Previously on Supergirl, Kara came out to Lena (as Supergirl), Brainy and Nia stepped up their relationship, Alex and Kelly remained adorable af, someone claiming to be J’onn’s brother was terrorizing the city, and Lena sold CatCo to Andrea Rojas because she has bigger things to focus on now that she’s not spending all her energy on Kara, like building an AI named Hope to help her save humanity. Oh, also Eve got kidnapped.

We open this week with Supergirl having to stop a car accident because of a girl texting while she walked and not paying attention, while at the same time an ad for Obsidian North interrupts a news story about the upcoming election, and Kara gets huffier than a parent at a phone-filled dinner table.

Across town, Alex makes Kelly breakfast, which is a combination of poached eggs, bacon, and blueberry pancakes, one of which Kelly doesn’t care for and one that she’s deathly allergic to. Kelly doesn’t get very fussed by it; she says she may not like blueberries or eggs but she likes Alex quite a lot and gives her a kiss and a hug.

I probably would have eaten the pancake anyway. I admire Kelly’s sense of self-perseverance even in the face of potentially alarming Alex Danvers.

(PS. I’m sorry that all the screenshots have double CW logos…the site was glitchy and I couldn’t fix it! Don’t worry, it’s bothering me, too.)

But Alex gets that wild overthinky look in her eyes as she realizes she doesn’t know these basic facts you usually know about a person before you’re at the making-breakfast-for-them-at-your-apartment stage.

Maybe Alex will learn to ask about allergens/dietary preferences before making someone food from now on. Which you’d think she’d know, having dated a vegan.

On the other end of the spectrum, Brainy has prepared the perfect breakfast for Nia, which is breakfast burritos and nitro coffee, and Nia dives into it with spectacular passion, her adorable enthusiasm understandably something Brainy wishes to replicate as often as possible.

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ANYONE CUTER YOU HAVE NOT I PROMISE YOU

While Kara and James are on a walk where Kara rants some more about technology and youths and James tries to decide his new career path, they get to J’onn’s office and find him injured. He tells them about some kind of special Martian fraternal injury that can only be cured by q waves, which Brainy thinks won’t be discovered for a long time, but turns out Kelly uses them at Obsidian North right now. Which made me raise an eyebrow about where exactly all this tech comes from but no one else seemed to clock it, so maybe that’s just me.

This meeting is interrupted, however, when Kara gets a call from Nia that the new boss in town is having a MEETING and expecting her to BE THERE. Exhausting!

In her secret lab of secrets, Lena Luthor is doin’ some science, chatting with her AI, being cute.

10/10 would make crazy science with

Lena was researching the lenses Andrea gave her; you see, she built Hope to be incapable of causing pain, and humans cause pain because of their emotions. She’s working on a program called Do No Harm (she also says it in Latin but for everyone’s sake and also my own I’m just going to call it the Do No Harm or DNH project). She’s using the link the VR lenses use to connect to the brain to help keep people from harming each other. It’s given like a villain’s monologue, but with a noble (albeit shortsighted and flawed) goal.

It’s times like this I really wish Sam was around; someone outside her Super circle who she could bounce ideas off…

People keep hurting her, so why not get rid of their ability to harm others? Her emotions keep hurting her, so why not just eliminate those, too? She’s reeling in pain and she has no one to confide in but an AI of her own making; no one to remind her that emotions can be good, that she’s taking this a bit far. No one to hold her and tell her that it’s okay to feel.

Hope interrupts her little spiel to tell Lena that her subject is awake. And that subject… is Eve.

I don’t love that Lena changed her clothes, but at least she’s in something comfy?

When Nia and Kara show up to the CatCo meeting, Andrea is still smiling that knowing smile. She gives everyone tablets and tells Kara to do a fashion report, which Kara has deemed too low-brow. She would rather do a report on the new potential candidate for Senate (aka James) so Andrea asks her to do both. Now you know normally I’m 100% Team Kara, but this all seemed a bit unprofessional of her to do in a team meeting, and also surely she should have guessed she’d have to ease a new boss into her “I only write one story a month and come and go from the office as a please” methods of working. Andrea wants her to do both stories (which I personally think is a good compromise) and wants the fashion piece by lunch (which does sound unnecessarily fast for a fluff piece).

In the lab, Eve begs Lena for her life, insisting that “they” made her do everything she did, that she never wants to hurt her. Lena doesn’t believe her though, so she starts interrogating her old assistant.

I would give Lena my social security number and anything else she wanted if she looked at me like this.

Eve admits she had been groomed since she was 16; her parents had died, she was in debt, she was already in college and probably in over her head peer-wise. So she was the perfect candidate for an evil organization to scoop her up. Eve says she hated hurting Lena, but Lena remembers Eve’s face when she pointed that gun at her. How she looked giddy with power. All she wants from Eve is the truth.

