Previously on Supergirl, you may have heard, there was a Crisis, and after that Crisis some folks from some of the Infinite Earths that were destroyed got rocketed to the newly formed Earth Prime, including a bunch of Brainys, including a Lady Brainy who told him that dumping all his emotional connections and working with Lex Luthor is the only way to stop Leviathan.

And so, Brainy does. At the top of this episode, he breaks another Earth’s Winn Schott out of a prison transport bus and takes him to Lex Luthor. It’s all very ominous.

Across town, Kara, Alex, and Kelly are having a breakup feast for Nia, who is trying to put on a brave face about her breakup with Brainy.

I. LOVE. FRIENDSHIP.

They’re all being so cute and supportive and I love it. Nia tries to change the subject and they talk about how they’re all nervous about what Lex is up to instead. ‘

After Brainy delivers Not-Winn to Lex, they have a drink and Lex is impressed Not-Winn managed to get himself arrested within 16 hours of being on this Earth. Not-Winn calls himself the Toyman, like his father, and Lex wants to help him for reasons that will not become clear until later in this episode. He gives Toyman a ticket to ToyCon and access to a nemesis.

Then it’s off to find his sister, who is pissed he stood her up.

Lena looks like she’s about to appear from the shadows to tell a teenager they’ve been chosen for a dangerous destiny.

This Earth doesn’t have the q-waves she needs to complete Non Nocere, and she’s back at square one, and could have used her brother’s genius, evil as it may be. Lex is a little salty because Lena seems to have undersold Leviathan, and Brainy agrees that they’re the biggest threat right now. Brainy promises to abide by Lena’s “nobody gets hurt” rule, so Lena agrees to talk to Andrea to see what she can find out about Leviathan. In return, Lex promises to get her a new source of q-waves.

Lena’s face when she saw Brainy hurt my feelings.

The next day, at ToyCon, Lex is admiring his little action figures when Kara and William approach for a quote, overcompensating for their hatred with a high dose of cheer. That is, until partway through the interview when William “What is Chill” Day starts interrogating Lex instead. So Lex pulls Kara aside and tells her to get her British Ken Doll in line or he’ll make sure he can never report anything again.

“I can’t wait til Lena kills you again.”

He then makes sure she has to destroy whatever she did record by saying “Kara Danvers is Supergirl” into it, which was kind of funny because of how flustered Kara got. And anyway, Kara can’t talk anymore because Alex calls in to tell her that there’s a sniper at ToyCon so she has to go suit up.

Alex and Kara survey the scene and realize that all of this is starting to look oddly familiar…

“It’s like that scene from Aladdin; surely these are real monkeys who have been turned into toys. I CRACKED IT.”

And Kara realizes the toy monkeys are bombs just in time to dive over them and protect everyone. They see Toyman, who looks an awful lot like their friend Winn, but before they can even really begin to wrap their heads around it, another Winn shows up, this one in a Legion ship and with a future suit on.

“Please be the Waverider, please be the Waverider.”

Future Winn frantically tries to ask Brainy for help and Alex talks him down and asks him to explain what’s happening. They learn that Winn has a wife and daughter, and Alex and Kara are so, so happy for him.

LOOK AT THEIR LIL HAPPY FACES

Winn explains that in his timeline, some Time Cops showed up to arrest him for the Toyman’s crimes, and if they don’t stop him, he could mess up Winn’s timeline and make it so he never met his wife and children. I’m not entirely sure how both of those things could be true but I gave up trying to understand the logic of the Arrowverse’s concept of time and space about three seasons of Legends of Tomorrow and two Crises ago.

Brainy offers to help Winn park his Legion ship at the DEO, but Alex doesn’t want Lex to have access to it, so she says she’ll leverage an old friend to put it somewhere. (Should I know who that old friend is? I feel like I should know who that old friend is.)

Winn is confused; why wouldn’t she want Lex Luthor, American Hero, to be near his ship.

When I call myself queer and a straight person tries to tell me that word is offensive and I shouldn’t use it.

The Danvers sisters decide they need J’onn to fill Winn’s memories in ASAP.

Over at CatCo, Lena goes to talk to Andrea about Leviathan.

