“Supergirl” Episode 514 Recap: VR Troopers

Before the interview is over, the lights go out and pink energy flows through and the mystery attacker goes for Andrea again, but Supergirl flies in just in time. Supergirl tries to get Andrea to back off the launch but she’s sacrificed too much (namely, Lena’s friendship) to give up now. And so she’s grateful for Supergirl’s help because she knows that together they can get this tech off the ground.

andrea thanks supergirl

Can I just say, I love Andrea’s lil scar on the bridge of her nose. (The rumors are true, chicks dig scars.)

In prison, Steve’s bully is nice to him, but suddenly Steve is overcome and he looks like he wants to punch Toby but he can’t so he has a seizure. Lena is by his side when he wakes (THE DREAM) and he says that he has an insatiable hunger for vengeance now that he never had before; Lena feels awful.

Lena looks distraught

I wish Kara had somehow walked in on this moment. To see the real fear and sorrow in Lena’s eyes when she realized she caused someone harm.

Alex and J’onn somehow still find their way to the barn without Brainy’s help, and they find schematics for a modified gauntlet that the alien seems to be using as a weapon. The alien in question shows up (I would say what kind they are—it sounded like Chlorophyllian—but I can’t be sure of the spelling. That was just my best guess based on my knowledge of Latin roots and their sun/plant powers.) The alien sucks up J’onn’s powers and renders him to weak too fight back, and sets the barn on fire as Alex throws a crowbar at them, having to improvise a weapon in absence of her gun. The alien zips off and Alex presses her Supergirl button.

alex presses her supergiril button in the burning barn

Portrait of an Alex on Fire

Hearing the call, Supergirl interrupts Andrea’s latest event and swooshes her to the DEO, leaving her there while she goes to put out the barn fire. They realize that the gauntlets were modified to help this alien use their powers of absorption against other aliens.

Meanwhile, Lena is trying to science her way to an answer as to what happened to Steve.

Lena sciences seriously

I just think Alex’s science/medicine background could really help her out.

Lex comes in to check on her, and Lena is saying that maybe she’s delusional like Lex was, maybe her idea IS bad, maybe she is taking free will away, like Supergirl thought, even though that was never her goal. Maybe she is going down a dark path. Which is just so pure and definitely not something Lex ever considered about himself. Lex reminds her that his downfall was his obsession with beating Superman, and he encourages her to beware of her downfall being her obsession on what Supergirl thinks of her.

Lena looks sad

“Technically, it’s Kara’s opinion I’m obsessed with, but point taken.”

Back at the Tower, Alex is feeling weird because she was so helpful in that fight without powers or a weapon. She never had to worry about being a mere human before, because she had a team by her side. What if the DEO was her power? But J’onn promises her that she still has a team behind her, and that it’s only her first day; she’ll figure things out as she goes.

Alex looks blue

Alex! Buck up! You’re your own damn weapon!

Amongst the debris of the barn, Supergirl finds a box with Obsidian credentials and a suicide note. In the note, a man named Todd admits that he was obsessed with escaping in Obsidian because he was finding it impossible to adjust to Earth after leaving their home planet. He writes about not being able to cope, and once he got caught using the lenses he was fired and denied access to them, and he couldn’t bear to live without it. At first they wonder if he’s the attacker, but then they realize he died a year ago. So instead they suspect his wife, Amy, and figure she’s seeking revenge for taking her husband away from her.

Supergirl flies to Obsidian, where Amy is on a rampage trying to find Andrea. Amy absorbs Supergirl’s powers, knocking her out, and even Dreamer’s powers don’t stop her for long.

At the DEO, Andrea is telling Brainy about all the failsafes, and they’re worried about explosions, so Brainy says he’ll go to Obsidian to turn them off. Andrea wants to help, but Brainy says it’s not safe, so he orders her put in a holding cell.

Meanwhile, Amy is attacking everyone, including Kelly when she tries to reason with her. But Alex swoops in like a lesbian in shining armor just in the nick of time.

kelly and alex against a wall

Okay show good yes THIS but MORE.