There are those pesky emotions again.

Kara calls Alex from work to tell her she has to stay at CatCo for a while, and then takes some of Nia’s extra sushi lunches because Brainy tried to replicate the morning’s delight but went too far.

Kara’s excitement over Nia’s bento box fort + Nia’s face in this moment = me thanking Brainy for being over the top.

And while Nia tries to decide how she’s going to tell Brainy to turn it down a little, Brainy is at the DEO bragging to Alex about how he’s the perfect boyfriend because he knows all of Nia’s favorite foods.

Brainy insists that the key to a good relationship is knowing everything there is to know about each other, which makes Alex uncomfortable.

“I know her birth chart, doesn’t that count for anything?!”

Alex admits she almost poisoned Kelly and that she’s feeling insecure about it. She’s starting to worry that her big feelings about Kelly are disproportionate to how well she knows her. Which I’m pretty sure is just how queer people operate, but also I can see how it could shake a person.

At Obsidian North, Kelly treats J’onn with the Q Waves and speaks gently with him and offers to go into his mind palace with him to heal the broken memories she found. So I guess Kelly just knows everything James knows? Is that a safe assumption? All I know for sure is that I love these crazy VR contacts and they sort of remind me of the show Humans (RIP) and I just love when eyes turn colors eyes shouldn’t be. (See also: Gooverly on Wynonna Earp.)

Also, I can’t be the only contact-wearer who is appalled by the instantaneous way everyone on this show keeps putting them in and taking them out, right?

At CatCo, William and Kara are both on computers looking for images (Kara scrolling through them hilariously fast) and William gets up from his desk at the same time Kara gets a call; there are photos on his computer screen of Andrea and someone called Dr. Niles Jarrod and even though Kara is talking about something else entirely, William is worried her call is about the same thing his call is. He clearly knows more than we do about those photos, and it’s making him jumpy, so he has someone track Kara.

The problem is, William tracks Kara down into the sewers, where Alex, Brainy, and Supergirl are fighting a White Martian. Supergirl yells at him to leave but if he got a good look at those bangs, we’re in for it.

Also that look of exasperation is one he’s all too familiar with.

Kelly helps J’onn get back some missing memories about a traitorous brother who poisoned their memories and remembering heals his fraternal injuries, but the problem is, it heals his brother’s too. He gets to the White Martian and zips them both away, leaving Team Super without anyone to fight.

They leave the sewers and Brainy tells Alex she’s stinky and Kara loves it; it’s a very cute moment even if it’s just a vehicle to get Alex back to her apartment faster instead of going back to the DEO. They split up, but when Alex gets on her motorcycle and rides off, she’s trailed by the Martian brother.

By the time Kara gets back to the office, William has written Kara’s fashion piece, that she had already been working on, which I feel like…is not how journalism works??? I’ve heard of getting pulled from a piece but this feels a little ridiculous. Andrea asks her to do some copy editing instead, which Kara deems beneath her, and overall I think everyone is doing a terrible job at their jobs. But then Andrea is told about something being intentionally broken by a specific user.

I couldn’t tell if Andrea was going to kiss this girl or not even though I had no reason to believe she would. She just got SO CLOSE TO HER FACE?? I’m not mad at it.

This news leaves her more visibly shaken/angry than we’ve seen her yet, and she storms off to deal with it.

In her lab, Eve is finally confessing to Lena that she was right, that she did make those choices, that she did enjoy the power, when Andrea storms in, causing Lena to have to quickly hide her prisoner from her boarding school gal pal.

“What? I always stand by this wall. I love this wall. THIS WALL IS MY FAVORITE.”

Andrea says, “Your assistant is my best friend’s girlfriend,” which I only mention here because I have a feeling it will come up again? Even though I’m only like 60% sure that Jess character is still Lena’s assistant and I have no idea who Andrea’s best friend is.

But anyway, Andrea could tell somehow that Lena was trying to hack the VR lenses, so Andrea is taking her prototypes back. Andrea is displeased and tells Lena in no uncertain terms that she better not cross her again. Or else.

“I learned the art of the top-off from Bette Porter.”

I can’t help but wonder if Lena would have stood up to her if she wasn’t protecting such a big, human-sized secret behind her.

When Andrea is gone, and Lena makes the walls of her cell transparent again, Eve tries to use the fact that she didn’t call out for help a bargaining chip as to why Lena can trust her. Lena agrees she can trust her, and reveals that she had been mapping Eve’s brain this whole time.

