. Because of course at this point Alex is both at the point that she trusts Lena to watch over her and doesn’t need to be the one hovering over an unconscious Kara, but also is still going to feel full-body relief when she gets visual confirmation her baby sister is okay.

But Kara doesn’t want to waste any time, so Brainy dives right into the update. He figured out that Lex was hiding out in the future, which explains some of his new gadgets. Kara is stressed that her two most annoying villains are paired up, so Brainy suggests they use the totems they have to their advantage. But Kara and Alex don’t love this plan, considering all the havoc the totems have wreaked so far.

The way I would yell NEVERMIND if the Danvers sisters ever looked at me like this after saying an idea.

Kara says their job is to protect the totems, but considers the possibility that they could use the energy of the totems without weaponizing them, the way Nyxly did to shield herself.

“Supergirl” Episode 616 Recap: Sweet Dream, Beautiful Nightmare

Happy Wednesday and welcome to this recap of Supergirl season 6 episode 16, “Nightmare in National City,” aka the one where Dreamer levels up.

We open this week with an old school intro, where we’re reminded about Kara’s pod getting knocked off course, and get flashes of Lena doing magic and Guardian guarding while she talks about her friends. It made me a bit nostalgic.

But then we jump right into the previously-ons, where we’re reminded that the Superfriends are in a race against Nyxly for 7 totems; they had 3 of them but yeeted the Hope Totem into the sun in an attempt from keeping Nyxly from ever being able to make the infinity gauntlet All Stone, but Nyxly received a Lexosuit as a gift from a “secret admirer” to help her. Also, a little longer ago than all that, Nia’s sister Maeve was a bitch to her because Nia became the Dreamer of the family.

When Nia returns to National City with no Dream Totem in hand, she explains to Brainy that the reason she hit a dead end is because she went to her dad to go through her mom’s things for clues but turns out Maeve took it all and ditched their dad for taking Nia’s side and disappeared into the ether. Brainy suggests looking for the answers vis dreams so she does, getting a vision of a name that might lead her to the next clue.

Me trying to remember what the heck I came into this room for.

Up on the glam rock spaceship, Nyxly is fiddling with her new suit when she realizes it comes with an AI…of herself. It’s not only her own voice, but also knows about her 10-year-old self’s secret crush, so she’s confused, but it promises her it knows how to help her find the Dream Totem so she decides to trust it. And honestly giving a narcissist an AI with her own voice is the fastest way to get it to do what it says.

Meanwhile, in the tower, Alex shows up to work with a stack full of drawings from Esme for the Superfriends.

ALEX IS ALREADY SUCH A PROUD MAMA

She’s so proud of the drawings, and everyone is delighted to get them, and it’s all very cute and pure. Alex tells them that Kelly took Esme to meet the Olsen family and she’s going to join them as soon as things calm down a little; aka as soon as they find the Dream Totem.

Kara tells the team that her plans for today involve doing an interview with international leaders to try to promote peace and healthy communication skills, and Lena loves this idea.

It was so nice of Supergirl to get me an Ashlyn Harris’s Birthday present in the form of this look.

When Kara pitches it to Andrea, and it’s the most passionate we’ve seen Kara about her day job in a long time. Andrea finds it endearing but thinks the topic is boring so she decides to make it a multimedia spectacle, which misses the point of what Kara was trying to do but isn’t a no, so Kara will take it.

Across town, Nia follows her vision all the way to her sister, much to both of their horror.

Me when I open the door too soon and the delivery person who just put my food down on my mat hasn’t left yet.

Maeve starts to apologize but Nia interrupts her and says that’s not what she’s there for. She’s just there to talk about the Dream Totem. Maeve wasn’t even sure it was real, the research all mentions an artifact in the dream realm that can give anyone dream powers so of course she was intrigued by it, but never found any proof of it. Nia asks Maeve to tell her everything she knows about the totem but Maeve says it’s not like she can distill all the research she’s ever done on the topic onto a post-it note for her. She opens a closet full of old books displayed rather haphazardly for someone who supposedly cares about this topic, and basically tells Nia good luck.

Meanwhile, Nyxly crashes a sleep lab to use her AI to steal technology from a doctor who learned how to access the dream realm. She uses her new toys to borrow some dream energy and as Supergirl arrives to try to stop her, she opens a dream portal and sends them a nightmare monster for their troubles.

Alex and Lena hold down the Tower and try to guide their flying friends and help them keep the nightmare monster from getting to the power plant.

I’ll be honest I 200% didn’t catch what anyone said the first time I watched this scene with Lena and Alex looking this good in one single frame.

Since J’onn’s brain powers and Supergirl’s heat vision aren’t helping, Kara asks Lena if there’s a spell she could do, but it’s more complicated than that…or she doesn’t believe in herself yet. Either way, she decides to rely on the original source of her usefulness to the Superfriends and uses her big beautiful brain to offer the solution of using satellites to create a dome over part of the city; the bad news is, it would trap the monster in with half the people in National City, the good news is it would keep the monster from getting to the power plant. Alex is torn but Supergirl is desperate so she makes the call and tells Lena to do it. And the dome is straight up from a Stephen King novel, splitting food trucks in half and separating people from who they were sharing a taco with mere seconds before. And then, as icing on the stressful cake Supergirl is being served, the monster turns invisible.

Back at Maeve’s office, the Nal sisters work together to look for clues about the Dream Totem. Maeve tells her about a tapestry with a maze on it that might be instructions from the Oracle who hid the totem. and how it has a symbol that was also on the necklace their mother gave her, the symbol for purity. As Maeve picks up another stack of books, news clippings of Dreamer saving the day fall out. Nia is surprised but Maeve tries to shrug it off like this isn’t the sweetest thing; she says they might be fighting but Nia is still her sister.

“She saved everything we gave her, every little scrap of paper.”

When Nia realizes there are too many tomes to tote to the dream realm for one person, she decides to take her sister with her. Maeve is delighted by this prospect and smirks as her baby sister brags about her boyfriend as Nia texts him to tell him she’ll be back on this plane of existence in a jiffy.

Back at the Tower, Supergirl reports that she can’t find the monster anywhere. She checks on Lena, who tells her that she found out about the sleep lab and that Nyxly was probably there to steal dream energy, which means she’s already on her way to the Dream Totem.

At this point I’d settle for them admitting they’re at LEAST work wives.

But Brainy arrives with good news; they’re not as far behind as they thought. Nia is already on her way to the dream realm to get the totem; they just have to hope she can find it before Nyxly.

While wandering through the dream forest, Maeve tells Nia about a dream expanse somewhere past this forest, but Nia has never figured out how to leave. As they wander, Maeve’s necklace starts to glow and points Nia toward a tree with a knot that is also a button, and when Nia presses it, it opens up a door to the aforementioned dream expanse…a door that closes behind them.

“Love is an open do–oh shit.”

Since the action is happening in the dream realm, Kara runs off to do a mock interview to prepare.

“Alexa, show me the definition of ‘adorkable’ please.”

But she’s distracted. Kara can see on the news that the town doesn’t approve of the Superfriends’ decision to put a dome over half the city, and the governor is speaking out about it. And so even though she’s wearing Kara braids and glasses, her head is in a Super space.

Alex is at the Tower trying to talk the governor down about the dome, trying to convince her that it’s for everyone’s safety, but the governor is still pressed about it, because the people are separated from their jobs or their loved ones.

“There’s a global pandemic, people shouldn’t be milling about anyway.”

The governor gives them 12 hours to take the dome down before she takes matters into her own hands. While Lena and Brainy get to work on a machine that they hope will contain the nightmare monster, which would be going better if Brainy wasn’t so in his head about things.

“Brainy, if I could get shit done while Kara was in the Phantom Zone for WEEKS, you can focus for an hour while your girlfriend is in the dream realm WHERE SHE VOLUNARILY GOES ALL THE TIME.”

In the dream expanse, Nyxly wanders around through spires, guided by her AI, until she finds a lighted path. And when she does find it, she sees that Nia and her sister are already on the path, and is delighted by this turn of events.

“Supergirl” Episode 615 Recap: Hope Floats

Hello and welcome to this recap of Supergirl episode 615, “Hope for Tomorrow,” aka the one with Esme’s two mommies.

Previously on Supergirl, Nyxly went to the Netherlands because totems shmotems, Kelly and Alex saved a little girl from failure fosters, and Lena made herself right at home at the Tower.

We open on Kara flying in through Kelly’s apartment window with arms full of toys, cheerfully greeting Alex, who is painting a mural of hopes and dreams. Everyone is very excited to meet Esme. Kara is so ready to be the best Aunt ever, and help ease this little alien into life on Earth the way Mama Danvers did for her.

She’s going to be the best aunt ever and I am EMOTIONAL about it.

Alex is excited but also very panicky in that very Alex way. When Kelly comes home with Esme and leads her to her new room, Alex is so nervous that she won’t like anything, she starts rambling and saying she can change whatever she wants as Kelly and Kara watch, amused.

Classic Alex.

Alex introduces her to Kara, who tells her that she was adopted too, and gives her some stuffies to join Lovey, the zebra friend Esme already has. They introduce her to J’onn and she shakes his hand because she’s THE CUTEST.

Can *I* adopt Esme?

She goes to put Lovey on a shelf and starts to fall through a wall, but J’onn catches her. Scared, she listens quietly while Alex holds her and says that she has mimicking powers and that she’s sorry she didn’t warn her that J’onn was an alien.

I know they #struggled this episode but little things like how they get down on her level to talk to her are huge markers of them being Good with Kids.

But then Esme squeaks out a teeny apology and Kelly pulls her close too, promising she didn’t do anything wrong. A phrase that cannot be undervalued.

This is such a good hug?? I’m jealous.

Up on the glam rock spaceship, Nyxly is annoyed that CatCo is reporting that the Superfriends are the heroes and Nyxly is the villain, but Nyxly is the hero of her own story. She says there wouldn’t have to be so much fighting and chaos if the Superfriends would just leave her to her totem-fetching tasks. But she’s no stranger to someone rewriting history to benefit themselves; most notably, her own father.

Mitch gives Nyxly a bracer infused with the courage totem to pair with her power dampening cuff to give her a little bit of magic. She can now wield the power of courage…and thus, fear. So now all she needs is hope.

Next we go back at Kelly’s apartment, where I presume Alex lives now? RIP the loft? Anyway, Kelly and Alex talk about Esme and Alex feels so bad about how spooked Esme got within ten minutes of being in her new room. All Alex wants to do is protect her. Kelly understands, she feels it too, but she also feels so, so lucky to be starting a family with Alex. And they’re going to give Esme everything she’s been lacking in her life so far.

This episode did nothing for my desires to start fostering kids even though I’d be doing it alone.

Plus, they can and will help her with her powers. They’re the perfect family for a little alien girl.

At the Tower, Brainy is asking what kind of block set he should get little Esme, and Lena and Kara IN UNISON say he should get her a train set. IN UNISON. Lena says it’s because then she can go wherever she wants, and Kara says she would have said the same exact thing.

They’re so in sync it’s borderline disgusting.

Brainy tells Supergirl about Nyxly being spotted at the Hague, so she and J’onn go to stop her. She tries to freeze them with fear, but frankly they’ve seen worse, so they manage to break through. Nyxly gets away, blasting everyone with courage totem energy as she goes, but she doesn’t take the totem with her, so it’s a net positive.

Back at the Tower, Alex introduces Esme to Lena, and Esme promptly says the truest truth the way children often do and tells Lena she’s very pretty.

I feel like they don’t acknowledge how ethereally attractive Lena is enough on this show.

Alex asks Brainy for help learning more about what kind of alien Esme is, and after he rattles off a story, she declares him funny. She’s a smart one, this kid.

Meanwhile, Kara activates the Hope totem, and her gauntlet is to inspire hope that will last, which J’onn thinks he has in the bag.

When Kara gets back to the Tower, she finds Lena there reading her grimoire, trying to find a charm that will act as security around the humanity totem in case it calls into the wrong hands again. Kara updates Lena on her day and her new gauntlet and it’s just everything I wanted from this relationship. Granted, with a little less kissing, but you know what I mean. Lena fully, fully integrated into the team, Kara leaning on her, etc.

Kara is worried about what will happen if she fails the gauntlet like she did with the courage totem, but Lena feels pretty damn sure her hero Kara Danvers has a head start over Nyxly when it comes to solving a hope-based puzzle.

“And historians will call them close friends besties, roommates, colleagues, anything but lovers. History hates lovers.

When Alex comes up and asks Kara if she can help instil some hope in a frustrated little girl trying to reckon with her powers, they figure this is as good a place as any to try to start to solve the gauntlet. Lena even says, “el mayarah” to Kara as she goes.

Alex introduces Esme to Supergirl, but between Esme’s obvious genius and also her power sensing abilities, Esme immediately knows Supergirl is Kara and Kara is Supergirl.

Ah, that moment you realize maybe you’re smarter than some adults. A turning point in a young gifted kid’s life.

Alex tells her to keep it a secret and Kara begins her lesson; they figure that especially since Esme will probably be around Aunt Kara a lot, it’s a good place to start helping Esme gain control of her powers.

Kara is so good with Esme, gently coaching her through superhearing, listening to Alex’s heartbeat, and every time she starts to get a little overwhelmed, Alex just encourages her to push through it, to keep trying.

But she realizes this may be the wrong approach when Esme and Kara overhear an accident outside and Esme calls Alex horrible for making her listen to that and runs off.

Are they going to get Esme little lead-lined glasses to wear around Aunt Kara?

Up on the ship, Nyxly is starting to feel hopeless about her hope gauntlet. She knows she’s no match for the literal Paragon of Hope in this regard. So she decides to take a different route. She’s going to force Supergirl to finish the gauntlet, then take the totem; all three of them, in fact.

All she needs is a little… leverage.

Nyxly is very good at the Bisexual Perch.

In The Hague, J’onn is trying to keep the diplomats from Kaznia and Corto Maltese from declaring nuclear war on each other, but they were affected by the totem so they’re proving hard for him to keep calm. The American woman who is there for some reason, I think they said she’s the secretary of defense but I’ll be honest this totem business was side plot to me this episode, anyway she wants him to brainwash the diplomats into doing what she wants because probably that’s what they would have wanted but J’onn refuses.

“Supergirl” Episode 614: This Magic Moment

Hello and welcome to this recap of Supergirl season 6, episode 14, “Magical Thinking,” aka the one with Kara once again trying to out-gay her canonically gay sister.

Previously on Supergirl, Lena found out she was descended from witches, Nyxly set out on a quest for totems because apparently she didn’t watch Season 3 of Legends of Tomorrow, and after a tussle over the Totem of Courage, Kara found herself linked to Nyxly, which she hopes will help find the imp so they can stop her.

We open on game night, which already has me thinking maybe I accidentally started lucid dreaming fanfic, because Lena is actually invited this time. And Kelly, Alex, J’onn and Nia are playing Jenga, a game that doesn’t require teams, and yet Lena is pacing around the loft waiting for Kara to arrive before she can settle down and have fun.

When Kara does come back, she is too stressed about Nyxly to appreciate that no one started eating the Chinese food without her. Lena wants to help her, and offers to look in her mother’s book of spells for an answer.

Lena at Game Night = closer to Supercorp bingo.

Lena is worried about it though; she has been analyzing and studying the book and can’t seem to make heads or tails of it, scientifically speaking. When she’s explaining it though, Nia thinks she can help, since her dream powers can’t exactly be broken down in a rational way. She offers to help Lena and Lena graciously agrees.

Kara tells Lena that CatCo wants to do a story about the Superfriends, and Alex agrees that they need the public’s support to stop Nyxly, but they want to keep Lena’s newfound magic abilities off the record. If I’m being honest, the reasons were not clear to me. They even know that Lena Luthor works closely with Supergirl Back East, surely it wouldn’t be a surprise that she was working with the Superfriends now? I guess the magic thing is worth keeping under wraps for now, but I still don’t really get why.

Anyway, Lena agrees. She’s just happy to be here, if we’re being honest.

Kelly isn’t going to be back at the Tower just yet because, unlike the reporters in the room, she actually likes to show up at her job now and then, so she’s going to take on one of the other kids displaced by the group home she dissolved: the justice-loving, whip-smart cutie named Esme.

Despite Kelly speaking sincerely, all of a sudden Kara starts laughing maniacally, confusing her family.

Not quite as good as Melissa’s natural laugh, but still fun.

But the laugh is not her own; it’s the unhinged glee of Nyxly, who has just discovered a second totem right here in National City.

When Kelly goes to check on Esme, she’s so excited to tell her guardian angel about how her new foster parents are so nice and even make her pancakes for dinner, and Kelly is so pleased. Esme is happy, too; so happy, in fact, that she made Kelly a friendship bracelet to thank her for saving them from Miss Hannigan. Esme has a matching one, of course.

