Hello and welcome to this Supergirl 611 recap, “Mxy in the Middle” aka “The One I Thought Was a Musical Episode But Definitely Wasn’t”

Previously on Supergirl, Lena had a Phantom vision about her mother and decided to back “to where she was born” which was also “Back East” and we all assumed it was going to be Ireland because we’ve heard her speak…plus Nia released Nyxly from the dream realm to spend a day with her mom and Supergirl fell into Nyxly’s trap and summoned Mr. Mxyzptlk.

We open at the close (of last week’s episode) and Mxy is surprised to see Princess Nyxly and Supergirl going toe to toe. They both summoned him; Supergirl for help and Nyxly to get revenge for the time he testified that she was crazy after trying to destroy a few measly enemies.

Mxy snaps Supergirl out of the ice and she flies them to safety so Nyxly can’t track his magic. Kara tells the team about the imp she thought she left in the Phantom Zone and Mxy fills them in on her backstory and her father and how now she needs a crystal to control something called an allstone.

Also? He does it all in song. Which is how I wish all lore dumps were done. (That said, the description for this episode mentioned this song, so I thought Mxy was going to make everyone sing, and it seems like a crime to have a Broadway singer and professional rock star just sitting there watching this happen, but okay.)

Mxy says that the allstone was broken into totems, which gave me flashbacks to the Legends of Tomorrow season that was so convoluted my friends and I started using the term “totems shmotems” to explain the feeling of “let’s not think too hard about lore and get back to talking about characters and feelings.” The totems each represent different things, like love and dreams, and they can be disguised as anything. But also, Nyxly needs a descendent of the evil imp who made the allstone in a crystal to activate them, which just so happens to be Mxy.

Nia is stressed about how much all this is snowballing and Kara is blaming herself. Nia has an idea to depower her, and Kara promises her impish pal that nobody puts Mxy in a crystal.

Nia has a dream of the ice cage again, but this time she sees Mxy dead at the bottom of the cage. Brainy interrupts her and can tell she’s hiding something from him, so he prods her and she confesses to him about bringing Nyxly here from the dream realm. She feels so, so bad. She really thought this was just going to be another trash monster they could defeat with teamwork.

But Brainy understands. He spent practically a whole season working with L*x because he was manipulated into thinking it was the right thing to do. Brainy encourages her to tell Kara, but Nia is afraid Kara will lose respect for her as a hero if she does, so she says they can fix it without Kara ever having to find out.

In her fancy car with the invisible driver, Lena finally approaches her destination: Newfoundland. And while I did confirm (via Google) that some areas of Newfoundland have people with Irish-esque accents, it still boggles the mind why they didn’t just say she was going to Ireland.

Lena gets a call from Andrea, who compliments her on how happy she sounds.

Lena asks for Andrea’s help finding someone in a picture she found of her mom and her two best friends. She found one woman, Margaret, but she can’t seem to find out what became of Florence. Andrea agrees to use her worldwide media outlet to good use and help her out.

When Lena arrives at her B&B, at first the innkeeper Deedee is so delighted and welcoming, until Lena mentions her mother’s name, then suddenly there’s no room at the inn. Deedee not-so-subtly mumbles something about a “dirty witch” and fully turns Lena away. As if this poor lamb hasn’t already suffered enough at the hands of a family name.

Back at the Tower, the Superfriends make a plan. They have a re-engineered siphoning device and an extra sized power-dampening cuff and they’re ready to rumble. Mxy just wants to use the Phantom Zone projector, but Alex and Kara super do not.

And at first I thought it was very cute how tiny human Alex Danvers threw her body in front of her sister of steel, but then I realized that this is actually one thing she could really have protected her from. She was ready to take the nightmares from her sister.

Kara thinks Nyxly has just been wrongly prosecuted and that all she really needs is a friend, so she doesn’t want to do anything too drastic just yet. They need an amulet that is in Corto Maltese, so Kara flies off to fetch it, determined to save everyone. And to not have to send anyone – ANYONE – into the Phantom Zone.

Nyxly is sitting pretty in the glam rock spaceship when Mitch shows up, fresh off a prison escape, furious she didn’t help him. She says she is helping him, by teaching him that trust is a fool’s game and everyone will hurt you in the end.

She shoos him away; he thought he was the one using her to get his magical menagerie up and running, but it’s clear she’s the daddy in this situation now.