You’re really going to tell me she wore this outfit and wasn’t intending to seduce Andrea if that’s what it took?

Andrea is relieved to not have to lie anymore; she was just trying to protect her friend. But Lena quickly learns that in this timeline, Leviathan never called on Andrea. She was never The Shadow. Andrea looks scared. Lena reassures her that they’re in this together. She invokes the promise of their youth: You jump, I jump.

“I’m so happy I could just kiss you.”

I really thought Andrea was going to kiss her and Lena was going to be like, “What are you doing?” and Andrea was going to remind her that of course they dated because that’s the most romantic fucking line. But alas.

They have more chemistry than Kara and William JUST SAYING

But after she leaves the CatCo office, Lena’s face is stone again as she calls Lex and says the deed is done. She has Andrea wrapped around her finger and they’ll know if Leviathan calls on her.

You know how they say that if you smile in the mirror enough your mood will actually start to improve? I’m kind of hoping that if Lena keeps trying to fake friendships it will remind her how nice friendships can be, despite the risk of pain. We’ll see.

Alex and Kara head to J’onn’s office to show Winn the new place, and Kara is delighted to find that there’s a secret elevator that leads up to a secret lair. J’onn reveals that he built them a SuperFriends HQ, just like Star Labs, or the Arrow Cave, or even the Waverider; a place they can meet and plan without a bunch of randos eavesdropping. Or, you know, Lex Luthor. He was inspired by Barry’s idea to secure the Hall of Justice.

“I’ll miss those Canadian extras but this is really nice.”

They’re going with The Tower for SuperFriends HQ, but we’ll see if that sticks. J’onn gives Winn back his memories of the pre-Crisis timeline, and after a bout of extreme nausea, he remembers everything.

Back on the other side of the good/evil line, Brainy says that Lex has what he needs, so he should call off the Toyman now, but Lex says that’s someone else’s problem now.

And a problem it is, because the Toyman is streaming live and saying that he’ll blow something up if he gets to a million followers, and his support starts coming in immediately, much to the Danvers sisters’ horror.

You can tell Kara’s not on Twitter and has never had anyone tell her how much they hate the thing she just said she loves for no reason.

Oh and by the way, J’onn put little call buttons for all the Paragons in Superfriends HQ, making me once again hope that we can have more one-off crossover visits now that we’re all one one Earth.

After she’s done geeking out about their new clubhouse, Kara goes to CatCo to try to talk William out of investigating Lex. But William doesn’t want to give up. And before she can convince him, Andrea shows up and says that William has to come with her to an Obsidian launch. As for Kara, as far as Andrea knows, Kara used to be friends with the Winn that became the Toyman, so she wants Kara to get an exclusive interview. And she won’t take no for an answer.

Andrea has really been channeling the energy Cat Grant left behind lately.

Before even pretending to do what Andrea says, Kara takes Nia to Superfriends HQ and excitedly shows her their new digs, and to introduce her to Winn.

“Nice to meet you. I’ve heard such medium things about you!”

Winn is delighted to meet THE Nia Nal, because he’s best friends with one of her descendants, Nura Nal.

Nia is excited and wants to hear all about Nura, but as Brainy not-so-gently points out, they don’t have time for that right now. First they need Nia to dream. Nia is a little shook by Brainy being there, but she settles onto the couch to see what she can see.

“We’ll just be sitting here staring at you. No pressure.”

First she sees Brainy, and then Brainy turns into a white tiger and attacks her. Nia, not knowing Brainy was involved in this Toyman caper, thinks she’s too in her head about her ex-boyfriend glaring at her and that her vision didn’t work, but tells them about the tiger anyway.

Nia goes out to the Feelings Balcony that comes standard on all buildings in National City, and Winn goes out to talk to her and tell her a bit of what he learned from Nura about dream energy and how powerful she is. In fact, when the Legion gave Winn, the only human, his ring, they imbued it with powers so he could keep up with his peers, and he and Nura chose to put dream energy into it, because of how powerful it is.

My kingdom to make Nia stop crying every episode.

Nia feels a little better and I didn’t think I missed Winn but did I miss Winn? I might have missed Winn.