First time in a long time I wasn’t mad about seeing a plot turn a mile away.

It’s very fucking cute!

J’onn is showing the CatCo reporter around the Tower and the way they explain how Kara and Nia are so close to the Superfriends is by exposing that Alex Danvers is part of the Superfriends; which I guess makes sense, since I don’t think it was a secret before that she worked for the DEO. It’s just that “no one knows” she’s Sentinel. Totems shmotems…wait, dammit I can’t use that for this show anymore! Secret identities, shmecret shmidentities…I’ll workshop it.

The reporter agrees to their terms about what can and cannot be published and they all move on with their lives.

Across town, a fighter has the totem Nyxly is looking for, and simply demands it from him.

Honestly, props to that man for being like “I mean sure yeah scary lady you can have my necklace.”

He gives it to her and she thinks it’s too easy, but she speaks the password quickly and Olmec’s voice tells her to use the totem wisely. Supergirl, hot on her heels, lands in front of her, and Nyxly uses the totem to defend herself, shooting totem energy out into the crowd of men around her. She has Mitch beam her back up to their glam rock ship, and Nyxly is surprised it doesn’t seem like she has a gauntlet the way she did with the courage totem.

Below, however, everyone that was in the totem’s blast radius has become quite fighty.

Kara heads back to update the team and finds Lena and Nia studying the spellbook, which is heckin’ cute. Looking at their list of totems, they think perhaps this is the humanity totem, what with people seeming to have lost theirs.

“Everyone who has ever donated an organ is emailing their peers who didn’t interact with their posts about it. It’s brutal out there.”

After Nia says a particularly clever string of words, and Lena and Kara seem surprised, Nia says, “I’m smart, too, you guys are just show-offs.” Which Kara and Lena can’t disagree with. Also, as someone who had this thought literally yesterday at my day job when I piped up in a meeting I usually just lurk in and everyone looked at me like they forgot I was smart.

I have a literal master’s degree but sure, be impressed!

Lena tells Kara that they found a spell that might work, and Lena is hesitant but Kara is very encouraging. She believes in Lena.

Out doing crowd control, Sentinel and Guardian are chatting about their days while fighting back some angry men, and it’s actually very cute. Kelly tells her about Esme, and Alex is charmed by the tidbit about the friendship bracelet.

If I lived in National City I would be watching all the news clips I could find and hardcore shipping Guardian and Sentinel.

Back in the Tower, Nia and Lena are trying to find that balance between magic and science and I love this on so many levels, partially because this pairing is a lovely developing friendship in its own right, but also just knowing that Katie McGrath and Nicole Maines are such good friends in real life, it’s truly delightful to watch.

Lena’s spell floats into the air and the lights flicker, so Nia goes to check if the Tower’s sensors clocked that energy spike but all of a sudden Nia can’t tell her left from her right. She looks mildly amused by it but Lena is sent into an immediate spiral. When Kara comes in to check on them, Nia says, “Lena broke my brain,” which is very funny and relatable, but Lena doesn’t laugh. In fact, she looks quite desperate; especially when Kara pleads with her. She needs this to work. She needs Lena’s help.

“This feels a little unfair because you know I’d do anything for you. Remember that one time I PURCHASED CATCO so you could keep your fake job?”

Lena goes back to reading her spell book and completely of her own accord without anyone else’s help or boring backstories, Lena realizes that she’s trying to replicate the spell too clinically, without taking into consideration the difference between dried vs fresh herbs, or brain vs heart. She needs to create vs recreate.

Outside, people continue to gleefully be terrible to each other for seemingly no reason, but in such number that I guess it’s slightly different than most days. Esme and her new foster mom are on their way home with groceries when they’re confronted by one of these humanity-lite people and he breathes fire at them, so little orphan Esme, on instinct, fire breathes right back at him. Perhaps siphoning powers like the Saltzman twins, or maybe a mirroring power of sorts. Her foster mom holds her close as the bad man runs away; perhaps too close.

Lena has an idea for how to get her spell to work, so Kara takes her to the Botanical Gardens. Kara protects Lena with her whole body, strong-arming men while her girlfriend gardens, like some kind of AU Dani and Jamie from Bly Manor. Lena tries the spell again right then and there.

“Everyone is exhaustive. Even the best ones. Sometimes, once in a blue goddamn moon I guess, someone, like this moonflowersheep laurel , just might be worth it.”

But instead of making the raging less ragey, it makes a perfectly peaceful woman get a little punchy. Lena thinks she made things worse, but what she doesn’t see is that as more people get more dangerous, Nyxly gets less so. For example, she can’t follow through on her plan to shoot a security guard; so technically, Lena saved a whole life. But she doesn’t know this.

Instead, when she and Kara get back to the Tower, Lena is fully spiraling about once again trying to do the right thing but instead making things worse. Kara tries to reassure her that she’s not to blame for all this mess, Nyxly is.

Kara wants Lena to do another spell, and Lena looks hesitant but Kara is practically begging her.

“You can still be with the wizard, what you worked and waited for.”

And what are you going to do when those baby blues are pleading with you? When the woman who used to come to you for help that you thought would stop doing that when you found out she was a literal superhero is standing in front of you once again, asking for you to be there for her in a way that only you can?

“I will be your hero, your strength, anything you need. I will be the sun in your sky, I will light your way for all time, promise you. For you I will.”

Meanwhile, Nyxly is as confused as Mitch is about why she didn’t shoot the guard when she had the chance. She’s feeling all this…compassion. And she thinks maybe these new emotions ARE the gauntlet.

Trying to reason with her in this new state, Mitch suggests maybe they just keep finding totems, but without hurting anyone. This gets Nyxly back on board.

Down on Earth, Kara is struck by a feeling, so sudden and new. She feels Nyxly’s overwhelming emotions and realizes that the humanity that was removed from the citizens of National City is being put INTO Nyxly. Realizing this is her gauntlet, Lena says they can find a way to use this to their advantage.

Kara realizes that Lena’s mistake can actually be the solution. If they take more humanity from people, they can overload Nyxly and force her to either restore everyone’s humanity or at least reveal her location.

“I have a great idea, I got it from this super hot scientist I once fought…wait.”

Kara is excited by her idea but Lena looks at her like she has three heads. Is she KIDDING her with this? Lena doesn’t want to purposefully hurt more people and Kara says it’s “for the greater good” and Lena gapes at her like, “Does the phrase Non Nocere ring a bell?” This isn’t how Kara does things, and Lena knows it.

“Supergirl” Episode 613 Recap: Shards of Courage

Hello and welcome to this recap of Supergirl Season 6, Episode 13, The Gauntlet aka The One where Kara and Lena Were Reunited.

Previously on Supergirl, Kelly called the Superfriends out and in and stepped into her power as Guardian, Lena found out she was descended from a witch and possessed the gift of magic but stepped decidedly AWAY from her power, Nyxly abused her power to trap Mxy and start to go after some totems, starting with the Totem of Courage.

Kara is in the tower when Lena comes back, and Kara is so happy her friend is back. She even goes in immediately for the hug.

“Can you believe they let us do this now?”

Kara asks Lena about her trip Back East, but Lena is still processing it all so while she doesn’t dare lie to Kara, she dodges the question and asks to be caught up on work stuff instead. Brainy gives her the previously on recap and Kara invites Lena to go to the Fortress with her to see what they can learn about the totems. And I’m still not over Lena being so casually and warmly folded into the Superfriends’ plans. I will love this forever.

Putting aside my Supercorp feelings, I do genuinely love Lena Luthor’s integration into the team with all my heart.

Lena happily agrees and they head to the Fortress together, where they access the living memory of Vita, a Kryptonian witch who has popped up here and there across the seasons. Kara understands why they might need a witch to deal with fifth dimensional magic but Lena’s face becomes that of a person confronted with the very thing they’ve been trying to avoid. Lena asks if “magic” is even the right word for it, since it’s technically ENERGY, and surely there’s a scientific explanation.

Kara brushes off this comment and asks Vita about the totems. Vita is even more eccentric than I remember as she lists what she calls rules about the totems.

“Let me guess, magic always comes with a price.”

Rule 1, don’t pick up the phone, there is an order to which you must collect the totems, and Courage is first. Rule 2, the totems are concealed as artifacts, hidden across time, important to the cultures raised around them. Which…is not a rule. But go off, I guess. Rule 3 is that you have to activate the totem before you wield it by saying the word “cursex” and the final rule is that to control the totem you must submit to a test of character, a gauntlet, and succeed.

“I’ve been taking a lot of online quizzes lately so I’m sure this will be fine.”

Meanwhile, in the National City Museum of Ancient Technology and Anything Else Supergirl Happens to Need Right Now, a doctor gets a letter about her funding being terminated and she is frustrated because she wants to harness lightning for a laser. What kind of laser? Who knows. She just wants it.

Up in the glam rock spaceship, Mitch tells Nyxly how to get into the museum and steal the artifact, and she’s annoyed she can’t just snap her fingers and get her way like she could in the fifth dimension.

I understand. Being a human IS quite tedious.

But, it will be worth it, because the Courage totem is the first step in her elaborate revenge plot.

Back at Alex’s apartment, Alex and Kelly are chatting over coffee. Kelly thanks Alex for giving her the space to process all that’s happened over the past few days, and of course for the coffee.

“Honestly I’m just grateful Lena and I can be in the same episode, even though we had to split it and not share scenes.”

Alex gets a call from the Tower and invites Kelly along, but Kelly has more work to do with Orlando in the Heights, and Alex just beams proudly at her before asking if she needs any help. Kelly assures her she doesn’t so Alex kisses her on the cheek as they go their separate ways.

Forever depressed they filmed this final season during a pandemic, otherwise I’d love to believe we’d get more sweet lady kisses.

In the tower, Alex and Lena do some tag-team science to narrow down potential artifacts that could be the totem in disguise.

Crazy science, if you will.

There are still so many options that it would take Supergirl a month to investigate them all, but just then they get a ping from the computer telling them that Nyxly is trying to steal the slingshot David supposedly used to kill Goliath that just got delivered from Warehouse 13.

Nyxly smash-and-grabs the slingshot and starts to run out as the alarm sounds when the Superfriends stop her. Kara says, “Hand it over,” and Nyxly just laughs in her face and says, “No,” which continues to be adorable. I love her streak of joy amidst her villainy.

I would take ten thousand Nyxlys over He Who Shall Not Be Named any day.

Nyxly decides that her only way out is through so she utters the magic word to activate the totem and starts to see a blast from her past while a blast of energy fills the room, and when Supergirl makes a play for the totem, it splits in two.

The Superfriends take their half of the totem back to the tower, where Lena examines it, learning that it’s definitely radiating fifth dimensional energy.

“I can contact my old friend Helena G. Wells to ask her about it…”

They turn on the crystal to ask Vita, but she’s tired of being a hologram so she jumps into Brainy’s body instead. She tells them that they need to unite the halves of the totem to gain full control of it, and to get control of her half, Kara will have to pass her gauntlet before Nyxly does. And she has to face it alone.

“But I’m the superhero who LIKES working with her friends! Unfair.”

Lena yeets Vita out of Brainy and rushes off to make sure it never happens again while Kara heads to the training polygon to enter her gauntlet. A voice tells her she must face her past, face herself, and face the moment she lacked true courage. So she’s surprised when she finds herself in a flashback of the day she became Supergirl, when Alex’s plane was going down and she had no choice but to try to save her.

Did they just part her hair on the other side or did they find the only good wig on the CW lot?

After she goes through the motions, on her way back to her loft she hears a cry for help that she remembers ignoring the night of for fear she would be exposed. Kara is clearly not overthinking the riddle the way I was; I would have thought she had to just witness what ignoring the cry for help caused; have the courage to face the consequences of her decision. But Kara can’t help herself and decides to save the man this time, thinking that it was the most courageous choice. However, she soon finds herself back in reality with the voice telling her that she has failed the gauntlet. And so, everyone who had been in the museum when the totem broke gets a little jolt of courage.

Nyxly activates her half of the totem too and enters her own gauntlet with the same rules. She finds herself back in time, on the day of the coup she planned with her brother, which was stopped by her father, who praised his son for his bravery and scolded his daughter for her betrayal. Nyxly, filled with years of rage and resentment, decides to change this moment by killing her father this time, but that causes her to fail the gauntlet, too.

Is Nyxly getting more attractive as she gets more evil or is this a me problem?

There’s another surge of courage, and this proves too much for the citizens of National City. The museum breaks out into mayhem and fighting and Spike the Iguana is there so he turns back into his dragon form.

The Superfriends show up and Alex’s practical tactical brilliance has been fully replaced by taurine and raw courage, and she runs off to face the dragon head-on. J’onn yells after her that he’s proud of her and Kara just looks at her team like they are all playing a practical joke on her.

Me when everyone on my Twitter timeline was talking about how much they loved Mare of Easttown.

The scientists fight over the plans for lightning harnessing, Brainy miscalculates some punches, J’onn tries to reason with the dragon, and Alex fights with gusto. Kara steps in and manages to get everyone to listen to her long enough to de-dragonify the iguana and head back to the Tower with her.

“Supergirl” Episode 612: Look. Listen.

Hello and welcome to this recap of Supergirl season 6, episode 12, “Blind Spots,” aka the one co-written by Azie Tesfai herself!

At first it seems like we’re going to pick up where we left off, with Nyxly fondling her crystal ball and thinking about the totem, but before things can progress, we rewind instead. And in a rare turn of events, we actually get to see what Kelly was doing during the last episode while the Superfriends were up to their impish shenanigans.

Kelly starts her day by calling Joey to check in, and is happy to hear him talk about how excited he is for his new apartment with Orlando, and how he’s taking a friend to see it now, but her smile quickly fades when she hears him scream as the building collapses.

Kelly runs to help them, pulling rubble off Joey and his friend, and when Orlando tells her that ambulances don’t exactly rush to the Heights, Kelly decides to take the kids to the hospital herself since Joey is having trouble breathing.

But by the time she gets there, the hospital is already overwhelmed, they need more vents, there’s nothing they can do to speed up helping the victims of the building collapse.

Kelly, if I’m ever on a ventilator and a literal child needs one, unplug me!

I finally had to learn the evil Councilwoman’s name, and it’s Jean Rankin. She was close enough to the collapse to need to be in the hospital too but she demands to be taken to a private hospital instead; but when Kelly asks for her help, she assures her she’s “freeing up a bed” out of the goodness of her cold, black heart. But Kelly isn’t stupid.

Orlando suggests they ask Supergirl for help, but when Kelly calls Alex, she says they’re busy trying to stop Nyxly; in the meantime, at least, she’ll have some of her med school friends send respirators over.

“Yeah I have some connections at the Grey Sloan Mercy Grace Memorial Hospital for the Disaster Prone and Overdramatic, presuming there hasn’t been a sharknado there this week they should be able to help.”

Kelly looks a little hurt as her girlfriend hangs up on her and goes back to looking after Joey, who is starting to glow blue on the inside, along with the other survivors.

Once she’s in her fancy hospital, the doctor suggests resting will help her heal, but living by the mantra of no rest for the wicked, Rankin demands some trial medicine, and even though the doctor doesn’t want to, he eventually “leaves” a needle near Rankin’s bed and she injects herself, and her wounds heal up immediately, but her assistant passes out beside her.

Back at the hospital, Kelly sees the news reporting on the giant cat the Superfriends fought, but nothing about the building collapse. She calls her brother and leaves a message, venting about how she has even suited up as Guardian yet and fighting for the community is already so exhausting, especially since she feels like she’s fighting alone. She doesn’t know how to get people to care, and she feels so… powerless.

Having the opposite problem in Newfoundland, Lena is learning magic from her mom’s friend and is already way too good at it.

Beluga sevruga come winds of the caspian seaaaa!

Florence wants her to try again but Lena gets a news alert about the Nyxly business so she decides to head back to National City to help them, instead. Florence tries to get her to take her mother’s Grimoire with her, but Lena just leaves without looking back.

At the Tower, the Superfriends decide to shift their efforts into finding Mxy instead of Nyxly, since they think his power will be easier to track, so Kara needs to take Alex to the DEO Desert Facility to get something for Brainy. Alex hesitates, worried about Kelly, but she decides Kelly will be okay without her help and decides to leave anyway.

Wanting to check in on someone but also not wanting to bother them/seem overbearing is a regular struggle in this household.

Kelly sees the CATCO news channel finally reporting on the building collapse… but it’s talking about the traffic it’s causing, not the people struggling to get the help they need. Kelly calls Andrea about it, but Andrea says the Heights “isn’t newsworthy” for her demographic and brushes her off, frustrating Kelly even further. These are the people who are supposed to be her friends, and no one is listening.

