Previously on Supergirl, I wrote a recap and named it Make it Reign which I’m not saying the Supergirl writers stole for this episode title but I’m not NOT saying it, Sam and Reign got split, Kara found out her mother was alive, the evil priestesses arrived on Earth, and the show forgot how to write women for a minute.
This week we begin with the three evil priestesses on Earth, and they are pretty pumped to have powers from the yellow sun. Their parade is quickly rained on though, and they are bummed to find out they can’t touch the Worldkiller Rock; luckily the good ol’ cult leader is there to help and holds it tight while the fire burns around his hand, rambling about sacrifice.
On Argo, Kara and her mom find the recipe for Worldkillers in Selena’s house and realize they need a way to communicate with their friends on Earth, which will be hard while they’re Under the Dome.
Speaking of Earth, Sam is down there, looking pretty rough. Ruby is worried about her but Sam promises she’s done lying.
At the DEO, J’onn comes and tells Alex that it’s time to say goodbye to her Space Grandpa. She’s so sad and her lip quivers and her eyes well up and it’s very hard to watch.
Making Alex cry is a crime against humanity.
He says sweet things to her and calls her intuitive and says that if he has to go, he’s glad to leave his son among people who love him. He leaves her with some wisdom, like “all of life is change,” and assuring her that he’s at peace, knowing he’ll live forever within his son.
While Kara and her mom are in Selena’s house, they find a hologram crystal and are more surprised that Selena’s visage appears than she is to see them through it. She gives them the update on what exactly is going on, as villains are wont to do, explaining that Reign would have emerged sooner if Sam hadn’t been so damn strong. She says neither can live while the other survives, and the point of the Worldkiller is to, well, kill the world. Essentially terraforming it into Krypton, humans be damned.
Selena self-destructs their home and Kara is more determined than ever to communicate with the DEO.
Sam managed to drag herself to the DEO because she feels so yucky, and Lena and Alex tell her some science about herself.
HERE. FOR. THIS. SuperAgent Science Squad!
I will say, this episode passed the Bechdel test a bunch of times, which almost made up for some of the other things. Almost.
Sam’s cells are transforming back into Kryptonian, so Ruby suggests to the two women with advanced degrees in science that maybe they try sun lamps.
On Argo, Alura remembers her husband’s old lab, so they head there to find a portal that he hadn’t succeeded fixing that they can get to work. Kara remembers this lab, and remembers her father treating her like she was a fellow scientist, like the most important person on the planet.
In the Fortress of Doomitude, Reign is reborn as a fire fetus, but she can’t become whole until they combine Pestilence and Purity’s blood. They can sense that it still exists on this planet, so they follow the scent like the Sanderson Sisters hunting children.
At the DEO, Sam is under some heat lamps, not feeling any stronger, when Alex and Lena put up a barrier as a test.
I think I lost time just staring into the beauty of this image.
But Sam is unaffected, meaning she’s not as Kryptonian as they thought.
Up in Kara’s dad lab, they find some crystals and use it to hi-jack the Momogram, so Kara talks to Winn through her mother’s image. He’s skeptical and yells for Alex, who instantly recognizes her sister’s urgent tone. (Erica Durance did an amazing job channeling Melissa Benoist’s mannerisms and speech patters in these scenes.) Through the hologram, Kara tells Alex what’s going on and asks them to whip up the portal on their end so they can get back to Earth and stop, well, the apocalypse.
Alex saying “Shut up, Winn!” is my kink.
The priestesses show up at the DEO to get the blood and Alex sends Demos to destroy it while she tries to fend them off.
No more Miss Nice Lesbian
She uses her gun to send a pretty badass electricity net over them, but it only slows them briefly.
Alex runs off to her lab to get some Kryptonite, looking a little like “Kara would kill me for this” before rushing back to stop the new invaders.
Kara, after brushing aside a stale cracker on the controls, takes over the Momogram and starts to use her to move around the DEO and try to find a way to activate the controls.
Ruby does some cute smart things to help Demos get past one Worldkiller while still protecting herself and her mom.
Alex has another badass fight scene with her magnet-gun-fetching-gloves and even one of them with a kryptonite charge that she power-blasts at them and then does a flying two-footed double-kick and it’s Very Dramatic and Very Cool.
Meanwhile, Kara uses the vision of Alura to trick one of the priestesses into punching the portal controls, which is apparently how you turn it on, and Alura suits up and follows her daughter through the portal to Earth.
“Amazing how I happen to have a suit with the same waistline detail in my closet!!”
