Previously on Supergirl, National City was plagued by an ancient earthbender and his secret society Leviathan, the Martian brothers made up and stopped trying to kill each other, Lena confessed to Kara that her heart was broken and trapped her in a Kryptonite cage in the Fortress of Solitude while she took off with the Myriad technology to set her Do No Harm plan into motion.

After realizing she wasn’t responding to their comms, Alex and Brainy show up to the Fortress to save Kara before too long, but she still wasn’t even trying to break out of her little cell. As soon as they get her out, Kara’s immediately talking about Lena, saying she has to go after her. “She hates me,” she says with her sad eyes. She broke Lena’s heart and she wants to fix it.

Meanwhile, Lena is in Lex’s old bunker using the satellites to prepare Myriad. She’s going to make this world a place that can’t hurt her anyone if it’s the last thing she does. Lena is so happy Hope has been by her side through this; her help has been invaluable. Before they can start the process of launching Myriad, Lena realizes that Supergirl has tracked her down and is outside the bunker. The bunker’s built-in defenses already have cannons pointed at Supergirl, and Lena just has to decide what to do.

Lena almost sounded excited to hear that Supergirl escaped her Kryptonite cell.

She hesitates briefly, but then tells Hope to deploy. Supergirl is blasted back a bit, and Lena is sure this will give Kara the signal she’s sending and she’ll back off. But when Supergirl doesn’t leave, the cannons switch to a Kryptonite blast. Outside, Kara sees the beams turn green and looks like someone just slapped her across the face. She floats there, hands up, quietly begging Lena not to, clinging to the hope that Lena won’t fire.

SHE COULD HAVE FLOWN AWAY IN AN INSTANT BUT SHE STAYED. JUST TO BREAK MY DAMN HEART, PROBABLY.

And Kara’s hope is warranted, because Lena doesn’t hesitate this time, she immediately and frantically tries to shut down the blasters when she realizes they’ve turned fatal. She shuts them down just in time with a sigh of relief.

Nothing like the adrenaline rush of almost killing the person you care about most in this world.

When she regains her composure, she tells Hope that she did that because they don’t kill people, “no matter how much they’ve hurt us.” She’s nowhere near the line she’d need to cross to become a villain, but she’s also not ready to make nice.

Back in the Leviathan lair, Rama Khan returns only to find Gamemnae (the woman formerly and briefly known as Tech Lady) telling him that there are whispers that he’s losing his touch. That the Elder might be putting someone else in charge instead. She reminds him that her tech is still an option, and warns Rama Khan that the humans will destroy the planet if they’re not stopped (fact) and that Supergirl will die before letting them harm the humans. But tonight the planets will be aligned just so, and they can take advantage of that to make a second Pompeii using the dormant supervolcano that has apparently been in National City this whole time. All they need is a staff, and to harness the medallian’s powers, aka Acrata’s powers.

After finding herself unwelcome at Lena’s bunker, Supergirl goes to the DEO to ask if there’s a way they can communicate with Lena while she’s inside.

Kara tells Alex all the things Lena revealed to her in the Fortress, about how she’s known Kara was Supergirl for months, how Lena killed Lex to protect her, how she stole Myriad. There’s no anger or frustration in her voice, just a deep and heavy sadness. Guilt, even. She just wants to talk to Lena, but Alex has concerns.

“You…you know I’m the gay one right?”

Kara insists there’s still time to reach Lena, that she can fix this, so Brainy tells her they can project a hologram into the bunker.

They don’t really understand why Lena would need Myriad anyway, but J’onn pops in saying he knows how, and doesn’t warn anyone before his brother pops in right beside him. A little “heyyy a former fugitive who was trying to kill us all is gonna show up in a second but DON’T WORRY” would have been nice, but alas. Alex kicks into Attack Mode but J’onn talks her down, saying they’re linked now and J’onn is sure Mal is good and here to help.

Mal explains what he knows about Lena’s Do No Harm plan, and how she was harnessing his Q Waves and powers to do it.

Alex is so torn between trusting her sister and protecting her .

Kara looks to Alex to see if she sees what she sees now. Lena thinks she’s doing good. “She’s hurting,” Kara says, guilt dripping off every word. Mal agrees with her, and Kara insists again, “I can still save her.” She blames herself for this hurt Lena is wielding, and she says it again, hoping she can speak it into reality. “I’m going to fix this.”