Andrea, you have ONE (1) friend, it wouldn’t have killed you to try to get into Kelly’s good graces.

Kelly hears a knock at the door and when she answers it, she’s surprised to find John Diggle, who apparently has been wandering around the Arrowverse since his show ended. He says that James sent him because he was worried about Kelly, that she’s leaning on her military training and not stopping to take care of herself while trying to take care of everyone else. She explains that she’s trying to help and just feel so… alone.

“And there were so few Black characters on this show over the years they literally had to import one from another show to help me.”

She tells him that Alex sent respirators to help but no one else has done anything else to help her. Diggle understands her struggle, and wishes it didn’t need to come to this, but that maybe she just needs to show them what’s going on. Really put it in front of their faces, make it impossible to ignore. So they head down to the site of the building collapse to see what’s really making these people so sick. And sure enough, as soon as they get there, they find a blue glowing light and follow it into the rubble in search of answers.

In a fancy car nearby, Rankin observes the rubble and is pleased that she got to look like a supportive community leader but will still end up getting her way. Speaking of getting her way, she says she really wants a sandwich, and one immediately shows up in her hands. And once again, her assistant passes out about it. And she thinks she can use this new power to transform the neighborhood.

When Alex and Kara come back with some fifth dimensional energy trackers, they follow the signal and are surprised that they lead them right to Kelly and Diggle. They catch each other up and Kara explains that she feels bad about accidentally powering up Nyxly’s device.

One time in high school I stepped on a girl’s flip flop and broke it and I still feel bad about it, so I understand.

They realize that their cases are connected, and that they can remove the energy from the debris, which will help them find Nyxly AND help the citizens of the Heights. A win-win.

Meanwhile Rankin is really leaning into her new powers, conjuring money to bribe some constituents into voting for her, completely unaware that every time she wields her power, she’s taking it away from others. Not that I think she would mind knowing locals were paying the price for her magic.

Kelly tells Kara about the damage to the Heights, about the lack of resources and support, and she begs her to help. Not just Supergirl, but her girlfriend’s sister, her friend. But Kara assures her that when they stop Nyxly, Mxy will be able to snap his fingers and put everything back the way it was. She flies off as Kelly is trying to explain that making things “the way things were” wouldn’t actually be helping, but she’s already gone. Ignored once again.

“A girl is absent for ONE episode and suddenly she’s invisible.”

Kelly gets a call from Orlando and Joey is getting worse even though the doctors don’t know why. Alex checks in on her and Kelly thanks her for the respirators; the only thing anyone has actually done for her today.

The problem is, she only showed up as a girlfriend, and not as a girlfriend AND an ally.

Kelly starts to explain that there’s something else going on, but Alex agrees with Kara that stopping Nyxly will “fix” everything and heads back to the Tower.

Nia, who Kelly wasn’t even talking to but was listening more than Alex apparently, gives Kelly one of the trackers to see if maybe they did miss something. Kelly quietly thanks her for this crumb of support.

Giving someone the tools to help themselves is better than nothing I guess but also like SOMEONE HELP HER.

Kelly uses the tracer and it leads her to Rankin, who is radiating fifth dimensional energy; Kelly thinks it’s a little odd that she looks good as new while Joey and the others are getting worse. Rankin is giving a press conference and when asked about the people who are still sick, Rankin gives a tone deaf answer, insisting she feels great and that everyone else should just… try harder to feel better?? Orlando runs out and asks his own questions, wondering what fancy treatment she got that the others in the community didn’t have access to. She rattles off some Fox News lines about how they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, which isn’t even relevant here, but what IS relevant is what Orlando responds, which is that the problem isn’t that they aren’t pulling themselves up, it’s that the system is holding them down. A guard goes to get Orlando to stop asking questions by way of nightstick, but Guardian steps in and stops him with her shield before he can.

Guardian chases after a fleeing Rankin, but she has powers now. They fight and Rankin speaks her greatest insecurity out loud, “You’re not strong enough.”

She looks like a little sister wearing her big brother’s cosplay and it’s very cute but also looks very uncomfortable.

But no matter how much she doubts her strength, no one can deny Kelly’s smarts, and she manages to grab some of Rankin’s hair before she disappears.

She takes the hair back to the Tower and demands to know where the Superfriends were when the fight broke out. She tells them Rankin is the source of the energy but that she couldn’t fight her alone. Kara starts to apologize but Kelly interrupts. She has something to say.

“Supergirl” Episode 611 Recap: Wicked Witch of Back East

Hello and welcome to this Supergirl 611 recap, “Mxy in the Middle” aka “The One I Thought Was a Musical Episode But Definitely Wasn’t”

Previously on Supergirl, Lena had a Phantom vision about her mother and decided to back “to where she was born” which was also “Back East” and we all assumed it was going to be Ireland because we’ve heard her speak…plus Nia released Nyxly from the dream realm to spend a day with her mom and Supergirl fell into Nyxly’s trap and summoned Mr. Mxyzptlk.

We open at the close (of last week’s episode) and Mxy is surprised to see Princess Nyxly and Supergirl going toe to toe. They both summoned him; Supergirl for help and Nyxly to get revenge for the time he testified that she was crazy after trying to destroy a few measly enemies.

“No one died!”

Mxy snaps Supergirl out of the ice and she flies them to safety so Nyxly can’t track his magic. Kara tells the team about the imp she thought she left in the Phantom Zone and Mxy fills them in on her backstory and her father and how now she needs a crystal to control something called an allstone.

Also? He does it all in song. Which is how I wish all lore dumps were done. (That said, the description for this episode mentioned this song, so I thought Mxy was going to make everyone sing, and it seems like a crime to have a Broadway singer and professional rock star just sitting there watching this happen, but okay.)

“I have some Anna Nalick all queued up on my phone if we want to join in.”

Mxy says that the allstone was broken into totems, which gave me flashbacks to the Legends of Tomorrow season that was so convoluted my friends and I started using the term “totems shmotems” to explain the feeling of “let’s not think too hard about lore and get back to talking about characters and feelings.” The totems each represent different things, like love and dreams, and they can be disguised as anything. But also, Nyxly needs a descendent of the evil imp who made the allstone in a crystal to activate them, which just so happens to be Mxy.

Nia is stressed about how much all this is snowballing and Kara is blaming herself. Nia has an idea to depower her, and Kara promises her impish pal that nobody puts Mxy in a crystal.

Nia has a dream of the ice cage again, but this time she sees Mxy dead at the bottom of the cage. Brainy interrupts her and can tell she’s hiding something from him, so he prods her and she confesses to him about bringing Nyxly here from the dream realm. She feels so, so bad. She really thought this was just going to be another trash monster they could defeat with teamwork.

“And my mom wasn’t even nice to me.”

But Brainy understands. He spent practically a whole season working with L*x because he was manipulated into thinking it was the right thing to do. Brainy encourages her to tell Kara, but Nia is afraid Kara will lose respect for her as a hero if she does, so she says they can fix it without Kara ever having to find out.

In her fancy car with the invisible driver, Lena finally approaches her destination: Newfoundland. And while I did confirm (via Google) that some areas of Newfoundland have people with Irish-esque accents, it still boggles the mind why they didn’t just say she was going to Ireland.

Lena gets a call from Andrea, who compliments her on how happy she sounds.

Whenever I’m going through screenshots to pick some for my recap, I always do this little involuntary gasp when I flip to a photo of her smiling like this. LOOK AT HER.

Lena asks for Andrea’s help finding someone in a picture she found of her mom and her two best friends. She found one woman, Margaret, but she can’t seem to find out what became of Florence. Andrea agrees to use her worldwide media outlet to good use and help her out.

When Lena arrives at her B&B, at first the innkeeper Deedee is so delighted and welcoming, until Lena mentions her mother’s name, then suddenly there’s no room at the inn. Deedee not-so-subtly mumbles something about a “dirty witch” and fully turns Lena away. As if this poor lamb hasn’t already suffered enough at the hands of a family name.

“Sins of the mother” is one of my least favorite tropes! Stop trying to Elphaba Lena into a villain, Irish-adjacent town in Canada!!

Back at the Tower, the Superfriends make a plan. They have a re-engineered siphoning device and an extra sized power-dampening cuff and they’re ready to rumble. Mxy just wants to use the Phantom Zone projector, but Alex and Kara super do not.

BE CUTER, I DARE YOU

And at first I thought it was very cute how tiny human Alex Danvers threw her body in front of her sister of steel, but then I realized that this is actually one thing she could really have protected her from. She was ready to take the nightmares from her sister.

Kara thinks Nyxly has just been wrongly prosecuted and that all she really needs is a friend, so she doesn’t want to do anything too drastic just yet. They need an amulet that is in Corto Maltese, so Kara flies off to fetch it, determined to save everyone. And to not have to send anyone – ANYONE – into the Phantom Zone.

Nyxly is sitting pretty in the glam rock spaceship when Mitch shows up, fresh off a prison escape, furious she didn’t help him. She says she is helping him, by teaching him that trust is a fool’s game and everyone will hurt you in the end.

“Also, while we’re talking about things that are fake, love is a lie.”

She shoos him away; he thought he was the one using her to get his magical menagerie up and running, but it’s clear she’s the daddy in this situation now.

Up in the Tower, Alex is doing some science on the Amulet and does her regularly scheduled explanation of why Kelly isn’t here that isn’t just “we can’t afford Katie McGrath and Azie Tesfai in the same episode because of some CGI you’ll be seeing in a bit.” She says Kelly is dealing with the aftermath of the building collapse In the Heights, and Alex wants Mxy to keep an eye on the phone in case she calls, but Mxy wants to help. Sadly, without his magic, he’s pretty useless, and he overhears J’onn saying as much.

Back East, Lena goes to a local restaurant to find her mother’s friend Margaret. She orders a whiskey neat and some information from Margaret’s daughter Peggy, who is the one, the only, the Morrigan.

This is why Canadian Bingo is the best game.

Similar to the innkeeper, at first Peggy is a twinkly picture of hospitality, and Lena is so thrilled to have found the woman she was looking for.

“Surely this peer will be friendly to me! Surely my luck can’t be THAT bad!”

But as soon as Lena mentions her mother’s name, her smile turns to a glower and she accuses her mother of causing Margaret pain and being the reason she’s dead.

Lena is confused and Peggy says that Elizabeth caused trouble and then disappeared with a rich man, leaving Margaret to wither away, which sounds like a bit of a stretch as far as chain of responsibilities goes, but either way, she’s upset.

Lena promises she doesn’t want to cause more trouble, she just wants more information about her mom and friends. Then she’ll leave, go Out West and back to her found family since both her biological and step families provide her with nothing but pain. Peggy says the three women were a coven, and when Lena scoffs, she is like, “There’s a news clip of you being flown through the air in the arms of your bulletproof girlfriend but witches is where you draw the line?” And before Lena can remember that one of her friends uses something called DREAM ENERGY to create glowing whips, Peggy goes on to say that she watched Lena’s mother light a shed on fire with her mind while her father was inside.

“That escalated quickly.”

Peggy tells her to let the dead lie and Lena is so sad. She really thought going off on a side quest was going to be more fun than this.

Next page: ANGRY LESBIAN EYELINER ALERT. 

“Supergirl” Episode 610: Powerless

Hello and welcome to this recap of Supergirl Season 6 Episode 10, Still I Rise aka the One Where We Learned What Dreamer Dreamed.

Previously on Supergirl, Kara and Kelly helped two brothers named Orlando and Joey, Kelly became Guardian, and Nyxly tricked Dreamer into a deal.

And we begin just after that deal was set into motion, with Nia using her powers to bring Nyxly into the real world. It’s not long before Nyxly starts to show her true colors and Nia has some regrets about this deal, especially when she finds out that the 24 hours she’ll spend with her mother will be in a magic trap where she can’t communicate with anyone to warn them. She needs a head start.

But, to her credit, Nyxly does the one thing that she promised that Nia was most worried about, and in the blink of an eye, Nia’s mom is standing before her. And because sometimes moms just gotta mom, they are barely out of their hug before Isabel tells her daughter she’s disappointed in her.

“Well how was I supposed to know that magic has a price!”

Nia says she needed her mom to train her, that she left before they could work together, and her mom is like, “Haaaave you considered that me and my dream powers were trying to teach you about dreams while I was visiting you in your dreams.” The owl was indeed her mother, and Nia brushed it away. Nia knew that if making this deal had any consequences, she could solve it with her mom (I mean they got Kara out of a fractured Phantom Zone for Rao’s sake!)…though now that they’re trapped that might prove a little more difficult. Mom doesn’t mince words, saying that Nia unleashed something terrible. But since they’re stuck here, they might as well make good use of their time, so they get to work.

Back at the tower, Kara and Brainy are watching the PSA they made in which a very enthusiastic Brainiac 5 and a very awkward Supergirl tell kids to eat their vegetables.

Me trying to pretend things are “back to normal” knowing full well it’s not.

Kara is so embarrassed and wants to kill the whole project; if she’s going to do a PSA she wants it to be about mental health or something bigger. But Brainy says not only is it too late to keep it from being published, but it’s too late to take it down, since it already has 800k views. Kara is feeling a bit panicky about this news so she decides to distract herself by following the sounds of grunting. Which…feels like a dangerous choice when you work with your sister and her girlfriend, but power to ya.

And while Alex and Kelly are indeed getting physical, it’s because Alex is training Kelly to fight.

POV: You just walked in on your sister getting sweaty with her girlfriend.

Kelly takes Alex down and Alex says she did a good job but Kelly doesn’t crack a smile; she didn’t do the move exactly how Alex taught her, so the perfectionist in her wants to try again, to get it right.

Kara beams, all proud. She remembers when Alex trained her. She looks like she’s considering joining them but Kelly gets a message from the foster home that Orlando’s apartment fell through so he and Joey won’t be together next month like they planned, so Kelly wants to go be there for Joey like she promised. Kara made the same promise to Orlando, so she goes to find him, too.

Orlando is surprised to see Supergirl catch his stray basketball, and before telling him about the Earth-25 version of herself that is the captain of a basketball team called the Lakehawks, she asks what happened to his apartment plans.

“It’s a tad mesmerizing for Lena to watch, though she doesn’t want to admit it…The ball seems to be an extension of her body.”

He explains how he got approved for an affordable housing building that specifically has some units designated for the formerly incarcerated to help reduce recidivism, but that the building is being sold to a tech company. He’s feeling despondent, like he’s stuck in a vicious circle, because he can’t get an apartment without a job, but he can’t get a job without an address, and he can’t take Joey home without both. Supergirl promises she has his back but he doesn’t look like he believes her.

Up on a spaceship, one of the Glam Rock aliens from the Midvale episodes, looking much less Glam these days, tracks Nyxly and captures her in his cage, planning to put her in his menagerie. She uses her wiley ways to convince him that since she has no powers, she wouldn’t be a good act for his show, so he hangs his head and lets her go.

:sings: Don’t be suspicious, don’t be suspicious.

But on her way out she sees a bunch of news articles taped up with Supergirl’s picture crossed out and she realizes their interests might be aligned, and offers to help him catch her. All she needs is an engineer to set up her trap, and he’s happy to kidnap one for her.

Kara shows up to work at CatCo already on the phone and balancing a stack of papers. She really wants to get this information about the low-income housing being bought off, and wants to “work with” Supergirl to convince the City Council not to do this. Andrea appears as silent as a shadow and says that a bunch of articles about stats aren’t going to help, not even if Supergirl rattles them off. Andrea thinks Supergirl should do a social media takeover, leverage the platforms people are already using.

“The right hashtag can save just about any show. Even that one God-obsessed show starring Prince Charming.”

Also this isn’t really a suggestion. It’s happening. Much to Kara’s dismay.

Nia and her mom are practicing dreaming, and Nia ends up in her dream forest, but on purpose this time. And she’s pretty proud of herself. She sees an ice cage and tries to figure out what it means, but before she does, she gets attacked by ravens again. She wants to snap out of the dream but her mom won’t let her: she can’t run away from these feelings, she has to face them. Nia starts listing the symbolism of ravens according to her dream books, but mom tells her to combine that knowledge with what ravens mean to HER.

Nia sees her old dollhouse with a stained glass raven in the attic window, and is transported into it, where she sees a little version of her sister Maeve.

As someone who often has hyper-vivid and/or lucid dreams, returning to an old one can indeed be trippy.

Elsewhere in National City, the circus jerk beams down to steal an alien engineer. His cry for help interrupts Supergirl’s very strained live feed where people are calling her a hypocrite and she is probably grateful to have a good excuse to leave in the middle of it. The glam rock alien disappears before Kara can stop him, and when she gets back to the Tower she says that she searched the whole city and can’t find him, but she knows he looks familiar.

