In the Supergirl recap, Kara fights for respect after she accidentally outs herself as Superman’s cousin while one of his old adversaries comes looking for her….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
It’s been a few weeks now that Kara Danvers aka Supergirl has been patrolling the streets of National City, but while she’s still getting her feet wet, the newest hero in town is figuring out really quickly that there’s no learning curve in this business.
Not even in interviews.
Following up from last week’s episode, Supergirl conducted her interview with media mogul Cat Grant and while she did her best to answer honestly and candidly, the questions quickly turned sexist when she was asked about settling down and starting a family — is that the kind of question this so called reporter would ask her cousin?!?
And at that moment, Supergirl ended the interview just seconds after revealing that she’s Superman’s cousin — something the rest of the world didn’t know until seconds later when Cat Grant released the information.
It’s clear that Kara still has a long way to go to be her own hero but the latest episode titled ‘Fight or Flight’ did a great job inching her along into being defined as Supergirl and not just Superman’s cousin.
With that said let’s recap the latest episode of Supergirl…
New Enemies
Following the revelation that Superman is indeed her cousin, Kara has to deal with the fallout from everyone around her from Director Hank Henshaw to her friends at work, who already know her secret. She’s still trying to get Cat Grant to treat Supergirl with the same respect that the Daily Planet shows Superman, but right now she’s having no luck.
Cat takes the few quotes she got from Supergirl and paints her as a weak willed millennial, who would crawl back and move into mommy and daddy’s house if their planet didn’t explode. Supergirl won’t be her own hero so long as she can always call on her famous cousin to bail her out of tough situations.
To make matters worse, Cat wants to publish her vindictive story in a matter of days while throwing a gigantic party to celebrate the success of her magazine cover story. Of course, Kara is in charge of all the catering and organization of the party even if she’s off saving the world in between phone calls.
The one she takes today is thanks to a major traffic collision where she has to rip open a bus to save a driver. That was easy enough but then seconds later a faux-Iron Man comes flying out of the sky and then unloads on Supergirl with a huge nuclear blast.
This guy’s name is Reactron and apparently he’s been battling the Man of Steel for years, but now he he’s coming to National City to pick on his cousin.
Despite the ambush, Kara is able to toss a car door at Reactron to break something in his suit, which stops him from firing on her and he’s forced to fly away and live to fight another day. Kara goes back to the DEO for help, but Henshaw says that this villain is just a human with a super suit — and because he’s not alien, they can’t get involved.
In the mean time, Reactron shows up at Lord Industries and kidnaps billionaire tech genius Maxwell Lord (who does that sound like?) to help repair his suit after Supergirl caused it to malfunction.
Who You Gonna Call?
While the DEO has checked out helping Kara on this one, Winn and James are both on board to assist in finding Reactron and maybe figuring out why he has such a grudge on Superman in the first place. Winn has set up a super secret command center deep in the bowels of Cat Co. in an office where someone died so clearly they aren’t using it any longer. Thankfully despite the DEO saying thanks but no thanks, Kara’s sister Alex made no such pledge and she offers a helping hand as well.
The first order of business is finding the nuclear signature where Reactron has Maxwell Lord captive so she can swing through and save the day. During the investigation into Reactron’s source of nuclear power, they find out that there was a meltdown thanks to terrorists at a plant about 60-miles away from National City. It was there that Superman stopped the attack and kept the power plant from melting down but during his heroics, two scientists were lost — one was a woman who died and the other was her husband that survived to become Reactron!
So Kara decides to kill the guy with kindness and reach out to his softer, gentler side, which is something Superman never did. She needs to define herself and maybe secretly being a caring superhero is the way to do it!
But once she arrives at the scrap yard where Maxwell Lord is being held, Supergirl finds out quickly that the tech savvy billionaire was forced to repair Reactron’s suit and now he’s more powerful than ever. He knocks her down and out in less than 30 seconds but just when it appears like Reactron is going to get the killing blow, Superman (or at least the part we could see) swoops in from out of nowhere and the villain flies away in great haste.
Something to Believe In
When Kara wakes up from her battle with Reactron and realizes that Superman had to save her, she’s furious and upset because this just proves Cat Grant’s point that in the face of danger, she’ll just ask her cousin to do the job she couldn’t finish. As it turns out, the call to Superman came from James, who has a special watch that her cousin bestowed upon him just in case he ever got into trouble.
Kara lashes out and tells James that if he doesn’t believe she can handle things then he clearly doesn’t believe in her and he should just go. To make matters worse, Maxwell Lord does a press conference and says thank you to his one true hero for saving his life — Superman.
Later that night, Kara gets dressed up for the party she organized to celebrate Cat’s new Supergirl article that was released already! When she arrives, she shares a dance with Winn, who is clearly crushing on her but she doesn’t exactly return the feelings and a moment later James asks to cut in and that’s when her eyes light up even if she is pissed at him.
James apologizes and says it’s always been his instinct to turn to Superman for help, but in this case he wasn’t calling him because he didn’t think she could handle the situation — he was worried that Kara might not make it out alive and that was far scarier than dealing with the retribution of calling her cousin to lend a hand.
Meanwhile back at the DEO, Henshaw’s cyborg eyes light up again as he figures out that Alex has been secretly keeping tabs on Reactron to help her sister even when she wasn’t allowed. Henshaw doesn’t reprimand her but instead offers to help her cause.
At the party just when it looks like Kara and James are about to share a moment, Reactron shows up demanding another battle with Supergirl. Kara runs off to change into something more appropriate but just as the battle begins she’s forced to save Winn so to distracted the pissed off nuclear monster, James tells him that if he wants revenge on Superman to come get him because they are best friends after all.
While James runs away to lure Reactron out of the party, Kara gets a message from her sister and Henshaw with a weakness to finally bring the monster down. If she rips out his nuclear core — wrapped in lead so it won’t melt down and you know kill thousands of people — that will disable the suit and take away his power.
Supergirl melts a statue and covers her hand in lead before finding Reactron for one final throw down. In the end, she plunges her hand into his chest and rips out the core to deactivate his super suit and save the day! All by herself!
Supergirl Saves the Day
With Reactron done and National City safe, alls well that ends well for Supergirl and she even finds out that the DEO will continue to help her out even if the threats aren’t alien in origin. She’s ready for a nice quiet night at home with her sister when Alex suggests that she pursue the person who really pushed her buttons that day.
So Kara heads back to Cat Co. to find James, but when she does she runs into him and his ex-girlfriend Lucy Lane — little sister to Lois Lane. Apparently she’s in town to work things out with James and three’s a crowd so Kara has to go.
As depressed as she is about her crush having someone else in his life, Kara’s day gets perked up when she receives a message from her cousin telling her job well done — even he couldn’t defeat Reactron so this really was a job for Supergirl!
One final side note — at some point they are going to have to show a real Superman on this show and not just bits and pieces of a cape or a flash of blue and read across the screen. If anyone other than Tom Welling is cast and brought in to play Superman, that will just be an injustice. End aside.
SOUNDTRACK:
“Cecilia and the Satellite” by Andrew McMahon and the Wilderness
“Girls Wanna Have Fun” cover in the final scene but unfortunately no identification on the artist other than to say it wasn’t the Cyndi Lauper version.
Supergirl returns with a brand new episode next Monday night at 8pm ET on CBS!