Rama Khan goes to get Andrea to do another job, but Andrea has had enough. She was doing it to save someone she loves, but someone else she loved died in the process. Rama Khan offers her one last job; then she’ll be free of her contract. She asks about her father and he spits that he can keep his riches, and her eyes fill with heartache because that’s not what she was trying to save.

It was never about the money for Andrea. And empathizing with her is a plot twist I didn’t see coming.

Lena is in the bunker and almost ready to launch Myriad. Lena is so ready to save humanity she’s practically glowing.

But then Supergirl beams in. She tries to stop her from using Myriad, and Lena thinks that Kara thinks she’s using it for evil and she’s offended.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Kara apologizes again. She’s sorry she was weak and she lied to Lena for so long. She knows that she made a mistake, she knows that all Lena ever asked of her was honesty and it’s the one thing she didn’t give her. She says that Lex used Kara’s weakness, her lies, to try to break Lena and make her more like him, but she’s better than him, she always has been. And Kara has given speeches like this in the past. The last-ditch effort before a fight, the “we don’t have to do this” appeal. But usually her voice is strong and her head is high and she speaks with an earned righteousness, with clarity and confidence, laced with an abundance of hope. But not this time. This speech is full of apologies and sorrow. It’s tinged with borderline desperation, her voice is wavering, her hope dwindled to one thin strand she’s clinging to with everything she’s got.

Kara keeps calling herself weak but the strength it takes to apologize like this, to reach out to Lena over and over, is more than she even knows.

(PS. This has nothing to do with anything except that writing about Kara’s teary eyes and strength reminded me, I highly recommend watching Melissa Benoist’s IGTV video she posted about her history with intimate partner violence (if you’re able), so you can see that Melissa is stronger and braver than we even knew. I stand with Melissa, always have and always will.)

Lena knows this, she knows that even though she’s in Lex’s bunker using evil technology that she is not like the antagonists they’ve gone up against in the past. She is good. This is good. She tells Kara that her words mean nothing to her and turns off the hologram.

You can see her icy shell cracking and melting but hell if she’ll accept the warmth she’s offered.

Kara goes out onto the DEO balcony to process and Alex comes out to check on her. Kara is heartbroken that she couldn’t get through to her. She understands why Lena is doing what she’s doing. Her voice quivers as she tells Alex that she knows it’s her fault.

You can take responsibility for causing someone pain, but you can’t hold yourself solely responsible for the actions they take afterward.

Alex reassures her that Kara wasn’t keeping her identity a secret to hurt Lena, but to protect her, to protect everyone. That impact is important, but intent should be considered, too. She loves Lena too, but there’s more at stake than Kara and Lena’s relationship. The fate of humanity is on the line, and if Lena has gone too far to pull back to them, they have to treat her like someone who is not on their side. Kara shakes her head. “This is not our Lena.”

But with this new information, this new turn of events, Alex isn’t sure she knows who their Lena is anymore. Lena’s upset that Kara lied to them for months, but then she turned around and did the same thing. Showed up to countless game nights harboring secret resentment. And it’s not the first time she lied to them. Though, in this moment, Alex goes against her own advice, and is ignoring Lena’s good intentions in every instance she mentions. Kara says she will not, I repeat, WILL NOT treat Lena like a villain. But Alex has to. Despite Alex’s words coming out all calm in rational, I think what’s really happening is that Kara is hurt and Alex wants to fix it. I don’t think Alex thinks Lena is a villain, I don’t even think she really holds all those things against her (though she did come up with them awful quickly), I think she sees the pain in her sister’s eyes and all ability to see two sides to this flew off the balcony.

Alex proves she means business by telling Kara that they snuck a virus into the bunker with the hologram that will slow down Myriad and give her time to surrender before they take any action. Alex says they have to start thinking with their heads, not their hearts.

“We. Can both. Be queer. It’s fine.”