Somehow they have identified him though; does Supergirl wear a bodycam? Anyway, the kidnapper is Mitch, and he kidnapped a builder alien, so they know he’s starting up his menagerie again.

Since it seems like the team has this handled, Kara wants to go have Supergirl talk to the city council woman to try to convince her not to make this building deal. Alex looks supportive, but concerned. She knows Kara has to figure out that she can’t solve systematic racism/classism/capitalism in a day but she also knows Kara has to figure that one out on her own.

Me when my straight friends explain to me an issue LGBTQ+ people face as if I, myself, have not faced it. Trying to be supportive but also wondering where the hell they’ve been.

In her dream attic, Nia is playing with little Maeve, and she realizes she’s holding a ball of light. The little girl asks her for the light, says if Nia gives her the light she’ll love her forever, but as soon as Maeve touches it, it burns her. Nia wakes up crying, knowing what the dream means. The ravens are Maeve. Nia knows how much her having these powers hurt Maeve, because all Maeve ever wanted was these powers. So maybe Nia has been holding back, not wanting to let her light shine too brightly, because even though hiding her light was hurting her, she knew letting it glow would hurt Maeve.

If your light is too bright for someone, don’t dim it, just tell them to get sunglasses.

But the thing is, Nia isn’t doing anything TO Maeve, even though that’s how Maeve feels. It’s not right of Maeve to make her jealousy and hurt feelings Nia’s problem. To lash out and make it personal when it’s really an internal feeling that could have been worked out with uninvolved parties instead of making Nia feel guilty for doing something she loves. Maeve’s feelings are valid, but her reaction is unfair to Nia. And frankly a bit hypocritical, because when the roles were reversed, when Maeve thought she was getting the powers, she didn’t seem to care how Nia felt about it.

Nia’s mom says that her authentic self is the greatest gift she can give the world, and hopefully Nia really hears that.

Supergirl goes to the councilwoman to talk about recidivism and gentrification.

At least she didn’t get the Superfriends together to sing Imagine?

But the councilwoman won’t hear her. She says she’s doing it for the community and that she doesn’t want “criminals” in the neighborhood, so Kara knows she’s really not hearing her.

When she gets back to the Tower, Kara finds Kelly training again, and joins her. They both have had DAYS and are taking out their rage on some equipment.

I am just so obsessed with Kelly having a relationship with Kara that has nothing to do with Alex.

Kara tells Kelly that she thinks she’s being a bit hard on herself. But Kelly is honestly freaking out a little. She doesn’t have powers, or a magic glove, getting the moves right is her only way to fight alongside the Superfriends. But Kara reiterates what Alex told her, that the move she DID do was perfect for the situation, even if it wasn’t her original goal. Kara says Kelly needs to see that she’s as capable as everyone else already knows she is.

Next page: A couple of gay lady superhero’s flirting (no, not Kara and Lena this time). 

“Supergirl” Episode 609 Recap: Guardian, Angel

Hello and welcome to my Supergirl recap for Episode 609, “Dream Weaver,” aka the one where Guardian rises.

Previously on Supergirl, Kara leaned in, Nia missed her mom, Lena went to her yet unnamed homeland, and Andrea pushed the CatCo team to learn more about the Superfriends.

We open this week in the woods where Lena poked Alex with a stick that one time. Oh wait, no, it’s not the Reignforest, it’s Nia’s dreamscape. She’s in a pretty blue dress and following a woman in white with a snowy owl on her shoulder.

I know I don’t usually put such scenic shots in my recap but look at this! It looks like the beginning of a ballet or something! Stunning.

She recognizes the woman as her mother and calls out to her, but she gets her dress caught on a stick and gets thwarted by an unkindness of ravens. She wakes herself up before she sees what we see: Nyxly lurking in the shadows.

Out in the world of the waking, it’s my favorite night of the year: GAME NIGHT! Alex and Kelly are on a team and absolutely killing it. Just totally on the same page the whole time, with shorthand that surprises even them. Kara is delighted, J’onn jokes that they’re cheating, and it’s all very cute and wholesome fun. They even quote Frozen.

“Some things never change, like the feel of your hand in mine.”

J’onn says that living together suits them, and I agree. Nia and J’onn are up next but Nia is having a hard time keeping her eyes open; she hasn’t been sleeping well lately. She thinks it’s because Brainy is gone, which is sweet, but I have a feeling something imp-ier is afoot.

Kara is keeping score because Lena is still “Back East” (which would mean, like, Boston to most people, but apparently means the Mysterious European Country Lena is from to National City) and if she can’t team up with Alex or Lena, she won’t play at all. Kara says that she hopes Lena finds peace and they all take a moment to think about how dirty Lena has been done by the family that took her in.

They ask about Kelly’s new job as a social worker and she tells them about a new case she has with a 10-year-old alien orphan with EMP powers. Alex knows this will be the perfect gig because empathy is Kelly’s superpower.

Also in these scenes they were trying to out-babe Avalance, which is no easy feat but I believe in them.

While the Superfriends were having a lovely game night together, it seems Andrea was making a murderboard wondering what the Superfriends do for fun together. She calls Kara, Nia, and William to her office to demand they find the answers, but I think she’s asking the wrong questions. MY question is, does Andrea have any friends? Can Lena hang out with her more when she’s back in town? This obsession with the Superfriends is starting to worry me.

I think her real question is, how can Acrata/The Shadow join the Superfriends.

While Andrea is giving them their next assignments, Nia falls asleep standing up. It’s truly impressive, and I say this as someone who has watched a friend fall asleep sitting up on a backless stool during a New Year’s Eve party. Andrea is displeased by this, but instead of berating her or belittling her, she sends Nia home for a mental health day to sleep.

She turns her attention to Kara and William, and warns them that if they don’t get an interview with Supergirl soon, they’ll be stuck writing obits. Pulitzer shmulitzer.

Knowing she has a head start on finding out how to access the Superfriends, Kara zips off to help J’onn on a mission instead. When she gets to the scene, she sees a truck that has been opened like a sardine can. After a brief investigation, they realize that two different types of alien worked together for this gig. Kara is a little confused. “Since when do those two types of aliens work together,” asks a Kryptonian who dated a Daxximite to a Green Martian who dated a White Martian. But the important thing they DO know is that the stolen goods are bomb ingredients, so that can’t be a good thing.

When Kelly shows up for her first day with her new case, the foster mom says she’s been having trouble with the boy Kelly is here to see, Joey. He used to be a sweet kid but the last time he went to visit his brother in prison, he started acting out, getting so emotional his powers surge. She’s worried someone will get hurt.

I’m glad to see that the manila folders people don’t actually carry around with them anymore are being recycled in the Supergirl prop house this season.

The women are interrupted by a little girl running through the room on a quest for justice, specifically re: her stolen bread roll. It reminded me of all of us who stood up against the misogyny of teachers asking only the boys to help carry things in grade school even when you hit puberty first and have a good three inches on all the boys in your class and the leg strength of a dancer. Eh hem. Anyway, Kelly and I are both amused by this little ball of energy.

As the little girl (Esme) scampers away, Kelly realizes that all the kids are wearing power dampening cuffs. As the foster mom defends that choice by saying it’s the only way to keep all the kids safe, Kelly notices that there are also high-tech security cameras installed. And suddenly Kelly has even more concerns than ever.

When Kelly goes up to Joey’s room, he’s reading a Captain Carrot comic, which is apparently a real DC comic about a superhero who is also a bunny, and she bonds with him about having a big brother to look up to and worry about.

Next time I look for a therapist I’m just going to ask for “The closest you have to Kelly Olsen, please.”

Understandably soothed by Kelly’s calm, understanding tone Joey admits that he’s worried about his big brother because when he last saw him, he had bags under his eyes, a clear sign of overusing his powers. He’s in a work release program in prison, and he’s worried if he uses his powers too much he’ll die. The only reason Orlando is in prison in the first place is because their parents died and he needed more money to help take care of Joey than a minimum wage job could provide so he robbed a store.

Kelly looks at this scared little boy and promises she’ll do anything she can do to help.

If this season doesn’t end with Alex and Kelly starting a foster home for alien children I’ll write the fanfic myself.

Back at the Tower, Kara, Alex and J’onn are making a plan to stop the aliens from making a bomb when Kelly comes in looking concerned. She explains Joey’s predicament and Kara says she’s familiar with the work release program; it’s called Second Chance and she wrote an article on it once. The jobs are all with a clothing manufacturer so she doesn’t understand why Orlando would need to use his EMP powers, but that’s what Kelly wants to find out. She asks for Kara’s help and she IMMEDIATELY leaves Alex and J’onn in charge of the bomb mystery to help her future sister-in-law.

I would kill or die for the women of Supergirl, turns out.

And what I loved most about this moment is how uniquely Supergirl it is. (Both the hero and the show.) Oliver Queen or later-seasons Barry Allen would have been like THERE ARE ALIENS MAKING A BOMB WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR YOUR SIDE MISSION and would only help later when things got desperate/it became obvious it was related to the main mission. But Kara loves teamwork and friendship and she loves her sister most of all and thus she loves the woman her sister loves. So it wasn’t even a question. She not only prioritized Kelly but also trusted Alex and J’onn to handle the main mission in her stead. No convincing needed.

Trying to relax during her mental health day, Nia is looking at pictures of her mom to prepare to go back into her dreamscape. When she gets into her dream forest, the same thing happens. Her dress gets caught on a branch, the birds swoop…but this time, Nyxly saves her from the birds. And Nia is surprised to see her.

Stop right now, thank you very much.

Nyxly apologizes for dream crashing and explains how during the rescue from the Phantom Zone she ended up trapped here, and she can be sentient/corporeal here because she’s a fifth dimensional imp. And she needs Nia’s help.

You see, she wants Nia to use her powers (the same powers that accidentally conjured a pink panther back in Midvale) to materialize her in the real world. She promises she’ll go straight back to the fifth dimension to see her father and brother who she “dearly misses” despite having told Kara her father was a “mad king” who killed her older brother and sent her to the Phantom Zone to keep her from being queen. Whether either of these stories are true is anyone’s guess, but the fact that it’s such a different story proves she’s lied tremendously at least once, either then or now, if not both.

Nia is wisely hesitant, until Nyxly tells her what she’ll do for Nia in return: She’ll bring her mother back from the dead. Interestingly and importantly, Nyxly doesn’t add this next part until Nia seems against this plan; the caveat would be that she could only bring her back for 24 hours. And again it’s unclear how much of this is a lie. Is it true she can only do it for 24 hours and she just wasn’t going to mention it until it was clear she wasn’t one to bend the rules of magic for personal gain, is the whole thing a lie and she just thought the caveat would make it seem more believable when she saw Nia’s reaction…it’s anyone’s guess!

Nia is suspicious but it’s hard to fully write someone off when they just offered to make your wildest dreams come true.

Does Once Upon a Time’s Neverland phase haunt Nia’s nightmares too? Is that why these scenes are so dark?

Just as Nia seems on the edge of agreeing to the trade, the white owl swoops down to attack Nyxly and Nia takes this opportunity to leave her dream, like when you’re trapped in a conversation in a party and they’re finally distracted enough for you to slip away to the bathroom. (At least, that’s how I remember them being. It’s been a while.)

While Nia naps, Kara and Kelly go to see the prison warden and ask him about the Second Chances program. He is so proud of it, and credits Kara with giving it positive publicity that attracted more donors. They ask about why a prisoner might be using his EMP powers, and the warden can’t think of a reason so he promises to look into it. They want to see him but there’s a two week waiting period for visitors so they’re simply out of luck.

“But…I have a Pulitzer.”

Just kidding, Kara uses her Super powers to distract a guard and check the computers and realizes Orlando is already being transported to his job so they decide to just catch him en route.

When they go outside, they see what Joey was talking about; Orlando looks worn down and tired and he hasn’t even gotten to work yet. Kara senses something hinky going on so she flies to the job site and does a little x-ray spying. She notices the workers getting sorted into two groups; most prisoners go to the manufacturing job as expected, but she notices some men being pulled out of line, put in a van, and taken to a second location.

I see Kara has been watching Nancy Drew. (As she should be. You should be, too. It’s a very good show.)

When Kara gets to said location, J’onn shows up, and they realize their two cases are connected. Kara can see that Orlando and the other men don’t want to be doing this, don’t want to hurt anyone, but the guard who pulled them aside is holding them at gunpoint and forcing them to use their powers to help him steal bomb supplies.

Valerie Anne’s Supergirl recap continues on the next page! 

“Supergirl” Episode 608 Recap: I Am Trash!

Welcome back! It’s been a minute but here we are, with a recap of Supergirl episode 608, aka the beginning of the end, the start of the final stretch of episodes. Ever. :sob:

That might sound sarcastic, but I’m serious. I know we’ve had our ups and downs with this show, but it has been very important to me over the years for many reasons and I am genuinely sad to see it go.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Previously on Supergirl, Lex banished Kara to the Phantom Zone and when the SuperFriends tried to get her back they released some Phantoms into National City, so everyone was experiencing the cold nightmares the Phantoms provide. Kara found her dad, who she previously thought was dead, and eventually the Superfriends vanquished the Phantoms and got their Supergirl back.

The episode begins with Brainy trying to Mission Impossible his way back to the Tower with a black box while Dreamer is in his ear warning him that the clock is ticking and Lena saying that the “Golden Sleeper is stirring.”

When he gets back, he shows a pristine Welcome Home, Kara donut cake and Nia admits that actually Kara is still sleeping under the sun lamps but they were afraid if they didn’t tell Brainy it was a rush job he’d get distracted and eat the cake.

When Kara does start to wake up from under the sunlamps, she has a nightmare about the Phantoms but as soon as her eyes snap open, Alex is there.

My kingdom for Alex Danvers to be there when I wake up from a nightmare.

Alex reassures her, “We’ve got you, I’ve got you.” Kara tries to lighten the mood, joking how she never wants to see anything Phantom-related for a good long time, including Operas or Star Wars movies. Maybe not even Scooby Doo, just in case. Alex smiles at her; she’s so glad her baby sister is home.

Listen I know Melissa probably needs a break but HEAR ME OUT: Sentinel/Guardian spinoff. I’m just not ready to say goodbye.

Kara asks for another hug and Alex happily obliges. And then she leads her to her proper welcome home party. She gets a hug from Space Dad and Brainy, from her little sis Nia…and she hugs Lena.

How close to accidentally cracking a rib do you think Kara got?

Kara squeezes her tight and says, and I quote, “It’s only because you’re on the team that I’m here.” Tears spill down Lena’s cheeks and she smiles.

*Nervous gay noises*

Kelly couldn’t be there because that scene alone filled their gay quota for the episode, but Kara understands. Zor-El is there too, up from his nap, and he’s excited to go to Argo and be reunited with his wife, but not before he learns a little more about what his daughter’s day-to-day life is like.

They call him Uncle Archie from Midvale and take him to CatCo because they learned nothing from the Mike situation, and Kara is nervous to be back but Nia covered for her while she was gone so she doesn’t think Andrea will suspect anything strange. And in fact, Andrea is pretty happy to see her again.

What in the bisexual pirate tiktok business casual outfit is this?

Kara lies her way out of Nia’s lie, saying that she was indeed undercover for a story but the story fell through…for reasons. Andrea is disappointed but is still glad to have her Pulitzer winner back. She calls a staff meeting and says that CatCo is #8 on the Top 10 list and she wants to move them to #1 by next month because she’s been watching a lot of The Bold Type and she’s pretty sure that’s how journalism works.

Andrea wants Kara to use her Supergirl connection to get a Phantom exclusive. She says Phantom enough to make the Girl of Steel shake a little, especially since she had no idea Phantoms attacked National City.

She goes over to Nia, looking horrified; she blames herself for this. The Phantoms got loose because her team was trying to save her. And she knows exactly the kind of hell the people of National City went through because of it. Nia tries to pivot that blame to Lex, where it belongs, but Kara’s already in her head about it.

Once she gets those lil eyebrow crinkles there’s no turning back.

William interrupts the pity party, and Kara apologizes, but he gets it; he’s been undercover too. And also, as a blessing to all of us, he has a girlfriend! I can’t be sure but I think I’ll like William a hell of a lot more when he goes back to just being the coworker Kara has to jump through hoops to hide her Super identity from without the added layer of him trying to court her. Kara is genuinely happy for him, because she’s the best of us.

Nia is watching over Uncle Archie out on the balcony (a staple of National City architecture), who is a little overwhelmed by his new powers. Nia gets what it’s like to receive powers with no instruction manual. As they chat, they notice a satellite hurtling toward them and Nia is excited; now Papa Zor-El will REALLY see what Kara’s life is like.