But they’re a little too late, and while Demos was running around with the blood he was told to destroy, he gets zapped threefold and murdered, despite being one of the few remaining people of color on this show. Not to mention two of the other people of color introduced this season are also actively dying. Demos has been a really fun background character for a very long time, and I guess the intention was to show that this whole Worldkiller business has stakes after all, but I wish they had chosen an unnamed character instead of our one Asian character who has been around for two seasons.
Selena gives another villain speech, digging out the tired classic “Caring makes you weak” and demands Kara hand over the blood of Purity and Pestilence. Kara, in what wasn’t her brightest idea, chucks it at her, but then zaps it with her eyes. Selena holds on tight, her hand frying in the process, and the priestesses get the hell out of dodge.
Meanwhile, Lena is doing some crazy science with Eve. Okay fine it’s just regular science. They think they’re at a dead end when Lena decides to test some blood she has lying around on an unwashed instrument and looks again and suddenly she think she might know what’s wrong.
Lena when you’re done with this I need more of your lead dust NO REASON
Lena brings Sam to the planning table in the center of the DEO and Lena tells them that they think Sam and Reign are still linked and that all they need to do to weaken Reign is to make Sam stronger. Alura suggests the Fountain of Lilith, which sounds pretty gay to me, but it’s in the ReignForest. Sam doesn’t care, she’s ready to go, and determined not to die. So she shouts her battlecry (“For Ruby!!!”) and tells Lena it’s okay to shock her half to death.
Save the Sam-Leader, save the world.
A moment of light in the stressful darkness is when Kara officially and proudly introduces Alura to Alex.
“We are family! I’ve got my mom, sister, and me!”
Alex looks a little wary, whether from suspicion or sadness that this is who is taking her sister away from her is unclear, but is gracious when Alura thanks her for taking her daughter in when she first landed on Earth.
Then six women pack into one room and support each other while Sam takes the trip to the ReignForest.
Six women working together to save the world. More of this is the show I want.
When Sam gets to the forest, she hears whispered threats hissing through her ear as she takes off running, but almost immediately falls down, so I don’t have the HIGHEST hopes for her success rate on her own in here.
In the end, it turns out Demos died for naught, because Selena still has enough blood all up in her burnt hand to have Reign be reborn, fully clothed and masked, with Pestilence claws, and I would presume a scream of Purity. She dives into the center of the earth to start the terraforming process and the ground begins to quake, the buildings to shake.
The cult dude formerly known as Byron Montgomery, having expended his usage once Reign is born again, is shocked and appalled that the evil deities he worshipped turned on him and killed him dead as soon as they didn’t need him anymore.
Lena offers to stay with Ruby and Sam while the rest of the women rush off to save the day.
It’s all hands on deck, and even though J’onn and his father had been spending the whole episode exchanging memories in a separate room, Papa J’onn decides he’d rather sacrifice himself for the cause then ensure every scrap of memory gets passed on. This will be his legacy.
One episode left, friends. I have no doubt Supergirl will save the world, but who will save Supergirl?
Maybe Kara will be off waitressing under the name of “Anne” in some small town in the middle of nowhere in between seasons to find herself again.
Hey, it worked for Livewire.
They also decided to just introduce magic apropos of nothing…is there a National City University Wiccan Bake sale? Feels like they’re short some *good witches*.
I don’t have a problem with “magic.” If you take the Arthur C. Clarke approach, “magic” is just forces we don’t understand (not a direct quote but it carries the gist). “Magic” was always a thing in the comics and one of the few things that could affect Kryptonians.
*offended gasp*
You mistake me, sir! Clearly this show needs more witches. Technically, everything does.
It’s the Third Law of Oz-ian dynamics: everything needs good witches!
Ah, I see. Well, if you substitute “women who practice magic” for “witches” Zatanna the Magician is canon. As for magic being “apropos of nothing” most of the plot devices this season have fallen in that category. I’m just going along for the ride to see what ridiculous thing could possibly happen next.
I don’t know who Zatanna is but she sounds great LET’S GET HER HERE
I was watching the show last night and delighting in the Alex/Lena trying to save Sam with suggestions from Ruby dynamic. It made me so sad when they switched to Kara and what should be something equally interesting (working with her mom to try to get back to Earth and save her loved ones) and I was just…bored. I kind of didn’t care a lot what was happening with Kara? On a show called Supergirl, her scenes were the ones I least wanted to watch or cared about?
I love the character in my head. The character they established in the first season and that we’ve seen off and on. But I just couldn’t care less for emotionally-conflicted over a bad past relationship that won’t go away Kara. So conflicted that she couldn’t even give her mom a straight answer about it…leaving it open for various paths of resolution, but also continuing the mind-numbing frustration of it all.