Andrea, frustrated, starts banging around her cell, and ends up accidentally falling through her shadow and ending up in her office to help Brainy shut down the failsafe.

Amy makes her way to the servers and starts to absorb energy from them to try to shut down the launch. Supergirl realizes she’s no physical match for these gauntlets, so she tries to talk to Amy instead. They talk about Todd, about his dark spiral, and Supergirl points out that Amy is on a dark spiral of her own. Supergirl understands her frustration, her pain, but if Amy continues, more people will die, which she knows isn’t what Amy wants. She just wants people to connect. She tells Amy she’s in control of her future, and Amy stops supercharging the servers, and Obsidian launches as planned.

Amy isn’t mad anymore, just sad. Tired. She says she misses him so much, and Supergirl understands. More than Amy could know.

Kara looks knowingly at Amy

“I, too, have suffered many, many tragic losses. But how good do I look in this light, be honest.”

Supergirl asks how Andrea got here so fast, but Andrea lies; she eventually puts together that it was the medallion that gave her those powers, but she tells Supergirl she just convinced agents to take her. Supergirl expresses her concerns about VR addiction, but Andrea says that it will help far more people than it hurts. That it can be used in trauma healing, and coping. Not just for escapism. She says that Supergirl has to remember that when it comes down to it, all Andrea wants to do is help people. Just like Lena.

At the Tower, J’onn asks Alex how she’s feeling after her first day, and our little overachiever is bummed she hasn’t solved the Lex mystery and mastered non-weaponed fighting in one day. To cheer her up, J’onn gives her a weapon. At first it looks like a gun, but he shows her that it’s a Martian weapon called the Hand of the Soldier, that can turn into any weapon she chooses as long as she can picture it.

alex looks down at her new toy

Yes, I did immediately start chanting, “SWORD SWORD SWORD!” thanks for asking.

She’s gonna make it after all.

After talking to Lex, Lena figures out that the vengeance part of the brain is different from general violence, so she reworks Non Nocere to help rid Steve of his icky feelings. He calls her a hero, and she says wistfully that if her plan works, there won’t be a need for heroes.

Lena looks wistful

“And if there are no heroes, there is no Supergirl. Only my best friend Kara Danvers.”

The Danvers Sisters settle into Kara’s loft for some dinner (sitting in front of the couch like a coupla gays) and Alex tells her sister about her new weapon. Kara gets a text from William and for some reason Alex yet again encourages Kara to try going on a date with him, even though she has made it pretty clear she doesn’t want to.

alex looks at kara

“Listen as we’ve well learned, even geniuses can have bad ideas sometimes.”

But this time, Kara relents. Maybe it’s because she realized that he was going to be in the line of danger by nature of his job anyway, and dating her wouldn’t put him in any more danger than usual, or maybe she’s just tired of the pressure, I don’t know. But she asks William to go to dinner with her, and looks medium amounts of happy about it.

kara forces a smile

“This is fine.”

Across town, Brainy is questioning Lex’s leadership but he has his eyes on the Leviathan prize and can’t worry about a few civilians he was sure Supergirl would save anyway. Now that he proved he was useful to Leviathan, he asks Gemma if he can meet them, and Gemma says she’ll think about it. :yawn:

Next week looks very Nia-centric, and frankly, it’s about damn time.

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Valerie Anne

Just a TV-loving, Twitter-addicted nerd who loves reading, watching, and writing about stories. One part Kara Danvers, two parts Waverly Earp, a dash of Cosima and an extra helping of my own brand of weirdo.

Valerie has written 609 articles for us.

10 Comments

  1. I wish this show had the same caliber writers as Batwoman. The episodes are so hit or miss for me this season that, as hard as it is for me to admit, it’s hard to watch.

    At first, I liked Lex despite having reservations about the actor but now, he’s too much. And Lena continuing on blindly and immorally with this Non nocere experiment is getting old too.