Yow that Despicable Me scene that’s Agnes just like rage screaming about how cute her stuffed unicorn is? That’s the kind of rage-joy I feel about how cute Nia is.

They suit up and fly up to stop the satellite, and Kara is just so happy. She went from being the second-to-last Kryptonian to finding her aunt, her mom, her dad, and an entire Kryptonian City alive and well. Kara gleefully hurls the satellite back into the atmosphere and Papa Zor-El uses his new freeze breath to put out a fire the satellite caused on a trash barge.

When they’re done, Kara goes back to work and tells Andrea that she wants to change her story from the Phantoms to the trash barge and how it’s all Lex’s fault because it was full of DEO wreckage. Andrea likes this story pitch but decides to give it to William because Kara is still the only one with a direct line to Supergirl. Out of options, Kara relents.

“This is actually going to make me supremely uncomfortable but telling you that would make me uncomfortable too so I’ll just go suffer in silence instead” is a little too relatable, thanks.

Because the truth is, she can’t tell anyone how traumatized she was by the Phantoms. So she has to go through this list of victims, talk to the people whose pain she blames herself for while also exposing herself to triggers. It’s something we don’t often get to see, how these ordeals actually affect superheroes. But of course it does. Especially someone with as big a heart as Kara’s.

They head back to the Tower where Zor-El expresses concern for the environment. Everyone is like “yeah welcome to the party” but Zor-El is seriously concerned. The oceans going to shit was the tipping point for Krypton and Zor-El couldn’t save that planet, so he is desperate to help this one. He’s hoping Kara still has her pod (the one that got knocked off course) to see if the plans for Krypton are in it but she has a better idea: the Fortress of Solitude. Even though it’s hard for her to be there, she’s happy to show her dad their little slice of Krypton on Earth.

Nia finds Lena working in the Tower, and Lena says she just got off the phone with Kara; she knows she’s at the Fortress. Just a lil update.

“Play it cool, Lena, don’t let Nia see that you’re over the goddamn moon that Kara looped you in but not her.” – Lena’s inner monologue, probably

Nia sort of sadly says she’s happy for Kara, but Lena understands how Nia feels. They’re both genuinely happy for Kara, but also they know that their dead moms aren’t going to magically reappear the way Kara’s parents have. Nia says what she’s supposed to say, “It’s great that they get to share that,” and Lena knows Nia means it, but she also understands the jealousy that comes with it.

No one has ever loved this woman the way she deserved, from the day she lost her mother til the day Kara told her she was Supergirl.

Nia admits that it’s kind of hard to watch. She’d kill for just one more day with her mom. Lena says she’d give anything to just know her mother. Nia asks if Lena ended up conquering her Phantom nightmare about her mom and Lena quirks an eyebrow at her; didn’t they all conquer their nightmares? Nia brushes off the fact that she super didn’t and Lena says that she let the Kelpie overtake her and then faced the memory of her mother. She finally stopped blaming her wee baby self for not saving her mother.

Every once in a while during Lena/Nia scenes I remember that Katie and Nicole are best friends in real life and I become GIDDY.

Lena knows there’s more for her to learn about her mom and Nia reassures her that she’ll figure it out. After all, she’s the smartest woman in National City.

Zor-El is looking over the destruction of Krypton and feeling bereft; but Kara calls him a hero. He feels bad about yeeting her from her home, but she assures him that she found a new one. And he is determined to not let Kara’s new home befall the same fate as her old one.

I keep trying to think of clever captions for these screenshots but then I see Melissa’s face and my stupid lizard brain just yells HANG IT IN THE LOUVRE on a loop.

When the team reconvenes at the Tower, Zor-El says he has an idea for how to clean up Earth’s oceans. Everyone tries to explain that things are more complicated than he’s making it sound, but he’s a man on a mission. He brings out an upgraded version of the little robot Kal-Ex that looks a bit like Alpha from the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

Next page: #DanversSistersForever. 😭

“Supergirl” Episode 607 Recap: Nightmare Before Hiatus

G’day and welcome to this recap of Supergirl episode 607, Fear Knot.

Previously on Supergirl, Kara got trapped in the Phantom Zone where she found her Kryptonian dad and a 5th dimensional imp named Nyxly, Team Super captured some Phantoms that got loose, and Brainy and Nia went back in time to Midvale to get Kara’s DNA so they could go on a mission to save Supergirl.

After two delightful Midvale episodes, we finally pop back into the Phantom Zone to check on Kara, who is dragging her dad away from the explosion she caused during her fight with Nyxly. As soon as they’re out of the danger of burning to a crisp, they find themselves in the wake of a phantom that scratches Kara, causing her eyes to cloud over in fear. She starts to feel hopeless, and loses the will to keep going. Her dad tries to pull her back to her feet, to tell her that her Earth family is surely looking for her, but she’s suddenly convinced they’re all going to die and it’s going to be all her fault.

Melissa did amazing in this episode but if we never see Sad Kara for the rest of the season I’d be okay with that.

Back on Earth, Nia and Brainy return from the past with Kara’s blood to find that Brainy missed the mark a little again (sounds like he needs some time travel lessons from AvaLance) and they were gone for three days. The good news is, Team Super was busy in their absence and everyone – Kelly, Lena, EVERYONE – is ready to go to the Phantom Zone immediately. (Except M’gann who is patrolling National City.)

Brainy is about to finish repairs on his Legion ship but one of the things J’onn has been busy doing is turning the Tower into a spaceship. Alex. is. THRILLED.

The Towership feels like a good way for Alex to meet up with Ava…just saying.

Kelly hops onto the controls, using Lena’s q-waves, and the DNA Nia and Brainy got, and the Tower J’onn commandeered, and under Alex’s leadership. Truly a team effort as they head for the Phantom Zone. J’onn warns them that when they get there, they might be plagued with their worst nightmares; think Dementors that create Boggarts. So Kelly uses her therapist skills to give them grounding techniques any of us who have had panic attacks or a need to walk back anxiety fainting already knew: Ground yourself. Name things you can see, touch, hear, smell. Things you know beyond a shadow of a doubt are real.

“Dansen? Real. Supercorp? Real. Willara? Not real.”

Lena gets it right away because she’s super smart and probably has suffered her fair share of waking nightmares. Alex is worried about Kelly coming on this mission with them, but Kelly is ready. She knows how important Kara is to Alex, and she’ll do anything for Alex.

Kelly and Lena being fully integrated into the team makes me wish there was one (1) more season.

They plan for the scenario where they show up and Kara doesn’t believe the rescue is real, which leads J’onn and Alex to fight about who should be the one on the ground when they get to the Phandom Zone. J’onn continues to be his Season Six pushy self and says Alex needs to be a leader to the rest while he’s on the ground, and she’s annoyed by this presumption but doesn’t press the issue further…for now.

They all have their roles; Dreamer will be on Phantom lookout, Lena made a sun grenade that will recharge Supergirl and scatter the Phantoms, but there’s only one so they have to time it just right, then Brainy will be the getaway driver. Plus, they only have so much power, so the countdown is on.

J’onn asks Lena to do the honors, and she sets them on course to find her girlSupergirl.

“I didn’t wear a lipstick shirt and a VEST because I DON’T mean business, c’mon.”

They do their final checks and hit a bit of a turbulence and a power surge but then it seems they’re in the clear.

Once the turbulence settles, Alex works up the nerve to demand J’onn let her come with her on the ground mission. J’onn barks that he doesn’t want to risk losing both Alex and Kara but Alex wants to do whatever it takes to protect her baby sister. Before they have to officially make that decision, they get an alert that the Phantom broke out of containment so they go down to fight it. They swiftly get it back in its cage, and J’onn is about to tell Alex she’s earned the right to come with him to save Kara when he realizes she’s been scratched by the Phantom, and if she doesn’t get to the med bay soon, she could become one.

Alex, desperate to save her sister, kicks J’onn into a containment cell of his own, pulls up her hood, and heads back to the rest of the team. When Phantoms start banging up against the side of the Towership, Brainy realizes that Alex has been scratched and her transformation is attracting more Phantoms like New York City mice to exposed packets of Ramen.

Alex starts to panic that she made the wrong choice. And I think this is where I should have realized this was Alex’s nightmare scenario playing out, but I’ll admit I didn’t see it yet at this point. But of course Alex’s worst fear is her making a leadership decision that hurts more than it helps. That the consequence will be that she not only doesn’t save her sister but she also loses Kelly and the rest of her found family, too. So in this scenario, Alex realizes the only way to save everyone is to go out into the Phantom Zone and act as bait while she waits for the transformation to take hold.

“I don’t want to say goodbye, but I’ve got to go.”

Then the clock reverts and we’re back to final checks again. Nia compliments Lena on her ability to harness the literal sun, and Lena is impressed by Nia’s ability to harness dream energy. And then they both bond over losing their moms and missing them dearly.

We love a good trauma bond.

They’re both so, so grateful for their new found family, but it does always feel like a little part of them is missing. But Lena has a book of folk tales from her mother, and Nia has her mother’s powers, so they’ll always be connected to the women they lost on some level.

Knowing how close Katie and Nicole are in real life made these Lena/Nia scenes even more wonderful than they were at face value, which was already pretty wonderful.

Then the power surge happens again, and Lena notices something wrong with the coolant and goes to check on it. When she gets there, she sees a monster made of water rise up and traps it in the control room and calls for backup, but no one answers.

“Oh god it’s another ad for Superman & Lois.”

When she gets back to the main room, most of her friends were killed by what Lena recognizes now as a kelpie; only Nia is still alive. Lena remembers her mother drowning and feeling so guilty for not doing anything to save her, and reading her mom’s storybooks and specifically torturing herself with the one about the kelpie. Nia wants to know how to defeat a kelpie, but before Lena can give her the answer, the kelpie appears and drowns Nia, right in front of Lena.

I just want one episode of Lena and the crew having a nice chill game night.

But Lena is very clever and when she realizes this is a nightmare scenario, she also realizes it’s probably literally a nightmare. So she takes Kelly’s advice and starts listing things that are real. She starts with physical things, like the Martian steel she’s standing on, but she then goes into the things that really matter, like her friends. Her friends! There was a while she had distanced herself from considering them her friends, so the fact that they’re her touchstone now in this moment of sheer terror is very important and lovely.

“Supergirl” Episode 606 Recap: Raining (Meteors) On Prom Night

Hello and welcome to part two of our Midvale Palooza, Supergirl episode 606, Prom Again!

This episode is special not only because it’s a flashback episode, but also because it is Chyler Leigh‘s directorial debut. That’s right, fam, we have a queer woman directing her own lesbian character when she was just a baby gay. You love to see it.

Previously on Supergirl, Kara got trapped in the Phantom Zone so Nia and Brainy went back in time to get Kara’s DNA with CJ Grant and some Glam Rock Aliens on their heels.

We open where we left off, with Brainy and Nia in an energy dome the Glam Rock Aliens trapped them in. They want these cuties for their menagerie, but Kara hears Brainy and Nia talking about being in danger and flies off to help them. She’s flying around the clearing getting ready to fight when Alex and Kenny catch up, momentarily distracting her.

Kara doesn’t fly around in her casual wear enough, this is hilarious.

She eventually gets back on course and Brainy and Nia help her get control of the situation, but unfortunately CJ Grant caught the whole thing on her drone camera.

Team Mini Super goes back to the makeshift fortress and Alex thanks their new friends for their help. Brainy assures them that the Glam Rock Aliens will be dealt with by the proper authorities, and Kenny is thrilled to learn there are space cops.

As they get ready to say goodbye to Brenda and Brandon, Kara thanks Nia for being such a good friend to her these past two days. Kara liked not feeling like the only alien, she liked feeling different but not alone. Nia promises her that it gets better.

The queer coded language directed toward Kara in this episode was out of CONTROL.

And so, the immediate threats seemingly dissipated, Nia and Brainy get ready to go back to the future, and Kara and Kenny get ready for prom.

But before they take off, Nia gets another dream of the cougar and the cage, but this time there’s something cleaning on the top of the cage, and the cougar has escaped. Nia can’t quite get a grasp on it, and Brainy shrugs it off as a glitch in the dream matrix, but Nia is left with a nagging feeling there’s something she’s missing.

Alex drops Kara off at prom because they couldn’t get Eliza on set during the pandemic and Kara apologizes for defying Alex’s orders to not super around Midvale all willy nilly. But Alex stops her; Kara was amazing and she’s in awe of her baby sister. In fact, she’s proud, and she says as much.

I know you’re probably tired of me saying this but in cast it’s the last time we see them: THESE YOUNG ACTRESSES NAILED IT.

Alex explains that she was a little jumpy about Kara using her powers because when Jeremiah unfairly put the responsibility of taking care of Kara squarely on Alex’s shoulders, Alex felt like she had to put her life on hold. But then she went to college and was starting to get a sense of freedom, and watching Kara risk having her powers exposed made her feel like she was going to have to take a step backwards, so she lashed out. But Kara says Alex wasn’t all wrong in the things she said; Alex was right that Kara has to make a decision about college and tell Kenny what it is. Alex knows that whatever choice Kara made will be the right one, and so do I because the Legends haven’t shown up to fix the timeline yet. What has showed up, though, is the meteor shower we’ve all been waiting for.

“If you make a wish, stars will wash up on the beach in the morning.”

Kara tries to figure out how she’s supposed to wear a masquerade mask and her glasses at the same time, but Alex suggests she ditch both. She has to wear a mask every day, why not go without one tonight?

Nia, however, doesn’t care how often she wears a mask, she knows she rocks it, so she does, indeed, rock it. She walks out in her prom dress and takes Brainy and my breath away.

Her nervous little smile and her nervous little hands PROTECT HER AT ALL COSTS.

Nia is still stressed about not knowing how to interpret her dreams and before she can ask one last time for permission to call her mom for help, Brainy holds her and tells her that she will figure this out. They dance and it’s adorable and then it’s time to go to the Prom because the meteor is about to hit.

CJ Grant is poking around the woods like she’s looking for scoop on the Teddy Bear Picnic when she instead stumbles across the Glam Rock Aliens’ spaceship. She accidentally on purpose releases them – on purpose because she pressed the buttons but the accident was she got herself captured when all she wanted was a statement.

Kenny and Kara meet in a classroom to exchange flowers and that’s when I realize…it’s kind of weird that they’re having their senior prom in the school, right? We had our regular school dances in our cafeteria in high school but junior and senior prom were off-site. But I guess, why pay for an extra set when we can’t even go all the way into the dance during a pandemic anyway.

It doesn’t seem like they know any other teens anyway, so this is fine.

Kara tells Kenny that she loves him and is this close to tell him what she decided about college, and the tone in her voice makes me feel like she was going to tell him she’d stay, but before she gets her full thought out, she hears a meteor heading for the school and flies out to stop it.

Alex sees a bird, no a plane, no her baby sister flying through the air, punching a space rock, then falling to the ground at an alarming pace. And even though this is old hat to present-day Alex by now, this is the first time for Teen Alex, and she is stressed, and thus relieved to see Kara is fine.

THE DANVERS SISTERS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO ME DOT TUMBLR DOT COM

Brainy and Nia see this all go down and can tell something isn’t quite right so they rush off to find out what happened.

When they get to the gym, they find Alex leaning over her Kryptonite-poisoned sister, seeing her hurt for the first time. Before she can process what even is happening, the Glam Rock Aliens show up and start scanning for a Kryptonian.

Kenny knows this is his time to shine and volunteers as tribute, getting himself beamed up like some kind of Sara Lance. It’s not long before they realize that he’s human (“No one wants to see a human” = mood) so they decide to use him as bait instead.

Nia and Alex help Kara walk down the hall and try to convince her she can’t just run off after Kenny in this condition.

This frame doesn’t do this hallway shot justice. Director Chyler Leigh nailed it.

The Glam Rock Aliens send a message to all aliens, confusing the hell out of Alex, and Brainy and Nia step in and say they’ll fix this. When Kara resists, Nia uses her dream powers to put Kara to sleep, and they lock Kara and Alex in the room so they won’t follow.

On the spaceship, Kenny gets thrown into a cell with CJ, and he expresses how useless he feels. CJ Grant is one to throw insults but not one to let someone insult themselves, so she gives him a pep talk, calling him the wrong name but calling out his heart correctly: he’s smart, he’s brave, and he has the makings of a hero.

Back in their own kind of cell, Kara tells Alex that she feels bad for ruining prom night. She wanted one normal, super-free night before she started supering full time with him. Alex tells her that she has to seriously consider coming out as super; coming out will make you less normal, and it’s not something you can take back, says a worried closeted lesbian.

“If you say it out loud…the whole world is gonna change.”