Next up on the Winn advice train is Kara, who tells him about being torn between wanting William to take down Lex and wanting Lex to not kill William. So Winn points out that being in Kara’s circle inherently means being in danger, but the people there don’t tend to mind, because it also means being protected by Supergirl. So Kara knows what she has to do.

Together the team figures out that Nia’s dream was indeed a clue, and Toyman’s target is National City University, where Andrea is giving her presentation, and home of the tigers.

Meanwhile, with the help of Brainy, Lex manages to find his way to the Legion spaceship and finds a magic box that gives him answers about Leviathan, specifically shows him an old portrait of Gamemnae, and then an image of her as Gemma standing next to Andrea.

Speaking of Andrea, she’s pitching a VR world where you come home from work…and then go to work? She’s like, “You can live your life and your dream at the same time!” which…sounds like just having a second job, but fine. Anyway, before she can really sell me on it, she’s interrupted by an attack of robot tigers.

Winn shows Nia cool new dream energy tricks, so she creates a whip from hers and starts taming the tigers.

“To sleep perchance to dream? More like to dream perhaps to FIGHT, BITCH.”

Winn goes after Toyman and tries to talk him down, but he blows himself up; luckily between his dream energy and Supergirl’s quick thinking, there were ultimately no casualties from the Toyman’s antics and Winn’s wanted poster is gone, so all is well.

Kara goes to CatCo to find out why William wasn’t with Andrea, and decides that instead of stopping him from investigating Lex, she’ll help him instead. As partners.

“I dunno they’re making me say these things.”

He starts to share his findings with her but then there’s a weird moment when they realize how close they’re standing and Kara awkwardly fumbles away from him, and invites him to game night.

Before heading to game night himself, Winn goes to talk to Brainy and says that he knows that Brainy isn’t as shut down and logic-only as he wants people to think; he saw Brainy’s face when he thought Nia was in danger. Brainy breaks down and admits that he’s working with Lex and that another Brainy told him to cut off all ties, and honestly it’s a relief to know our Brainy is still in there somewhere. He regrets helping Lex find the cube because even though he had calculated that helping Lex on this mission would likely not harm anyone, he’s learning that Lex is a bald sack of chaotic energy and hard for his logic to predict what he’ll do next. But he hates all of this and misses Nia and hates that he hurt her. So much.

Winn forgives him and hopefully he knows that if he would just come clean to his friends, his family, they would forgive him, too.

Across town, Lex brings Lena the cube and tells her to press the button and think of what she wants.

I know I’m following the right people on Twitter because of how many jokes I saw about what Lena’s box really wants.

And I’ll be honest when the image was of a beach, I thought what she wanted was a fucking break, but apparently q-waves are…literally waves? Anyway, if Lena’s happy, I’m happy. Though Lena isn’t quite happy. She’s not MAD or crying but she’s just…fine.

“I miss having scenes with people who aren’t you, Lex.”

She’d be better if she’d go to game night, I’m sure. Because honestly game night seems like a lot of fun. I feel like on TV a lot of times “game nights” are portrayed as being way stuffier than they are in my experience, but I have literally had a game night that looks just like this, with grown-ass adults sitting on the floor of a friend’s apartment and just laughing and having a good time.

I know I’m biased but I really want these nerds to start a D&D campaign.

Kara toasts to old friends returning and new friends joining and Alex gives Kara a look when she mentions William and fuckdammit I think this thing is really going to happen. Just when I was going to say I was really enjoying these last few episodes, they have to ruin it by shoehorning in a romance where there doesn’t need to be one. I get that Staz Nair is a very charming and very fun guy, and I do like him, and I get that William was just acting when he was being a butthole to Kara when he first arrived, and I am under no delusion that they will be putting Kara and Lena together any time soon (if they were going to do it, I think they would have done it by now) but Kara and William don’t make sense, and I don’t want it. I’m kind of hoping, since they’re kind of pumping up the romance right now, that it’s a red herring and not how that storyline is going to play out, but they’ve stopped giving Alex and Kelly storylines, and they broke Brainy and Nia up, so I guess they think they need more romance drama.

Me @ the writers when I realized what they were doing.

Anyway, the episode ends with the Toyman’s things being put into evidence and his laptop box springing open and a video of him crackling on screen, so I have a feeling we haven’t quite seen the last of him.

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