Back at the bunker, Lena tries to launch Myriad, but something blocks it. Hope says that the hologram had a virus, and Lena is hurt. And I’m screaming at my TV that Kara didn’t know, but Lena is resigned to yet another betrayal. I haven’t been paying as much attention as I should to when Lena calls Kara “Kara” vs “Supergirl” since she learned they were one person, but in this instance when Lena calls her Supergirl, for some reason it stabs me in the heart.

They need to manually adjust the satellites but Lex made it dangerous to do so. Hope is more than ready to go do it, since launching Myriad was part of her coded objectives, but Lena panics. Don’t go, she pleads. She walks it back a little, saying, “We may need you,” trying to sound dispassionate and logical about the AI she built and put in her ex-assistant’s body.

Lena, it’s okay if you grew attached to your AI. I used to cry every time my tamagotchi died.

At the DEO, Kara runs to Space Dad to say her sister’s trying to hurt Lena, and that she just needs time. J’onn is sort of in the middle on all this, and can see both sides; all he knows for sure is that they think they can use Mal’s Q Waves to stop Myriad.

Rama Khan takes Andrea to the volcano, she realizes what he wants her to do and refuses to do it. She warns him that Supergirl will just stop him, but he roars something about being a god and attacks. Andrea grabs the staff and Shadows off to the DEO, trying to warn them before Rama Khan yoinks her back and traps her and the staff into a dirt mound he can use as an energy beacon.

Her brief visit to the DEO was enough for Brainy to link the staff to Pompeii and guess at Rama Khan’s plan. Alex is giving orders to everyone to stop this, but Kara interrupts and tells Alex about the Q Wave plan. Alex almost laughs at the idea of trusting Mal to help them stop Lena.

“ALL THIS GREY AREA NONSENSE IS GETTING DIFFICULT TO NAVIGATE. WHERE’S MY GIRLFRIEND?”

Alex’s current plan to stop Lena if she doesn’t surrender would result in Lena’s death, and Kara pleads with her sister. Lena is their friend, she’s part of their chosen family, and if Alex kills her, there’s no turning back from that. It will have lasting consequences on all of them.

Now it’s Alex’s turn to go to Space Dad for advice, and Alex says that this decision isn’t as easy for her as Kara is making it sound. She doesn’t want to have to hurt Lena but her job is to make the tough choices and ultimately do what’s best for the world, not just the people she personally cares about. But J’onn tells her that they can’t just write people off for their past mistakes. They have to give them the chance to try to be better.

The DEO sends Lena another warning, another request to surrender, but Lena tells Hope to delete them. Hope asks again if she can go rearrange the satellite dishes. She believes in Lena, and Eve did too, and she wants Myriad to be successful. She was designed to want Myriad to be successful. Lena refuses again, saying they’ll find another way, because she doesn’t want both Hope and Eve to die, and Hope is the only friend Lena has left.

“You’re the only Hope I have.”

But Hope reminds her she is not Lena’s friend. She’s her AI. Lena’s face falls. My heart sinks. Two things are happening here all at once. The only person Lena trusted just reminded her that she’s not her friend. And also Lena realizes that she grew emotionally attached to the AI she built to work by her side so she wouldn’t be hurt…and it hurt her. Because no matter how hard she tries, Lena is full of love and her instinct is to trust despite the pain she’s been through. So she loved and trusted Hope despite her being in a betrayer’s body and hell didn’t even want Eve to be gone forever.

“Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know.”

This poor woman doesn’t need to “fix” humanity she just needs some therapy and maybe a puppy.

Supergirl and the Martian Manhunter go to fight Rama Khan while Alex is torn between using the Claymore satellite, which will definitely stop Myriad but probably kill Lena, or to trust Malefic, which will probably stop Myriad but definitely not kill Lena.

Having been slapped on the wrist by reality, Lena lets Hope go out to the satellites and together they crack Lex’s code and access the manual overrides, and finally Myriad is ready. So Lena launches it.

They have 30 seconds before Myriad reaches earth and all of humanity is hit with the Do No Harm waves, and after a moment of deliberation, Alex chooses to trust Mal because if there’s a chance to save her friend, she’s going to take it. If not for herself, for Kara.

Mal is almost successful but needs a little more power to fully overcome the Myriad beams, and Brainy says the only way to do that is to shut off the DEO inhibitors. Alex is scared but when it comes down to it Alex chooses to trust, and Mal is successful; Myriad has been stopped.