Up in the Tower, Alex is doing some science on the Amulet and does her regularly scheduled explanation of why Kelly isn’t here that isn’t just “we can’t afford Katie McGrath and Azie Tesfai in the same episode because of some CGI you’ll be seeing in a bit.” She says Kelly is dealing with the aftermath of the building collapse In the Heights, and Alex wants Mxy to keep an eye on the phone in case she calls, but Mxy wants to help. Sadly, without his magic, he’s pretty useless, and he overhears J’onn saying as much.

Back East, Lena goes to a local restaurant to find her mother’s friend Margaret. She orders a whiskey neat and some information from Margaret’s daughter Peggy, who is the one, the only, the Morrigan.

Similar to the innkeeper, at first Peggy is a twinkly picture of hospitality, and Lena is so thrilled to have found the woman she was looking for.

But as soon as Lena mentions her mother’s name, her smile turns to a glower and she accuses her mother of causing Margaret pain and being the reason she’s dead.

Lena is confused and Peggy says that Elizabeth caused trouble and then disappeared with a rich man, leaving Margaret to wither away, which sounds like a bit of a stretch as far as chain of responsibilities goes, but either way, she’s upset.

Lena promises she doesn’t want to cause more trouble, she just wants more information about her mom and friends. Then she’ll leave, go Out West and back to her found family since both her biological and step families provide her with nothing but pain. Peggy says the three women were a coven, and when Lena scoffs, she is like, “There’s a news clip of you being flown through the air in the arms of your bulletproof girlfriend but witches is where you draw the line?” And before Lena can remember that one of her friends uses something called DREAM ENERGY to create glowing whips, Peggy goes on to say that she watched Lena’s mother light a shed on fire with her mind while her father was inside.

Peggy tells her to let the dead lie and Lena is so sad. She really thought going off on a side quest was going to be more fun than this.

Next page: ANGRY LESBIAN EYELINER ALERT. 

Back at the Tower, the Superfriends follow a magical energy spike and follow it downtown while Mxy watches on their button cameras. Nia is really feeling the guilt as a giant cat stomps around the city. The lesbian knows exactly how to deal with this, and immediately whips out…a rocket launcher. Has she been able to do this the whole time? And she chooses pew pew pistols??

Anyway, the rocket launcher doesn’t work against the kitten, neither does freeze breath, nor Nia trying to lasso it into the dream realm. Brainy has an idea and needs Supergirl to distract it so she flies up and uses her heat vision as a laser pointer. At which point I wonder, did the writers room have a joke wall where they put all their weird suggestions that don’t fit the vibe of the show and now that it’s the last season they’re just using them anyway? Like if this was going to happen there needed to be way more joking and laughter about it. In my humble opinion.

Brainy traps it, and Nyxly is impressed with the Superfriends.

She just wants Mxy, then she’ll leave them alone. She pinky swears.

Andrea calls Lena to tell her that she found the third woman in the picture, Florence, who went off the grid after Peggy’s dad’s mysterious death. Lena thanks her but says she’s not going to do anything with that information because she’s feeling a bit demoralized being yelled at by complete strangers about the things a woman she barely even met supposedly did.

Andrea encourages her to stay with a series of phrases she found in the wrappers of the Dove candies she was eating alone in her office because her only friend is Back East, including things like, you can’t deal with the past until you face it, and my personal favorite, “Information doesn’t hurt people, secrets do.” Which is a BOLD statement to make to Lena, who she kept secrets from for decades. And she wouldn’t know this but Lena knows full well the true cost of secrets.

As they return to the Tower, Brainy scolds Nia for almost deleting herself from this reality but she’s so desperate to clean up this mess she made. She begs her to tell Kara but she still hesitates. Mxy welcomes them all back and shows them a copy he made of himself he wants to use as a decoy to get the power dampening cuff on Nyxly. Alex and Kara consider it.

But then the copy glitches and that falls slips through their fingers, too. Kara walks off to be alone, hoping that if she doesn’t go to the Feelings Balcony no one will follow her, but Nia does anyway.

Nia has to tell Kara the truth, that it’s her fault Nyxly is here, not Kara’s. She apologizes and Kara says she understands, because Nyxly fooled her, too. Nia looks at her with her big sad eyes and asks the question I ask my friends in my head every time they say something nice to me, “You don’t hate me?” And Kara laughs.

Nia made a mistake, but Kara knows it would be hypocritical to punish her for that. They’ve all made mistakes, all they can do is learn from them and move forward. And fix it, together. Which is reason #925600 that Kara is such a strong leader and one of the best superheroes to ever don a cape. (Or a hood. Looking at you, Arrow and Flash.) Like Nia, I was holding my breath for an overreaction, or at least a disappointed lecture, Nia because of how much guilt she was feeling, me for different reasons we won’t get into right now, but Kara is just like, “Okay yeah that was a bad idea, but you didn’t do harm on purpose, you’ve apologized, and you’re willing to work with me to fix it, so let’s do it!” It’s lovely.