While Alex is in the shower washing off the sewer smell, Martian Brother sneaks into Alex’s apartment and spots a cute picture of Alex and Kelly on the fridge.

This is so pure and cute and gay that I don’t even have anything quippy to say about it.

When Alex gets out of the shower, all she sees is Kelly there, so she asks her to start opening the wine while she gets a sweater. They have a toast and Fake Kelly tries to ask Alex about their operations.

Just a little standing wine, casual.

But as soon as Kelly puts her hand on Alex’s, Alex knows something isn’t right.

“Either our spark went out in the matter of hours or something isn’t quite right here.”

Alex presses her emergency Supergirl button and Supergirl busts in moments later. The shapeshifter had transformed into Alex at this point, but Kara knows almost immediately it isn’t her sister. So they start to fight.

“And since folks here to an absurd degree
Seem fixated on your verdigris
Would it be alright by you
If I de-greenify you?”

The Olsens show up to the scene and Kelly is confused as to why Alex and Supergirl are fighting, but when she learns it’s not the real Alex she runs upstairs to check on her girlfriend. She finds Alex shoved in a closet which is, frankly, rude, and Alex is startled to see her, thinking it might still be the shapeshifter, but is quickly relieved to see it’s the real deal.

“I can’t believe that monster put you in a CLOSET of all places.”

Alex and Kelly run up to the roof but Martian Brother tumbles into them, resulting in 1 Alex, 2 Kellys. They do that classic move and each make their case for being the real Kelly, and Alex hardly hesitates before shooting the Martian. Kelly gets knocked off the building, but Supergirl saves her.

As Chyler likes to shout from rooftops: THE LESBIAN LIVES!

As they all debrief in Alex’s apartment, J’onn asks Kelly if they can do the brain thing again but harder this time, but Kelly warns him that doing that could reset his brain for good. Unfortunately the Martian Brother was a literal fly on the wall for that conversation, and later his reflection will tell him that they can use that to his advantage. (Yes, you read that right. No, I don’t really understand what’s going on, either. Totems shmotems.)

Taking advice she got from her Space Dad, Kara holds her head up and struts into William’s office, saying she doesn’t really like him but she’s going to keep doing her job and doing it well and there’s nothing he can do to stop her. She takes the copy editing back, finishes, it, and brings it to Andrea with a bunch of pitches.

Now that all the fuss is over, Kelly and Alex settle in for some cookies, and Kelly gives Alex a little list of all her allergies. Alex admits that her freak-out about the blueberries was more about how she didn’t know all the tiny details of Kelly’s life but that she “really frikkin'” likes her, and she got a little spooked.

Get you a girl who finds your mini overthinky spirals endearing.

But Alex says that when it came down to it, in the moments it really mattered, she knew the important things about Kelly to tell which was the Martian Kelly and which was her Kelly. (She says it! “My Kelly!” I die!)

They kiss and it’s cute and I love them.

Making Alex smile this pure, unadulterated smile is Kelly’s superpower.

But on another ship that isn’t quite faring so well, Brainy misinterprets Nia says she likes more than food and that there are other ways they can spend time together and ends up plying her with poetry the same way he was plying her with food, and she’s getting a little overwhelmed by it all, understandably.

In her lab, Lena decides to fill Eve in on the plan. Explains that she was mapping her brain because there are parts of Eve’s brain she needs, parts she can use.

In Lena’s mind, she’s fixing an improperly healed bone of humanity. She has to break it to reset it, and she feels bad about that, but she’s so sure that the result will be healing.

Lena introduces Eve and Hope and says that Eve did say she wants to be better, and Lena is going to help her. So Hope dissolves into lil nanobots and goes INTO Eve. And you can see it on Lena’s face, that she’s not 100% sure she’s doing the right thing, even though she’s done her best to convince herself. She knows, on some level, she has merely rationalized consent, and hasn’t exactly received it. She knows Eve did some really horrible things, but she also worked alongside Eve for years, and still has those pesky human emotions she’s complaining about, so some part of Lena knows this isn’t quite right, but I’m sure she’s hoping the ends will justify the means.

I’m hoping whatever Lena’s plans are to “hurt” Kara, she has to do it looking her in the eye; she could barely do this to Eve and she never bought a media conglomerate for her.

And after a little montage checking in on everybody at the end of this very long day, which includes Alex and Kelly snuggling—

:Dido voice: I will go down with this ship.

—Hope walks out and Lena greets her new form.

This is fine.

Lena seems like she has conflicting emotions running through her, pride and exhilaration because of her success, a dash of fear for the implications of this being successful. Because just like that Lena has created her first AI/human hybrid, officially stepping into “playing god” territory.

Lena: *starts playing god*
Me: *starts building shrine*

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