I didn’t really think Lena would die but if Alex had taken that path…it would have been a loooooong road back to Kara.

Rama Kahn buries Supergirl in cinderblocks and is giving her his best villain speech, but when she hears that Alex chose the save-Lena approach to stopping Myriad, Kara feels a surge of hope that gives her the energy she needs to throw off her concrete blanket and freeze the Earthbender. At the same time, J’onn gets the staff out of the ground and Arcata is set free to tackle Rama Khan and shadow him away.

In the bunker, Lena is defeated. Hope asks what they should do, and Lena just resigns to the fact that she lost, saying sometimes the good guys don’t win.

Sometimes good does not prevail, and sometimes not all ships set sail.

Shadow takes a stabbed Rama Khan to the Leviathan lair, where Gamemnae takes the staff out of him, yoinks his pin off his robe, and tells him that she’s in charge now. His reign is over. Patriarchy = toppled.

Lena and Hope teleport back to her lab, where Lena makes sure her gun is loaded before handing it to Hope. And for a breath I was terrified. I thought she was going to have Hope shoot her, or herself, I didn’t know where this too-calm Lena was, emotionally. How defeated she really felt. If her hopelessness was leading her to want to be Hopeless. But in reality she’s just the cleverest girl. Agents come swooping in and Hope gets what Lena wants her to do. She pretends to hold Lena hostage, and Lena plays the victim, calling Hope “Eve” and acting innocent as a babe.

Obviously none of these guards had ever met Lena Luthor because no one who knows her would buy this damsel act.

At the DEO, Alex finds Kara on the feelings balcony again (I like that every building in National City has a feelings balcony) and tells her the story Lena’s giving the authorities. Neither of them believe it, they know what Lena did, but Kara is just so happy she’s alive. And now Alex is on her side; they’re going to save Lena’s soul, they’re going to get her back from the brink, together.

“Yes, my dear sister, we’ll save your ‘friend’ from herself, surely there will be no crisis to distract us.”

Later that night, Lena is drinking alone in her apartment and looking longingly at a picture of her and Kara, while at her loft, Kara is also looking at the same photo of them. And I’m sorry, but RIGHT before this scene, there was one of Andrea looking with that same sad look at a picture of her and Russell aka the person she LOVES ROMANTICALLY. So please explain to me the logic behind this. Please explain to me how the writers can keep calling them friends and yet having them do things that more-than-friends do in the same universe, the same show, the same EPISODE. There was a time I could see the argument both ways; that I could see why SuperCorp was a ship and I could see how the writers thought they were writing friendship between a superhero and a billionaire. But that time is long gone and if they finish this season not even mentioning one time that maybe there was more than friendship feelings at least on one side of this, I’m going to launch Myriad myself so no TV show can do harm to me ever again.

“And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby, it helps to think we’re sleeping underneath the same big sky.”

If this was a high school AU I bet Kara would memorize Lena’s schedule so they could “accidentally” run into each other in the halls.

Alas, even if such a confession were in our future, it’s going to have to wait, because, as you may or may not have heard, a crisis is coming. A character I called “Stupid Crisis Man” in my notes (but is actually called Mar Novu/The Monitor) shows up to J’onn after he sends his brother away in his rocket car to see M’gann and says J’onn passed his test. The Monitor says he’s been watching J’onn since the Elseworlds crossover and thinks he should join this crossover, too.

When The Monitor leaves J’onn, he goes back to a weird floating floor where Lex is alive and well and playing chess. The Monitor apparently brought Lex back to fulfil his destiny and become a hero, and Lex says he’s always been the hero, because WHEW that man is living in his own elseworld, but first Lex wants to discuss his sister. To which I say, “Keep her name out of your mouth, SIR.”

The Crisis set up that was at the end of Batwoman and Supergirl, that I imagine will be at the end of all the Arrowverse shows this week, is the newest rendition of Harry standing in the tunnel he found when he was following The Monitor. He presses symbols that I imagine represent Supergirl, Batwoman, Flash, Arrow, and the Legends, in that order, and the door (to infinite earths??) opens up and sucks him in.

The Crossover will be in five parts, the first three next week, and the last two in January, when our beloved Legends will finally return unto us.

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