Nia wishes aloud that she could dream up a better Mxy clone and Kara has an idea.

Over in Ireland Lite Newfoundland, Lena is following the clues Andrea sent her and finds a cave entrance in the middle of an open field that’s about as hidden as Willa’s treehouse. And then she just strolls right in! She finds a woman who is creating a smoke raven for some reason, and when she realizes a stranger is in her cave, she points a shotgun at her. But when she realizes the woman in front of her looks just like her former best friend but with better hair, she lets her guard down and Lena confirms that she’s Elizabeth’s daughter.

Florence says that Elizabeth told her that Lena would show up someday, told her to be precise in answering her daughter’s questions, because Lena is a scientist. Florence asks for a drop of Lena’s blood and Lena all but laughs in her face. She doesn’t believe in magic.

But Florence tells her to treat this as more of a science experiment so she agrees to a drop of blood. Using visions as a guide, Florence tells the tale of their coven, how they learned the language of nature and how Lena’s mom’s spark was powerful.

But then, in trying to scare Margaret’s abusive husband, they girlbossed too close to the sun and killed him dead. The town turned on them and threatened them, and Lizzie didn’t trust herself anymore, so she treated Mr. Luthor like a lead box to keep her magic from hurting anyone else. But Florence wants Lena to know that Elizabeth sees Lena, and is very proud of the woman she is, which is all Lena has ever wanted a parental figure to say to her.

Meanwhile, Kara tells the team their new plan: Nia is going to use Brainy’s image inducer to be a Mxy decoy and get the cuff on Nxy. Alex credits Mxy for the idea and it’s actually very sweet. She’s such a good big sister. But when they get to the park to enact the plan, the inducers fail when Nia gets too close to the crystal, and Nyxly is onto them. And furious.

Alex, Brainy, and J’onn show up with the Phantom Zone projector but Kara stop them. She still thinks she can get through to her. But in their hesitation, Nyxly magics them all onto tinfoil stakes and summons a kryptonite-breathing dragon to kill them all.

The real Mxy shows up and apologizes to the Superfriends for getting them into this mess; the truth is, he could have helped Nyxly all those years ago and he took the coward’s way out. So he’s changing that now.

Kara tries one last time to appeal to Nyxly’s humanity, hoping it exists. She says that her anger is valid, that Kara is angry about what happened to Nyxly too, but that they can be stronger together.

But Nyxly isn’t moved. In fact, she says “nah” which was hilarious to me. Fighting ensues and Kara holds up the Phantom Projector regretfully but Mxy says he can help and he manages to get the power dampener on her like it’s a snap bracelet from the 90s on his way to being sucked into the crystal. As soon as she’s depowered, though, the glam rock spaceship beams her up to safety.

Kara is sad she didn’t listen to Mxy, that she took the Phantom Zone option off the table too soon, but Alex reassures her that it’s never a bad idea to have hope in someone, even if it doesn’t always work out.

Nia has an idea for how they can still save Mxy, and echoes Kara’s words back to her for inspiration. Kara stands up, ready to try, try again.

In the magic candle cave, Florence is showing Lena more pictures of her mother’s bad hair. She says that Lena has her mother’s gift and Lena scoffs. She barely believes in the magic she just saw, let alone that she HAS magic. She says all Lena has to do is embrace her gift to employ it.

Back in National City, Nyxly asks the glam rock alien why he saved her, and he says he wants to use her to build a new life, and she agrees, if he helps her collect all the totems. First up, is the totem of courage, because she wants to control everyone’s fear. And HEAR ME OUT but if the Paragon of Courage is Batwoman, and the totems can be disguised as anything, shouldn’t Kara reach out to Ryan for help figuring out if the totem is like, her flower pot or something? Eh?? Mini crossover??? Please????

Nia dreams about Nyxly’s plans and Kara decides that she needs to find the totems first. And this time, she’s not going to pull any punches.

And y’all even though I was very disappointed it wasn’t a proper musical episode, I loved this? This is the kind of episode I wanted all last season instead of a certain bald maniac. It makes me wish even harder that we had more time. I can’t wait for Lena to return to the Superfriends and tell Kara about how she’s the answer to all the problems that arose while she was gone since, as Nyxly said, only magic can defeat magic.

Oh! And one more thing. They actually have a preview for next week’s episode! Guardian will rise again!

Pages: 1 2See entire article on one page