Kara doesn’t care if it exposes her though, she needs to save Kenny. She tries to break out but she’s still too weak so Alex picks the lock, because apparently she’s in college as a Rogue major. The open door exposes Kara to the full moon, and she absorbs the reflection of the sun from it and is revitalized so she zips off after Kenny.

“Supergirl” Episode 605 Recap: 2000 and Late

This Supergirl Recap 6×05: Prom Night! is brought to you in part by* the movie Avatar, The Vampire Diaries, and the music video for Cobra Starship’s Good Girls Gone Bad. And also my undergrad graduation speech by Hilary Clinton.

*Not really those are just things that were popular in 2009

Previously on Supergirl, the Superfriends stopped the spread of the Phantom plague and are going to use the Prime Phantom to find Kara but they need some of her DNA, and since apparently even her hair is indestructible (did she use Kryptonian scissors to get bangs?) they have to go back in time to get some. Honestly I don’t care if this isn’t the most logical solution to their problem, I’m thrilled we’re going back to Midvale.

The Superfriends meet up in the tower to go over the plan; in May 2009, the night of Kara’s senior prom, Alex came back from college and drove her, and a meteor almost hit the town, until Kara flew up and punched it. The meteor had Kryptonite though, so while she stopped it, Kara ended up crashing through the gym ceiling, and it was the first time Alex ever saw her sister bleed.

Since Alex, Lena, and J’onn were all of traveling-alone age, they can’t go back in time and risk meeting themselves and causing another CRISIS, but since Nia was 12 and Brainy was…in the future? Maybe not even born yet? On another planet? For whatever reason, they’re the only two that can go.

Alex tells them what she remembers about this timeline’s version of the past: Kenny is very much alive and goes with Kara on mini missions as a self-described Scooby Duo (be cuter, I dare you), but on the sly so the papers reported that Midvale was the “luckiest town” and had no idea that there was an alien among them.

Alex is stressed that she can’t go so she looks Brainy in the eye and possibly through his soul and threatens him not to mess up her past.

“I’m tempted to have you shake me and tell me to come out already but also that would retcon some lovely storylines so maybe just leave me alone.”

Briany is offended, though he doesn’t express as much until he’s on the timeship, dressed in a tux and stress eating potato chips. Nia is also dressed up, in a very flashy prom dress, and I was in college in 2009 but it seems a little dated; which is fine by me, she looks amazing. Brainy reminds her of some 2009 slang like chillaxing and WAZZAAHHHHH.

Nia notices Brainy is still inhaling chips so she reassures him that they’re going to do great, and they don the most effective disguise known to this planet: glasses.

:awed whisper: Who IS she?

In 2009, Alex is at a diner with Kara and Kenny and reading the news article about Midvale being the “luckiest city” and is suspicious of the teens and their mischief, but Kara tries to change the subject by asking why Alex cancelled her trip the Europe. Alex throws the deflection right back at her, and when Kenny gets up to get their milkshakes, asks Kara why it seems she hasn’t told her boyfriend that she’s planning on going to her dream school of National City University, not Midvale College with him.

These wee actresses are so good at imitating their grown counterparts, it’s almost superhuman.

Kara waffles between what she’s decided to do and/or tell Kenny and is grateful when she hears something in the distance and her and Kenny spring into action. This confirms Alex’s fear that Kara has been “supering” without her and she’s so worried about her little sister getting caught. She frames it as putting everyone, including Eliza, in danger, but you know she’s scared for Kara, too.

Kara says she could just fly to the baseball field real quick to see what crashed there, but Alex says absoLUTEly she cannot. But Alex is willing to compromise and will let Kara investigate, but only if she lets Alex drive her there.

And unbeknownst to them, another powerful being has also careened into town, but this one is a human who is going by CJ Grant and ready to take the world of journalism by storm.

Honestly this actress nailed Cat Grant’s attitude and mannerisms, too.

When Brainy and Nia crash land, they realize the prom is a masquerade themed, but by a happy accident, they landed a day early, so Nia reassures a very wound up Brainy that everything is going to be okay. They just have to avoid getting caught.

But since they didn’t consult the Legends before going on this journey, they haven’t learned not to say out loud the thing they want to avoid because just as Nia says this, Kara, Alex and Kenny walk up. Nia greets them with a WAZZAHHH and it’s freaking adorable.

Nia and Brainy awkwardly lie about being psychic aliens named Brenda and Brandon and accidentally let it slip that their ship is busted. Brainy pulls Nia aside and asks how they’re going to get out of this, absolutely panicking about how they’re not supposed to interfere in Alex and Kara’s life, and at the same time, Alex begs Kara not to interfere with these aliens.

Alex has yet to learn that saying “Kara no” is a surefire way to ensure a “Kara yes.”

But Kenny knows just what the SuperDuo should do and Kara starts to create a hole in the ground to hide Nia and Brainy’s ship. Nia and Brainy join them with their own powers, and Kara looks downright delighted. They decide that the girls will take Nia and Kenny will take Brainy and they’ll regroup about this dilemma in the morning.

Meanwhile, a pair of blue Glam Rock Aliens want a Kryptonian for their collection, and since Superman proved too difficult to capture, they’re going to snag the second one instead.

Kenny is excited to have Brainy over, since Kara is the only alien he knew, and ends up using his clever sidekick brains to help Brainy come up with a plan to MacGuyver a 3D printer using items at the high school so Brainy can fix their ship.

Meanwhile, Kara and Nia are having an adorable sleepover, talking about losing their moms and being aliens in a human world.

“So you see, it’s just me and Clarke left. Not a single other Kryptonian in the universe. Not my dad, not my aunt, not my mom and an entire village of people, nope not a one.”

Kara says, “I love my Earth family, but it’s not the same as being with people who really understand you.” Which is how I feel about my own Earth family, and how I think a lot of us queer people do, which is why we often build families of our own. Nia tells Kara that she understands, that her mom passed down her powers but died before she could help Nia learn how to use them properly. And hilariously, Kara tells Nia, “It gets better.” Really hitting that metaphorical nail on the head. Nia talks about how she sometimes feels like just hearing her mom’s voice again would make everything better, and then slowly she realizes that she could, theoretically, call her mom.

But before long Kara and Nia are talking about their powers and they start experimenting with them together.

“What is this feeling, so sudden and new.”

It’s very cute and sweet. Poor, stressed out, overprotective Alex comes in and catches them though and scolds them to stop. She uses her firmest boss voice to tell them that they’ll help them fix their ship but then Brenda and Brandon have to leave immediately, and Nia promises that’s the plan. Alex softens a little, maybe not used to having someone actually listen to her and not push back like Kara often does, but Nia’s not new to taking orders from Alex.

OBSESSED with Alex waggling her toothbrush at Kara and Nia having too much fun at their sleepover.

That night, Nia has another dream about Midvale High, but this time she’s attacked by a pink panther. She wakes up with a start and, realizing she doesn’t know what to make of that dream, thinks again about how easy it would be to call her mom.

The plans of the day are: The girls are going to Eliza’s job to steal a geode they need while the boys go the high school to 3D print the part they need. Go team go!

While in the computer lab, Kenny asks Brainy all about his adventures. He loves being Kara’s sidekick and wants to help her save people and stop crime forever. In fact, he even made them a base of operations like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. It’s very sweet! He’s a good boy! Which makes me fear for his life!

“CJ” Grant is ready to bust free of her gossip column so she is determined to get to the bottom of this Midvale Mystery. She interviews who she thinks is Dr. Eliza Danvers but is actually Alex with her mom’s badge, so Alex takes this opportunity to try to throw Cat off their scent while Kara and Nia go find the geode.

:sings: Don’t be suspicious, don’t be suspicious.

Working together and with a little help from Nia’s powers, Kara and Nia get what they need and save poor Alex from her interrogation.

Back at the high school, Brainy runs out of snacks so he sneaks out to the vending machine, when his yelling at an unfallen snack gets him recruited for the Glee Club. I see they use the Mr. Schuester method of getting new members at Midvale High. By the time Kenny finds Brainy after school, he’s the star of the baseball team, and has joined many clubs and learned about how different teens handle stress besides stress eating. Kenny tries to get Brainy to come back with him, but it isn’t until Kenny invoke’s Alex’s name that he agrees to leave the diamond.

Next page: Nia is a Dolly Parton stan, obviously! 

“Supergirl” Episode 603 Recap: Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again

Welcome! Thanks for joining me here in this Supergirl recap for episode 603: “Phantom Menace.” Let’s dive right in, shall we?

Previously on Supergirl, Brainy thought he had to work with Lex to ultimately stop him and it got him in a heap of trouble, Lex sent Supergirl to the Phantom Zone, Team Super tried to get her back but failed spectacularly, and Lex was found not guilty of his attempted MASS MURDER because the justice system and also maybe the structure of this TV show is broken.

This week, Kara is set on her plan to hitch a ride on a phantom to get through a portal to see where it leads, but things go sideways and she hurts her leg, and her and her dad find themselves in a crater with some raiders. While they’re being tied up, a woman drops in and manages to convince the men to leave with a little trickery. The men take Father Zor-El but leave Kara behind, and she’s grateful.

“Honestly he looks nothing like I remember so we can probably just let him go.”

Back on Earth, Brainy is working in the Tower, talking to himself while scanning the Phantom Zone for signs of a petite blonde heroine, when Lex comes on the TV. Brainy starts to lose it, screaming at the news coverage, almost punching the image of Lex, but luckily before Lex can claim the TV as another victim, the Martians swoop in. They had found Silas at his apartment and he told them a phantom had hitched a ride inside him and now is loose in the world. Silas says his roommates are missing and J’onn needs his team but looks around and finds his numbers lacking. Brainy explains that Nia is taking over for Kara at a reporter retreat (which let’s be honest she probably would have had to do for Kara even if she were here) and Alex hasn’t come in yet today, so J’onn calls her.

But Alex isn’t answering her phone right now. No, she’s wallowing in her grief and watching Kara’s Legacy Download, listening to Kara talk about how Alex was her first companion on this Earth and taught her how to be human. Kelly comes in and asks why she’s watching it now when she wouldn’t before, and Alex says before she didn’t think Kara is gone, now she does.

Alex was making some really good points here like, “What’s the point of anything” and also “Why bother trying.”

Alex thinks Kara is in hell because of her, and what’s the point in doing anything if she can’t save her baby sister. Kelly comforts her, says that she was upset when Obsidian folded but found helping people made her feel better. Showing up for other people can be easier than showing up for ourselves. Only she can decide to keep going, but she had to make that choice.

Across town, Lena arrives at her office to find her brother lurking like a bad stench.

I love that as Lena finds herself, she is starting to loosen up, emotionally and re: her outfit/hair choices.

He’s mad about being shut out of his company but Lena is dead-set on protecting not only LuthorCorp but also the world from him. She doesn’t want to give him more power so she’ll fight him at every turn. Lex says he has tricks of his own and he will win this game she’s playing, he’s seen the Queen’s Gambit and thinks he knows how it ends.

“How dare you say anything even remotely related to Oliver Queen in my presence.”

At first I thought this was going to be Lena’s new role despite finally knowing Supergirl’s identity, that she was going to just be stuck alone in Lex’s web, but luckily I was wrong.

After her pep talk from Kelly, Alex does manage to pull herself together enough to make it to work, where J’onna and Brainy have figured out the Phantom that was let loose can make new Phantoms now, and probably started with Silas’s roommates. Unfortunately they get to watch the process in real time when Silas’s soul leaves his body and he becomes a Phantom before their very eyes. As the Phantom rises up and attacks, Alex has flashbacks about the last time they fought Phantoms which makes her think of Kara and how she might be gone forever and Alex just…freezes. Alex “would jump off a balcony because it looks cool” Danvers can’t move for fear she’ll be unable to save her friends, that she’ll lose someone else she cares about.

This is what I’m going to look like the first time I’m in a social situation with more than one other person.

But luckily the team rallies and stops the Phantom before that happens. There’s a lot of totems shmotems here about the history of the Phantoms and their alien race and how all this metaphysics works but the important thing is, they come up with a plan to stop the Phantoms before they start a Phantom apocalypse.

Alex goes out on to the Feelings Balcony and J’onn joins her for a Space Dad pep talk. Alex doesn’t understand how he can soldier on, but J’onn says marching forward is the only way to get Kara back. But Alex is too tired to march.

Me @ my day job when they want me to do things despite the world falling apart.

Back up in the prison world, Kara is trying to stand on her broken leg, unused to this pain but trying to power through it, and blaming herself for her dad getting kidnapped. The new lady says that the men who took her father are going to sacrifice him to a terrible monster, but the good news is there’s some time before that will happen.

They decide to get to know each other, Kara giving her the spiel from the top of every episode and explaining how at one point she thought there were only two Krytponians left in the universe but then they started popping up like weeds so that’s no longer the case. The lady introduces herself as Nyxly, a fifth dimensional imp like Mxyzptlk. She has a power dampening cuff on so she’s not at full power but she has a crystal ball she can use to scry on dad, who seems fine for now.

Don’t even worry that this looks exactly like the one the Wicked Witch of the West had, just don’t think about it.

Down on Earth, M’gann has an idea to contain the Phantoms, but J’onn rudely yells at her to not, which is a surefire way to get someone to do something, in my humble opinion.

Lena is working in her office when Brainy holograms in to discuss what they’re adorably calling Operation: Vengeance, aka their plan to take Lex down. They talk about how they already locked Lex out of some aspects of the company, and the next step is to take money from one of his shady fake foundations he uses to buy Kasnian weapons and donate it to a children’s hospital.

Mischievous looks good on her. Well fine literally everything looks good on her but I like this a lot.

And so Brainy gets to hacking for her. A formidable duo of intelligence, these two.

But then Brainy hears something happening in the Tower so he hangs up his hologram and goes to see what’s happening. The Phantom looks like he’s trying to head south even though he’s in a containment unit, and Alex scans the news and finds an alert for a disturbance at a warehouse to the south. They turn to tell M’gann to suit up and realize she left without them, against J’onn’s orders. Which frankly doesn’t feel like something M’gann would do? But maybe when they melded souls she caught some of J’onn’s “my way or the highway” tendencies.

It does turn out J’onn was right this time though, because when they find M’gann at the warehouse, the Phantoms are portaling away and M’gann has been scratched. If they don’t do something fast, she’s going to start luring teen girls into her watery underground lair.

In the Phantom Zone, Nyxly tells Kara that she was sent to the prison realm for no reason other than she was the daughter of a mad king. Her father was a power-hungry, paranoid narcissist who got rid of his heirs, killing Nyxly’s older brother and banishing her.

While she tells her princess origin story, she builds Kara a splint and a crutch, all while calling herself useless without her powers. But Kara points out that she has saved her twice over at this point, and that Nyxly is resourceful. They might not have their powers, but they have each other and they have the one thing this place hasn’t taken from them yet: Hope.

Literally a light in the dark, this one.

In his lackluster lair of lethargy, Lex is trying to strike a deal with Kasnian weapons dealers when he realizes his accounts have been drained and donated to the Luthor wing of the children’s hospital. And what happens next Lena learns about on the news: Lex sets fire to the wing and publicly blames Lena, saying she was in charge of the most recent updates to the hospital.

I don’t know how anyone ever thought this precious bean was a villain.

While Kara gets some rest, the princess imp uses her crystal ball and Kara’s inspirational speech to access her powers again and get the power dampener off; she has her magic back. She tells Kara she’s been having flashes of parallel lives, likely due to CRISIS, but that she was happy to save Kara because she has a good feeling about her. And now that she has her magic, she’s more ready than ever to help. And Kara is so happy she was able to spread hope in such a dark, cold place.

I can’t wait until Kara is back under the yellow sun, partially so she has her powers back, but also because there are TOO MANY SHADOWS FOR SCREENSHOTS.

Lena and Brainy are in the Tower bonding over their hatred of Lex and Lena off-handedly says she wishes she could kill him and Brainy takes that idea and runs with it, serious as can be about taking him out once and for all, and while Lena watches Brainy devolve before her eyes, her expression goes from rage to a soft empathy.

As much as it hurts to watch Brainy break, it must feel so nice to realize how very not alone she is.

Brainy doesn’t understand why she’d oppose this plan, she’s already killed him once. But Lena remembers that timeline and how it broke her, turned her into the darkest version of herself, made her more like him than she ever wanted to be. Brainy is having a hard time dealing with these feelings, the depth and weight of them being fairly new to him. His rage feels like an endless ocean, he wants it to go away, he wants to shut it all off.

Next page: Sentinel babes!