    Also getting old is how much people (on other sites) have latched onto Lena as their Supergirl messiah to the point where she is all that is talked about. They want her to be queer and have more screen time when they almost never advocate for more of Alex or her storyline when she’s canonically gay and has a gf. Not you Autostraddle but certainly many other places.

    The fighting and griping about Lena and Supergirl not being in a relationship has also ruined the show for me some. For me, yeah the queer baiting sucks but that was never and never will be the draw for me. It was never Lena or her relationship with Supergirl. Yeah Lena’s pretty and smart but most of the women on this show are/have been. For me, the heart and best part of the show was Alex, Kara, space dad (J’onn) and Winn. The bickering and debate have only fueled these subpar writers to be petty and unoriginal as they continue to write stories that either entice with the queer baiting because they know it will get people watching and talking only to force something different and it sucks.

    Rant over. My bad for the length.

  2. The opening was so out of left field I had to pause the episode to make sure I was watching the right series.

    Kara’s face when Alex says she won’t share her dumplings is everything.

    ——–

    It should be obvious to anyone on this side of the fourth wall that Lex has learned to “delegate”, and is going to use Non Nocere for his own nefarious purposes. After all, Supergirl would have to harm him to stop him. One of Lena’s weaknesses (yes, she has more than one) is that she continues to be too idealistic, and can’t see how her inventions will be misused.

    At least the season arc is starting to pick up speed.

    ——–

    So, William/Kara (ship name TBD) may happen. The writers seem to be bending over backwards to make him seem like a good guy. It may be motivated by external factors, in which case I admonish the writers for ignoring the opportunity the Crisis gave them to explain it literally any way they want.

    The premise of next week’s episode made me nervous, but it looks like Nicole was in the writers room for this one, so bring it on. And bring on the one after that (Alex in Wonderland) and the one after that (Melissa’s hopefully Luthor-centric directorial debut). Also the B-story next week involves Alex, J’onn, and Kelly, so maybe she’ll get some actual screen time.

    ——–

    Alex has survived water, air, and now fire. No element in this ‘verse can bury this gay.

  3. I know we can’t expect the science on this show to be realistic, but CAN WE PLEASE DISCUSS HOW UNSCIENTIFIC LENA’S “HUMAN TRIAL” IS? This is not how data works! She needs to be doing a double blind experiment! And observing the subjects over a long period of time! And not personally interacting with them! This is not what science is!

  4. also I need shenanigans with Alex’s new weapon akin to Adora learning to shapeshift her sword. If we don’t see Alex using her weapon as a mop or a pitcher, what’s even the point.

    • Does she shout a catch phrase, too, and get an elaborate transformation sequence?

      Alex: “FOR THE HONOR OF WAYHAUGHT!”

      (Twenty seconds of 80’s metal)

      Kara: “Do you have to do that every time?”

      Alex: “Hush, you.”

  5. also also, my first thought with the opening was that the characters were playing DnD at game night and I was SO EXCITED.

  6. Supergirl is the straightest show right mow on tv and gets big articles every week on here. While Batwoman basically gets ignored. Why is that?

  7. Supergirl, please don’t make Valerie gesture for nothing.
    ValNia?
    i am am asking you, Valerie, what is a better message for the Kara/William trajectory?
    pretty sure too much Nancy Drew is not a thing, so you’re good.
    puppy update, stat!
    i feel good about Lena alarming the population in this way.
    gotta say, don’t think this will be fine at second, or maybe third…
    don’t think this is the last outcome Lena fails to predict, but hope i’m wrong.
    Supergirl has surely been asked for a selfie before?
    Alex needs to use this face on Brainy.
    13/10 would also want the hour to go that way.
    scar concur
    failure to predict…
    Alex is always en fuego.
    they should be making beautiful science together.
    obsess over Kara’s opinion, Lena, obsess.
    her super alien gun was cool, though.
    more concur
    not entirely used to the bangs, but …
    thanks for chanting.
    wistful Lena is my favorite Lena.
    she looks like she knows it, too.
    coffee to go with those flames?

Comments are closed.