Maybe the middle of the end of the world isn’t the best time to tell your mom you’re thinking about getting back together with a married man. (Assuming that’s what she’s thinking.) That said, I am hoping for a resolution that ends with him being far, far away.
From your fingertips to Greg Berlanti’s ears
I’m really looking forward for more Alex/Lena interactions cause they’re great together! I’m gonna be devastated if Sam dies. She has so much potential for growth on the show and I’m hoping they don’t screw this up.
Thanks. I always enjoy these recaps, even when we sometimes disagree. I missed a few minutes near the beginning because of a “severe weather alert” but apparently J’onn filled Alex in on what was happening with M’rynn. That story line was sad but cool. It looks like M’rynn will go out fighting next episode.
Alura and Alex meeting was great, especially the who-rescued-who line.
Sam saying, “I promise you, I am not dying today,” illustrates how strong all these women are.
The theme of parents sacrificing for their children was a thread through the episode.
On a lighter note, Alura has more clothes. Yay! I was beginning to think she’d been wearing the same dress for the last 25 years. ;-) Speaking of clothes, both her blue dress and her fighting outfit have the same waist detail as Kara’s super suit, even though the latter was designed by Winn, who had never seen Kryptonian fashions.
It turned out there was a worn out copy of Cosmos Magazine in the escape pod with an article “2,317 Practical & Indestructible Fashions”. Unfortunately no one noticed the article titled “38 Ways to Move On”.
Didn’t they make a big deal about how much Mon-El had been changed for the better by her, learned to be a good person, etc? Great! He can use that newfound sense of morality and go be with his actual wife.
Solution consistent with their (very strange) stated characterizations.
A running theme on another site is that this show keeps “telling” when it should be “showing.” I can understand being conflicted–he essentially married Imra “on the rebound”–but arranged marriage or not he should have moved on by now. It’s been seven years from his POV. If he’s really a better man, let the writers show us by having him “do the right thing” and go back to his wife.
That’s one reason I had hoped Mon-El helping that kid Val was just for us…but noOOOoo they had to “tell” Kara and THEN have Kara SAY OUT LOUD “helping people without telling me!”
it ruined the whole thing :(
I loved the female energy in this episode… I mean, mostly Alex, Sam and Lena), which, indeed, almost made up for other nonsense.
Through the dark valley we all walk, hope, that everyone comes out alive and stronger at the end.
By the ancient rules, because the writers used one of Valerie’s review titles as an episode title, she gets to write an episode of Supergirl next season.
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Following a little R&R in Tahiti (it’s a magical place), Agent Demos will be placed in the Agent Relocation Program and assigned to a new covert agency. He will be trained by Agent Vasquez’s long lost twin sister, Agent Piper.
——–
My newest headcanon is that Alura’s suit is just what she wore to work as a judicator on Krypton and Kara drew it for Winn during the costume montage way back in season one after he tried to put her in hot pants.
———
The writers have got a lot of storylines going; I’m excited to see how they wrap this up, and what the consequences will be. Short of a Rao ex machina, someone will have to kill Selena, Vita, the third, unnamed sister, and Reign. And it won’t be Supergirl… to quote Giles, “She’s a hero, you see. She’s not like us.”
———
Who will save Supergirl? The same person who saved her last year: Science Girl (aka, Lena Luthor).
“By the ancient rules, because the writers used one of Valerie’s review titles as an episode title, she gets to write an episode of Supergirl next season.” <--- I love this!!!
That’s hot pants and a crop top. ;-) Seriously, I thought of essentially the same explanation you did, that Kara remembered her mom wearing that waist detail and wanted to incorporate it into her super suit. Of course, we know it’s the costume designers going for repeated themes like Reign’s chest emblem being the same shape as Kara’s but objectively it’s a little amusing.
I don’t know who will save Supergirl but there are a number of good options. Lena, of course; Alex; J’onn; the Legion (and wouldn’t it be something if the wife Mon-El was thinking about cheating on ended up saving the woman he was thinking about cheating with?); Ruby might suddenly develop powers; heck, Mon-El might even make himself useful (but I really hope not).
So if “Shut up, Winn” is the new “Not Now, Gary”…we need an AI to start with shipping (wherefore art thou, Gideon?).
Hmm. Maybe the evil AI in the temple could get really bored after its plans are foiled? They don’t know how to shut it down so they just leave it there.
It just keeps sending thirst texts to Lena using Kara’s cell phone number.