“Supergirl” Episode 602 Recap: The Point of No Return

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) 

“Supergirl” Episode 601 Recap: The Lena Luthor Protocol

Helloooooo, Superfriends! It has been a minute! Though honestly, not nearly as long as it’s felt, since time is broken. I was skimming my Supergirl recap for the Season Five finale before diving into this episode to refresh my memory of where we left off and I read a caption I wrote that said, “Or maybe she misses being fucking hugged,” and I was like “yikes that was aggressive wasn’t this episode before quarantine,” and no, no it was not. It was three months into quarantine, which is why I wanted someone to hug Lena so desperately.

Anyway, here we are, back again, for one final season of Supergirl. Let’s dive right in, shall we?

Previously on Supergirl, Brainy’s alter egos convinced him that the only way to defeat Leviathan was to isolate himself from his friends and work with Lex so that’s exactly what he did, Lex worked with Leviathan to take over the VR system Obsidian North and brainwash people, Lena and Kara fought about Lena’s Non Nocere procedure which was technically also brainwashing but with better intentions, and eventually Lena and Kara decided to work together to stop Lex.

Last we left Brainy he was trapped in the Leviathan HQ with poison air, and so still he lay dying. But Nia had a dream about him, so she arrives to help him.

I felt this can’t-get-to-the-person-I-love-because-poison-air moment on a deep emotional level.

While Nia tries to find a way through the glass door into where he is, Brainy tries to say his goodbyes, explain why he was working with Lex, apologize for pushing her away. He even tells her he loves her. But Nia isn’t giving up that easily and astral projects into the room to try to find a way to help him.

Gemma the Leviathan God of Technology bursts in the room to fight them, but the Superfriends show up hot on her heels. They try to fight Gemma but since she’s made of nanobots, they can’t just punch her to death. Brainy and Alex use their supersmarts (and Alex’s magic glove) to find a way for Supergirl to put the anti-life code into the Leviathan computer, and Alex braves the poison air as long as she can to get the code to her sister.

“Ah ha! It’s the very conveniently specific thing Alex somehow knew to conjure to save the day!”

Gemma goes down, and we can only hope it sticks this time.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Lex Luthor, who is revived by his mother Lillian and feeling stronger than ever. He has super strength, a super ego, and a super watch that can beam kryptonite lasers because of course he does. He says that aliens shouldn’t be earth’s saviors, that Luthors should, and thus he’s going to kill Supergirl and all her friends. Then, when he’s done with this earth, his plan is to fix the rest of the planets as if he didn’t have a front row seat to the last time someone tried to do that and it ended in CRISIS.

Lex tells his mother about the stupidly named “I love Lexi” code he put into as many people logged into Obsidian North as he could before it shut down, and he has satellites in place to kill everyone he didn’t infect. Lillian asks what about her and his sister, and he says there’s a Lillian Exception in the code, but that Lena is technically Team Super now so she’s on the hit list. Lillian and I both do not like that plan at all.

It always worries me when I agree with Lillian about something…

Lex’s argument is that Lena killed him first, to which I say, but did you DIE? But Lillian puts her foot down about this. Lena is safe or she’s out of here.

Speaking of Lena, she’s looking all businessy in the Tower, pressing the Supergirl button to get Kara to return to her. Supergirl does indeed show up with the rest of the team in tow, and Lena and Kelly fill them in on what they missed. For example, Eve and her mom are ready to go on record about what Lex did and who he really is.

The return of Dansen!

Lena tells them about how Lex stole her codes for Non Nocere and rewired it to his own whims, and using stories Eve told them about an exploding mouse and her big beautiful brain, she has figured out Lex’s evil plot to kill everyone who is not blindly loyal to him.

“Hey isn’t it nice to have the smartest person in National City on your side?”

As soon as Lena mentions the satellites, Nia gets a vision about Lex being some kind of awful anti-monitor/genie Jafar hybrid and destroying all the worlds. The problem they have now is that there are twelve satellites and they’d have to disarm them all at once and, as Kara points out, “Only four of us can fly.” Which I think is selling themselves a little short. I think maybe saying, “And there aren’t enough of us,” would have sufficed; four is a pretty high number of people who can fly in any given friend group. Even on a CW sci-fi show.

M’gann comes up with the idea for her and J’onn to do a Martian mind meld with the satellites to stop them all at once, and that seems as good an idea as they’ve got so Kara agrees to it.

Kara also asks Lena if she can reverse the Non Nocere code and un-brainwash the people Lex targeted, and Lena looks genuinely surprised. It makes you wonder how long she paced back and forth across the Tower floor wondering if this would be the last time she saw Kara before pressing that Supergirl button based on the shock on Lena’s face when she asks Kara if she’s sure that she can trust Lena, even after everything.

Kara doesn’t hesitate to reassure Lena. Obviously, as it has been established, she didn’t agree with Lena’s methods, but when it came down to it, Lena wanted to help people, and when push came to shove, she came to Kara for help. “I know what’s in your heart,” is literally what Kara Danvers said out loud to Lena Luthor in this moment.

THIS is the Supergirl I know and love. The forgiving and trusting woman who follows her heart.

Kelly will go to Obsidian to get the code Lena will need to undo I Love Lexi while Alex and Dreamer go to fetch a bottle of planet fragments that will be to Lex as Kryptonite is to Kara for Brainy to turn into a weapon.

Meanwhile, Kara will go to the Fortress of Solitude to get Myriad and maybe some more weaponry for this battle. They’re worried about Lex tracking Kara but she’s ready to be a distraction. She’s willing to risk her life if it means saving half the population of the world. It’s not even a question.

“I would prefer it if you would die approximately 200x less than you have in the past when trying to save the world? Thanks.”

And so Kara holograms in to talk to Lex, wears a truth seeker and tells him she wants to meet up. He calls her the “Maid of Might” which made me irrationally furious considering it’s not like “Man of Steel” is alliterative so there was no need to not call her a “Woman of Might” except for the patriarchy. But anyway, he agrees to meet her at the fortress and is so confident that he’s winning this war he started. He calls himself a god and prepares his wings of feather and wax.

After (easily) getting the code Lena needs at Obsidian North, Kelly is on her way out when she sees Andrea sobbing in a stairwell. Andrea says her father blames her for everything that happened and essentially disowned her, that Obsidian North and Catco are both going to be bankrupt by morning.

“It’s just, SYFY promised them a fifth season and now we might not get it.” :sniffles:

Kelly and her kind eyes tell Andrea that even though her father funded it, Andrea is the one who built Obsidian North from the ground up, all while running a multi-media organization that somehow still succeeds in print journalism. She calls Andrea brilliant, and says her father is a selfish narcissist. The only mistake Andrea made was doing this all for her father instead of for herself.

If Kelly is going to start therapizing everyone in her immediate circle, she’s really got her work cut out for her.

Back at the tower, Alex asks Space Dad why he looks so tense. He admits that he’s nervous about this mind meld, because it will mean M’gann will learn things he would have never shared with her, and he’s also worried that his subconscious fears about what she’ll find in his mind will risk the mission. But Alex has gotten enough pep talks from J’onn to return the favor; she tells him that he and M’gann have been through so much together, that he has to trust that she won’t hold anything in his mind or his past against him without having a conversation first. And who knows, maybe it will make them closer in the end.

“In the queer community we have this thing called ‘trauma bonding’ and it’s how we relate to one another.”

Elsewhere in this confusingly-sized Tower, Brainy apologizes to Nia again, and Nia admits that she’s still hurt. She understands why he did it, but she wishes he had let her help him save the world instead of pushing her away. Or at least let her in on what he was doing instead of making her feel like he hated her. Brainy knows she’s right, and gives Nia his Legion ring as an interim apology while he figures out how to make it up to her.

HELP SHE’S TOO CUTE I CAN’T TAKE IT

Later, Andrea sees on the news that her father publicly rebuked her, so she decides to take Kelly’s advice and be her own woman (though I doubt this is exactly what Kelly had in mind.) Andrea puts on her shadow necklace and bamfs away into the night.

Kara leads Alex and Lena to the Fortress, sending Alex off to the armory to find something they can use with the Anti-Lex substance once they find it. Lena has an idea for how to slow Lex down, but doesn’t want Kara to meet up with him. She thinks it’s a suicide mission, and won’t let Kara die like this. “I can’t,” she adds. Canonically.

Next page: Lena Luthor finally gets hugged. 

“Supergirl” Episode 519: After All This Time

Previously on Supergirl, the team learned Eve was involved with Lex in this timeline too, Kelly gave Alex the idea to have a vigilante mask, Nia and Brainy fought, Lex gave Leviathan a kryptonite weapon, and, perhaps most importantly, Lena showed up at Kara’s door to apologize.

Despite ending with Kara letting Lena into her apartment, and that obviously being what we care about the most, we once again start the episode with Lex. Gemma leads him down into Leviathan’s lair, and Gemma has to give him a pin to protect him from the radiation shields that protect the lair.

Leviathan tells Lex that they have the kryptonite beam bracelets and no longer need his help; they’ll take care of the whole killing Supergirl thing, he can sit back and relax.

Now to the good stuff. Lena thanks Kara for letting her in when she knocked, and starts to apologize for things she’s done.

“Do you wanna build a snowman?”

But Kara doesn’t want to talk about the past.

“The past is in the past, let it go.”

Just then, Alex, Nia, M’gann, and J’onn burst through the doors, ready to fight, because they got a 911 text, but Kara body blocks Lena and says that she’s not the threat at hand.

“Look at her! She’s in jeans! No one hatches an evil plot in jeans!”

The team stands down and Kara explains that Leviathan and Lex are working together, and they’re the real threat. The thing is, Rama Khan will know if Supergirl uses her powers, and now he has kryptonite. Kara thinks the team is ready for this, but Alex isn’t sure.

Lena says they still have tricks up their sleeve; she can make Kara an anti-kryptonite suit. She hasn’t done it in this timeline yet, but she remembers how. They just need a way to get to Lena’s lab ASAP.

So M’gann and J’onn shapeshift into Supergirls to act as distractions to get Kara where she needs to go, which Nia correctly points out is like a scene from Deathly Hallows.

Nothing but respect for MY Dumbledore’s Army.

And honestly after Lena being so separate from everyone for so long, seeing her in a room with Kara and two Supergirls feels right.

Making up for lost time here.

Before they head off again, Alex pulls Kara aside and shows her that she took Kelly’s advice and got a vigilante outfit. And she looks GOOD.

Blue IS the warmest color.

Kara literally screams with joy which is extremely relatable.

Once Kara calms down, the team gets ready to go.

Next time Brainy meets up with Lex, he’s ready to end Leviathan, but Lex wants them to kill Team Super first, which is a plan that Brainy hates.

Speaking of Leviathan, they are well fooled by the Supergirl decoys, and Rhama Khan is joined this time by two more element benders we hadn’t met yet. But luckily our Martian buddies weren’t alone, and Dreamer backs up J’onn while M’gann has the newest vigilante by her side. Alex has mastered her new weapon and produces a flame thrower and just…holy shit.

Sara Lance would be proud.

And while the gods are distracted by those shenanigans, Kara and Lena are on a regular ol’ city bus to Lena’s lab so she can make her a new suit. Lena promises she’s going as fast as she can, but Kara is jumping at the bit. She hates that her friends are out there fighting and she’s just sitting here waiting. With someone she should be talking to – I mean, really talking – but doesn’t want to talk to yet.

Alex shows up and explains the new god situation but assures Kara they have it handled. Kelly calls Alex to give her an update on Eve, and Kara uses her superhearing to eavesdrop, and Alex hilariously bats her away, annoyed. You could see a flash of their teenage years in that moment.

Lena is horrified to learn that Eve is back into play in this timeline now too.

I know this is not the point but also HER SHIRT.

Eve, who betrayed her deeply. Eve who pointed a gun at her face. But she swallows that down and just listens as Kara starts to spiral and Alex tells her that the best thing she can do right now is lay low.

They hug and part ways, leaving Lena to mourn the sibling bond she’ll never have, and maybe even a little worrying she’ll never be that close with Kara again.

Or maybe she misses being fucking hugged.

At Al’s Bar, Brainy summons his sister self to talk him through what he wants to do next. Lady Brainy says that even though she was the one who told him to work with Lex no matter the cost, she doesn’t think he has to let his friends die. Luckily, that was never in his plan. He’s going to bottle the gods. Lady Brainy asks about the radiation shields in the Leviathan lair, but Brainy is going to risk it.

Watching all of these Brainy scenes knowing these two are siblings IRL broke my heart even more.

But he does want her to come with him. “I don’t want to die alone,” he says. “YOU WOULDN’T HAVE TO BE ALONE IF YOU LET YOUR FRIENDS HELP YOU,” I shout uselessly at my TV.

Lex, Andrea and Gemma officially launch the Unity Festival in Obsidian and Kara and Lena watch together, nervously. It all feels kind of icky.

Me watching Lex scenes.

Alex’s new suit apparently turned her into a Charlie’s Angel because she drops down from the ceiling of a room in Obsidian North to let Kelly in so they can hack the system. Kelly is…very into this whole situation, and it was nice to see them have a moment of connection that didn’t feel as therapist/patient or even just best friendly as some of their recent interactions have felt.

“Baby, are we in a vending machine?” “What? What are you–” “Because all I see is a snack.” “Oh no.”

Alex admits that she doesn’t feel as badass as she looks, especially now as they face down gods. She has her skills and her weapons, but how long can she stand up against literal gods? But for now they use what skills they do have, and Kelly finds Eve’s IP address, though it’s encrypted, which is where Kelly’s tech expertise hits a wall. And so Alex utters a phrase I’ve been waiting for someone to say for what feels like years. “Better call Lena.”

I also love that Alex, one of Lena’s most consistent defenders, took “she’s on our side now” in stride. She’s pumped to have another scientist on board.

Back in the lab, Lena tries to apologize again, but Kara shuts her down. She really doesn’t want to talk about the past. But Lena doesn’t feel like any of her apologies have really stuck. She knows they need to talk this out. She even encourages Kara to shout at her about it…at least then she’d know Kara cares. (Also because this is an emotional response she’s used to/knows how to deal with.)

Lena knows Kara could snap her in two if she wanted to. Lena also knows Kara would never. So she felt safe enough to tell this impossibly strong woman to let out her anger on her.

It’s this seeming apathy that’s really irking her. Kara claims she doesn’t want to shout at her, or deal with these feelings at all, but then she starts talking about what it’s like to have her team in danger, to have her friends and sister putting their lives at risk for HER. She says the one thing Lena didn’t truly seem to grasp was that sure, Kara hurt Lena, and for that she is sorry, but it wasn’t her intention. Her intention was to protect her.

Also with Lena’s history, it’s a little like when you have to decide if you’re ready to come out to relatives who have said vaguely homophobic things; did they mean to be so anti-Kryptoniangay or were they just ignorance? Will they get over whatever that was because they love me?

And while yes, impact has to be considered in her actions, intention matters, too. But what Lena did next? That intention and impact was just to hurt Kara. Lena got what she asked for. Kara really let her have it. But oof it still hurts.

Lena isn’t defensive, or angry. She just says she understands, and apologizes again. Kara thinks that what Lena wants, based on the sheer number of apologies, is absolution, but Kara isn’t ready to forgive her.

All this shouting has Kara worked up so she officially can’t wait for the suit to be done; she has to go out to help her friends right now. And since she won’t listen to Lena and stay, Lena is going with her.

Kara and Lena head to where she’s interrogating William and in fact has just shot him. Lena gets the gun from Eve and turns it on her, a nice role reversal from last time, and when William starts to worry about his coworker Kara’s safety, and Supergirl is trying to figure out how she’s going to reassure William that Kara is okay while standing right in front of him without revealing herself, Lena steps in without hesitation and promises she just talked to Kara and that Kara is fine.

Now this is what I call multitasking.

It was Lena’s first field test, and she passed with flying colors.

“Perhaps the pastries I got in Paris were not for naught.”

The gods show up and Kara immediately treats Lena like she’s part of the team, telling her to get Eve and William to safety, and Lena says the kryptonite suit is on the way.

A Super and a Luthor. Working together.

And sure enough, just when the gods start to knock Supergirl down, the suit appears and helps her stand right back up again.

Kara’s joy when she realizes she was right to trust Lena is my joy.

And just in time, her SuperFriends show up. She superclaps the gods to dust but they quickly reform; turns out, they’re immortal, so trying to kill them is futile. It’s time to turn their focus on stopping Lex instead.

Lena, starting to test the waters of this whole being-on-a-team thing, and offers a suggestion: what if they ask Eve?

She could have held a grudge against all these people but she’s helping. At every turn.

And so Supergirl goes and talks to Eve. Making it less of an interrogation and more of a reaching a hand out to help and bring her over to the light. Supergirl says that “it’s when things feel most hopeless we have to dig down deep to do what’s right.” It’s two months into the pandemic that you have to fight the urge to give up and start going out to see people again. It’s when things are darkest you have to fight to find the light. So Eve gives in and tells her about Gemma Cooper being Leviathan, and about the Unity Festival being a trojan horse mouse trap like that one scene in Fievel Goes West.

