This new, updated version is Kryptonian tech mixed with tech from other planets, and Zor-El has named him Oscar after a quirky little children’s show he watched while he was waiting for Kara to wake up from her sun nap.

Not me picturing Young Kara singing “C is for Cookie” and eating cookies Super-fast like Cookie Monster just to make her sister smile.

Oscar can turn trash into energy, which he then uses to fuel himself, making him a very efficient lil guy. Which works out because it’s not like Kara can just fly around and clean it up; that barge they ran into earlier actually had some kryptonite on it. Because, not unlike vervain in Mystic Falls, people act like kryptonite is rare in National City, but there’s actually a surprising amount of it.

They want to run tests first but Zor-El’s eagerness is contagious so they send Oscar out.

Back at CatCo, Andrea hates William’s article because it doesn’t put enough blame on Lex. But William insists his research was thorough and the truth is, Lex found a loophole. He did all his shady dealings on the up-and-up.

When William leaves, Andrea starts to panic. People are pulling ads and CatCo is not on its way to #1 like she planned. Desperate, she gets her medallion and shadow bamfs her way into the Luthor mansion. She’s devastated to learn that William was right, that Lex’s trash barge was technically legal. But while she’s lurking around Lex’s office she finds a new angle…the Superfriends.

Has Andrea never met Alex because the photo in Lex’s office wasn’t even of her in her Sentinel gear.

Out on the trash barge, at first it seems like Oscar is doing a great job, but then garbage starts clinging to him. He falls into the water and they lose him entirely. The energy he was absorbing is a potential danger to passing cargo ships so Kara heads off to find him.

Lena Luthor protocol saves the day again.

And she puts on her Lena-designed Kryptonite-proof suit just in case.

When they brief Lena in, she catches up quickly. She realizes Daxamite tech might be to blame, which frankly tracks, about Lena thinks she should be able to uncloak him, which also tracks. Brainy has an idea for how to stop him, but they need to deliver a computer virus via drone. And I’ll be honest, I love how much a part of the team, and an inextricable part of the solution Lena is.

Papa Zor-El hates this plan; he doesn’t want to stop Oscar from doing his job. He wants to save the planet…that he accidentally calls Krypton. Alex realizes what he means but she tells him they have to stop it. It’s not worth the risk. It’s not like they could solve the climate crisis overnight.

“Oh to have the confidence of a mediocre white man.”

Knowing how to talk to a man on the edge, Alex speaks to him firmly and clearly: He can either help or he can step aside. He wisely decides to help.

By the time the Superfriends get to Oscar, he’s a giant trash golem. Though he’s kind of cool looking because the center of the DEO floor is on his chest.

Sentinel and Dreamer start evacuating civilians while Lena works from the Tower to try to break down Oscar’s forcefield. While they do that, Brainy tries to convince Oscar that he’s trash so he can get yanked up to him. Kara’s suit gets compromised in the process and the kryptonite starts to seep in. She starts to have PTSD flashbacks from the Phantom Zone and when Alex sees her frozen and in pain on the ground, SHE starts to have PTSD flashbacks of all the time she’s almost lost her baby sister, and frankly there’s a moment where things look bleak. But the Superfriends get it together just in time and Alex and Kara use their powers while Brainy gets close enough to give Oscar the virus. Lena warns them all to get out of the way and the day is saved.

“Seriously how did they ever survive without me on the team?”

Zor-El is feeling bad about his choices but Lena reassures him; hardly a person in this town who hasn’t done the wrong thing for the right reasons. And besides, Supergirl can fling this particular mistake into the sun. No harm, no foul.

Zor-El gets one last chat with his daughter on the Tower’s feelings balcony. He admits that one of the reasons he was putting off going to Argo to see Allura is that he’s worried that she’ll be upset; he made rash decisions and ended up making everything worse, resulting in the destruction of their entire planet. And then he almost did the same exact thing to Earth. Kara is sweet and supportive; she has a soft spot for people who destroy (or almost destroy) entire peoples on their quest to make the world a better place.

If you play Kara’s story in reverse it becomes a country song.

He looks at his little girl, impossibly grown, and he knows he made at least one good pod-shaped decision back on Krypton. He doesn’t want Kara to suffer the same fate as him; he tells her to put down the weight of the world once in a while.

Lena comes to get Zor-El because it’s time for him to leave, so Kara says goodbye to her father, but this time she knows it’s goodbye for now.

Lena smiles a sad smile seeing Kara get what she’ll never have.

It’s always nice to get along with the in-laws.

At CatCo, William is surprised to find that Andrea published William’s trash…barge article but now she has a new angle for him to work. The Superfriends. She wants to know everything about everyone in Supergirl’s life. What drives them, what their hobbies are, who they’re crushing on, which Autostraddle personality quizzes have they taken. She wants full profiles on each, and she wants a lasting relationship with them. She wants their scoop.

Later that evening, Lena calls Nia. She has already given Kara this news, because of course she did, but she wanted Nia to hear it too, because she helped inspire it. She wants to fully let go of the guilt of her mother’s death, so she’s decided to get to know her the best she can. She’s going to where she was born. Now, she doesn’t SAY Ireland, but I have to imagine she means Ireland.

“And just as a warning I’m kind of an accent sponge so if I come back with a brogue just don’t question it.”

And y’all, I don’t know why, but for some reason I thought there were only six episodes left, and I PANICKED. I was like, are they REALLY sending Lena away when we have LESS THAN SIX HOURS LEFT TOGETHER. The bad news is, it does seem like they’re sending Lena away for a little while, but the GOOD news is, this season is supposed to be 20 episodes, so we have more time together than I thought. I’m crossing all the fingers on my Irish side that one of those episodes is very Lena-centric and we get to SEE her do all this learning-about-her-mom stuff. Maybe find a magic medallion of her own.

Alex is getting ready for dinner with her sister when she realizes Kara is just staring at a blank screen, unable to write about the Phantoms for Andrea. When Alex sidles up next to her, Kara starts talking about what it was like for her in the Phantom zone. The cold, the fear. The hopelessness.

The ONLY time I am even remotely okay with considering what life will be like without Supergirl in it is imagining the amazing projects that will be lucky enough to have Melissa bring this TALENT to them.

Alex says she really doesn’t need to talk about it if she doesn’t want to, but Kara does want to. Avoiding thinking about it is what lead her to freezing up when confronted with it while they were fighting Oscar. To start to heal, she has to deal. And the loneliness was part of the torment, so whatever she can do to feel less alone, the faster she’ll start to recover. And knowing what we know now, it’s hard not to draw parallels here. She says that she was so glad to get out of that terrible situation that she almost forgot to process what she had been through. To acknowledge how afraid she had been for so long. And my heart breaks not only for Kara, but for Melissa, who knows all too well how that must feel.

So Alex pulls her baby sister into a hug. Kara asks what happens if that fear never goes away, and Alex admits that she’s been feeling pretty scared too. That she got to a really dark place when Kara was gone, when they had no solid plan for getting her back. And sometimes Kara’s safety still feels so fragile, but they have each other, and they have to work through their fears to get over them. Or at the very least, learn to live with them.

The Danvers Sisters are very important to me dot blogspot dot biz.

So they agree to heal together, and that gives Kara an idea. She takes inspiration from one of Iris West-Allen’s famous Central City articles and decides to take a similar spin on her Phantom article. Because coming together is exactly what the city needs after being ravaged by nightmares.

Alex is so proud that she is taking this horrible thing that happened to her and turning it into something good. And whether or not Kara realizes it yet, but that’s a great way for people like her to heal. Just like she takes on the weight of everyone else’s pain and problems, she can take on their joy and their healing, too.

These two are MY yellow sun.

The sisters eat dinner together like old times, and for one blessed moment, everything feels right in the world.

But then somewhere across town, Nia wakes up from a dream and only needs to say one word before we’re reminded of the hitchhiker the Zor-Els took back from the Phantom Zone with them: Nyxly.

Next week, Kelly returns! See you then!

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