Meanwhile, Nia tells M’gann about how her visions keep glitching and showing her Brainy being green and twitchy in Leviathan’s lair, and M’gann says that her powers are getting stronger, and that she should lean into them. But Nia is still sure it’s just her baggage about her ex and wants him out of her head.

Kara wants to cancel the Unity Day event, but Kelly and Lena said there’s not really anything they can do digitally (and safely) to eject people. Supergirl is going to have to go in to give a classic hope speech. Kara is wary; she JUST gave one, and she’s feeling a little stressed; she’s not sure she has one in her big enough to stop BILLIONS of people from being in VR.

Then, in unison, Lena and Alex say, “If anyone can do it, it’s you.”

:whispers: I still low-key ship AgentCorp don’t @ me.

Because they’re the two people who have believed in Kara from the start. Lena didn’t always support Supergirl, but she never doubted her strengths, never underestimated her like Lex does time and time again. And now that she knows? She’s never been more sure of Kara Danvers. And Alex has never wavered in that belief. Lena smiles almost shyly and Alex can’t resist saying, “jinx.”

The plan is that J’onn will taunt Leviathan to distract them while Supergirl goes in to get everyone to log off. The taunting works and the gods storm off to confront him (like literally they look like a storm when they travel), and they find both Martians, Nia and Alex waiting.

Lena gives Kara some kind of protection for the kill switch in case she’s too late, and Kara heads into the VR for the first time. She finally understands the appeal, and doesn’t seem as freaked out as I was by the Hands Across America vibe Unity Day has…presumably because she hasn’t seen the movie Us.

Gemma is afraid that Supergirl is in the VR to interfere, so wants to flip the kill switch now, but Lex says there aren’t enough people logged on yet. Instead, he suggests killing Supergirl’s vulnerable body, using the one Leviathan agent not yet occupied by Team Super.

And so Gemma goes to Andrea and finally activates Shadow, instructing her to kill Supergirl. Andrea doesn’t want to do this, but Gemma threatens her company and thereby her father if she doesn’t.

I didn’t realize how absolutely itty bitty Gemma was.

Supergirl tries to give her speech in the VR but people are talking to their dead loved ones, they’re finding peace the cruel, harsh world can’t offer, so they’re not listening to her. Lena has an idea though, so she uses the cloning tool in photoshop and makes it so instead of one Supergirl trying to talk to everyone, everyone has their own individual Supergirl talking just to them.

Andrea appears from the shadows in Lena’s lab and has a Kryptonite knife she plans on using on Kara’s immobile body, but Lena will not allow this. Just like she did when she thought her best friend was a squishy human, she puts her body between Kara and the danger without hesitation.

The time Lena protected Kara thinking she was a squishy human was one of the first things Lena remembered in embarrassment after Kara came out. But now she has a chance for a re-do. To actually protect her friend.

Kara gives her hope speech to the people in Obsidian Platinum, saying that VR feels good but pain is an important part of life. Pain helps us appreciate what’s good, pain helps us grow. And to forgive. You can almost see that realization dawn on Kara in this moment. She speeched her own self into knowing that forgiveness is vital. “The cost of escape is too great.”

In the lab, Lena is giving a similar speech to Andrea. Reminding her of their “you jump, I jump” promise. She says that if Andrea doesn’t do this, Lena will stand by her side to help her with whatever backlash comes her way from Leviathan. But that if she wants to try to kill Supergirl, Andrea will have to go through Lena first.

Hands down the sexiest thing Lena has ever done on this show.

And this is huge growth for Lena. She put her life on the line for Kara, AND for Supergirl. She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t stand to gain anything from it. She has no true stakes in any of this, except for that she is truly GOOD and doesn’t want anyone to get hurt. She doesn’t want the Obsidian users to get hurt, she doesn’t want Kara to get hurt. And frankly, she knows what killing someone feels like, even though in this timeline it didn’t take, and she doesn’t want her old friend getting hurt by that either.

In the simulation, Kara begs everyone to end the simulation, saying, “I believe in you,” at the same time Lena says, “I believe in you,” at the same time Lady Brainy tells Brainy, “I believe in you.” It’s love and it’s hope and it’s what this show has always been about.

Brainy powers through the radiation burn to bottle the gods, Andrea collapses into Lena’s arms and hands over the kryptonite, and one by one the Obsidian Platinum users end their simulation. For a long time this Leviathan/Lex mess seemed an overwhelming obstacle for our faves to overcome, but finally, finally, the tides have started to turn.

Hope always wins in the end.

Brainy, having successfully bottled the gods, doesn’t seem to have enough energy to crawl out of the Leviathan lair, so he lay dying until Lex shows up and yoinks the bottled gods from him. He knew Brainy would do this but was hoping it would be after they killed Team Super; he’ll just have to do that himself now. But all hope is not lost; Nia finally realizes that her flashes of Brainy aren’t just her subconscious and that he’s in actual danger and plans to do something about it.

In the lab, Lena and Kara bask in the glory of their success.

And I bask in the glory of their glory.

Supergirl saves Eve’s mom, making good on that promise, and Lena is proud of what they accomplished, together.

Lena’s still a little unsure about how this is all going to shake out, but Kara’s arms aren’t crossed anymore.

Lena tells Kara that she understands now why Kara lied to her, even if she wishes she didn’t. And that she overreacted to that pain of getting hurt, that she built up walls she was suffocating behind. She apologizes AGAIN and this time Kara doesn’t push back. She admits that all day, she was waiting for Lena to prove she wasn’t reliable, to let her down, but Lena came through without hesitation time and time again. Kara wasn’t ready to accept Lena’s apology, to let her in, but she is now. Lena is overwhelmed by the relief of this.

And then asks, “What now?” The “we” is implied.

Kara says there’s still one bad guy left to catch and Lena says, “Let’s take my brother down.” And they shake on it.

“Hands touch, eyes meet. Sudden silence, sudden heat. Hearts leap in a giddy whirl.”

And while I appreciate the symmetry of this, the callback to when Lena reluctantly worked with Supergirl way back when, showing how much has changed, how much they’ve both grown, representing a clean slate…Gosh, I wish they just hugged. Maybe this is coming from my quarantined heart, but Lena’s been on her own for so long, and this morning she was afraid it was too late to repair her friendship with Kara. But now there’s hope again.

That said, I know that’s not how these things go, and I get that Kara probably needs a little more time. Lena proved today that she was reliable to work with, but, to steal a bit from Buffy: There’s so much to work through. Trust has to be built again, on both sides. They have to learn if they’re even the same people they were, if they can fit in each other’s lives. It’s a long, important process.

And apparently they can’t just skip it. But Kara has not only opened the door for Lena, she has let her in. She could have sidelined her during this whole fight today, but her instincts to trust her kicked in and she put aside her hurt feelings, and it worked out in her favor. And now, Lena can be more a part of their team than ever, and I for one can’t wait.

Though this wasn’t originally meant to be a finale, it worked as one, since we were left with Brainy’s life in danger, and Lex revealing that he’s working with Lillian. According to David Harwood’s instagram, Alex was going to get a superhero name in the next episode, so unfortunately we’ll have to wait for that, and based on CW’s schedule release, we might have to wait until Fall 2021, but hopefully they’ll use that time to figure out how to ditch Lex once and for all so we can get back to what this episode did so, so well: focus on the women, and their relationships with each other. Once again, my hope in this show is rekindled, and I hope next year we get more superhero Alex, more Alex/Kelly, more Lena as a SuperFriend, more Nia and her growing dream powers. More Kara in relation to all these women. Because after all, the show isn’t called Lex Luthor vs. The World. It’s called Supergirl.

“Supergirl” Episode 518 Recap: Bridge Over Troubled Water

Previously on Supergirl, Kara and Lena broke up because Lena was so caught up in her Non Nocere project that was meant to cure humans of her ability to hurt each other that she agreed to work with her brother, who was starting to slowly but surely take over this show that was meant to be about women, Alex was feeling a little lost without being part of the DEO, and Kelly decided that her best bet at getting more screen time was to team up with William to help solve the mystery of Leviathan.

We open in prison, (which is only kind of a metaphor since we don’t see a woman for two full scenes of this show called Supergirl), where Steve and the other Non Nocere test subjects are doing yoga and saying their daily Lena Luthor salutations, as should we all. On the way back from yoga, three prisoners get stuck in an elevator, and a claustrophobic guy starts to panic, and he ends up getting violent and starts to hulk out a bit.

Meanwhile, Brainy is becoming suspicious of Lex, because he knows Lex is behind releasing the SunEater. Lex said it’s all part of the game to get in with Leviathan, but Brainy isn’t willing to risk his friends’ life for Lex’s plan. Lex says you have to crack a few eggs to get an omelet and to trust the process, and Briany feels like he has no choice but to relent.

Over at the Tower, the ladies are locked away and trying to sort out what’s going on.

“Quick, there are no men in the room, let’s figure out how to solve all of this season’s problems.”

Kara says Lena was so kind to her, but then showed up right before the SunEater was released, which felt like suspicious timing. And she knows Lena and Lex are friendly again, and no one can deny Lex is up to no good. Alex defends Lena, wants to give her the benefit of the doubt, but Kara is still too hurt and still trying to build up her defenses in case she does have to face off with Lena. For once, the stakes of having hope feel too high. What if she reaches out for hope and it’s not there? What if she reaches out for Lena and she’s not there?

The girls make a plan and split up: Alex is going to go talk to a connection Kelly has, Nia is going to try to dream the location of the Leviathan HQ.

I don’t remember if Nia and Alex have ever shared a frame like this before, but it made me squeal with joy.

And Kara is going to ready herself to fight a bald man who thinks he’s a god and a beautiful woman who is one, and also Leviathan.

Speak of the devils, Lena and Lex head to the prison to figure out with the prisoner who panicked. Lex is sure it’s an isolated incident and doesn’t think they have to worry about it, but Lena wants to be sure.

Lena’s looks of disdain toward Lex are #relatablecontent.

At Obsidian North, Andrea is giving one of her dreamy speeches, this time about a virtual event called the Worldwide Unity Festival, which frankly sounds like the kind of place a cult goes to drink fruit punch together, but okay. Kelly and William aren’t sure that now, with a bunch of people lost in the VR, is a great time to send more people into the VR, but when Kelly approaches Andrea about it, warning her that this is reckless and unsafe, Andrea brushes her off, says she’s overreacting, and tells her to bring her proof or leave her alone.

“Seems a little rude considering you also have been getting less screen time since Lex and Leviathan came around but FINE.”

Across town, Alex leads Kara to the Congressional Library to meet the real Pete Andrews, Kelly’s friend who was impersonated a while back. Pete is a big fan of Kara’s writing and is happy to help them try to research a symbol they think is linked to Leviathan to find their newest headquarters.

I like to think this is just Melissa being genuinely geeked to be working with Sean Astin and Chyler being amused by it.

In said headquarters, Gemma storms into where her ex-boss Rama Khan (which I kept hearing as Rubicon for some reason) is handcuffed and playing cards. He insults her human form, as if his is something to gawk at, but she brushes him off, saying she’s evolved to blend better than him is all. She opens a case and shows him (though not us) something Lex stole for her from the Fortress of Solitude. She wants to give him a chance to redeem himself, so she sends him to find the last component of this mystery weapon.

At the Congressional Library, the sisters send Pete off to check out something in a restricted room and Kara sees a bunch of people sitting around in Obsidian and says she’s starting to understand the pull of the VR she’s spent so much of the season rebuking. She can’t stop thinking about Lena calling her a hypocrite. She’s worried Lena is working with Lex and Leviathan, and the thought of it makes her so angry she wants to…Alex gets it. She wants to hide. Run away to a place where her problems don’t exist. She tried it. Very recently. It didn’t end well.

Alex wants Kara and Lena to make up so badly but knows she can’t push the issue.

William calls Kara away so Alex stays behind to keep working with Pete. When Pete comes back, he says that as soon as he mentioned Leviathan, everyone seemed unwilling to help him all of a sudden. Alex doesn’t care about that though. This is a matter of life or death, they can’t be afraid of breaking the rules.

In the prison, Lex is fiddling with Lena’s tech, and gets the prisoner to wake up, but he’s still in a rage and his eyes are still blown out like he’s touched the goo. Lena thinks this prisoner’s survival instinct overpowered his Non Nocere directive.

Just an insight into how chaotic my brain is: for absolutely no reason whatsoever, when I saw this screenshot, my brain decided it looked like she was about to bust into that one Eponine line in the original London Cast Recording of Les Mis when she’s like, “Jyyyyyust the old man and the girl, they live ordinary lives.”

Steve looks at her pleadingly, hoping he can fix it so they can go back to being yoga buddies. He had missed having friends.

But back in the cafeteria, the man who was punched but otherwise fine is back to HIS ragey ways, and a fight breaks out.

The reason William called Kara back to CatCo was absolutely something he could have told her over the phone, but anyway he realized that Margot’s manifesto was faked and that it was actually someone using an image inducer.

Also, at the tower, J’onn and M’gann have a romantic moment, and Nia and I snooze a little because now does not seem like the time for this.

Me whenever Lex is mansplaining Leviathan.

Lena is having a hard time recreating Non Nocere in the prisoner’s system, it’s almost as if it’s being considered a virus now. When Steve tells her about the fight, she is horrified. Her and Lex talk it out and realize there was a fight response to fear, then a domino effect when he was considered a predator. Evolution.

As someone who is half Irish, half Italian, I couldn’t resist this screenshot of Katie McGrath making this hand gesture. Also as a lesbian.

On an evolutionary note, Nia is getting better and better at dreaming, because this time she strolls into a room in her dream, shoos away a laughing Brainy, and sees Rama Khan on some playing cards, plus the symbol for the Oregon Geographical Monitoring Station.

Back at CatCo, Kara is eating William’s baked goods like Jolene made them while William pulls up communication between Margot and an employee simply listed as 873. Nia pings her about her dream and makes up a truly terrible excuse about her sister’s cat getting out so she can leave William. For someone who has been lying about her identity since she was 13, she sure is bad at it.

Anyway, Team Super goes to stop Rama Khan in Portland, and when the DEO catches wind of it, Brainy sends backup.

At the same time, in the prison, Lena is trying to get around the prison fight to her lab so she can reconfigure the q-waves. It becomes clear that she needs some fight training STAT, as Lex fends off people for her while she makes her way through.

I’ve been watching Merlin for the first time, I know K’tay can stage fight. Get Lena some skills, stat!

In Portland, Supergirl and Dreamer fight off Rama Khan and get his staff, somehow not suspicious about how easy it was to stop him this time around. Brainy and the DEO swoop in and take him as their prisoner even though the girls did all the work, much to Nia’s annoyance.

I love me a SuperDreamer team-up.

Kara manages to convince him to let them go with him back to the DEO, though when they get there, he won’t let them in the interrogation room, despite Nia saying she’s getting bad vibes from the staff they confiscated.

Nothing but respect for my superheroes.

Kara wonders why Brainy is being so cagey, and Nia wonders if him being in her dream wasn’t just her feelings for him being in the way; maybe he IS playing Leviathan like a hand of cards.

At the Library, Alex and Pete try to break into a room but end up being shot at, so they make a break for it. Pete thanks Alex for her protection, and says that maybe she should be a little more careful about acting like she still has DEO authority when she doesn’t. She doesn’t have a uniform to protect her anymore. He’s going off the grid and recommends she do the same, and they part ways.

Chyler’s ability to from sliding-across-the-hood-of-cars action hero to vulnerable human is astounding.

William and Kelly pull up the mystery employee file and find it’s Eve Tessmacher, and for a second I thought the perk of having it be these two to discover it is that to them she’d seem like just a cute bubbly lady, but apparently Kelly somehow knows of Eve’s treachery. I know she was given back her pre-CRISIS memories, but I guess she was also told other stuff too? Unclear. However Kelly knows Eve was bad in a past life, they know this is no coincidence.

Kara and Nia wait patiently in the observation room while Rama Khan is interrogated, hoping to glean some information, but Brainy starts to talk to him in a language neither of them understand or recognize. The only word they pick up is “Luthor.” And while this is happening, Nia gets another bad vibe from the staff; it’s scanning for something.

“I dreamed a dream in times gone by…”

Rama Khan laughs in Brainy’s face and says he got caught on purpose, and all hell breaks loose. Rama Khan’s staff pulls all the kryptonite in the place towards him, and he takes off with it, sending the DEO crashing to the ground in his wake. (Or in his quake. Get it?!)

Which is actually kind of wild. The DEO set we grew to know and love is really, truly gone now.