While she’s gone, William will use a friend in the NSA to help speed up these calls.
In the VR gaylien bar, Alex goes to get another drink and sees someone dressed in Supergirl’s original skirt uniform. She uses her freeze breath to make her drink colder and is talking about the real world and the idea that this isn’t real life leaves Alex a little shook. She starts to voice her concerns but Brainy tries to tell her it’s Kryptonite poisoning. Alex fights through the cloud fog and decides to end her simulation, but when she wakes up on her couch, she gets a message in her ear from J’onn calling her Supergirl and saying Psi is making everyone doubt their reality. Alex does the classic shirt rip to reveal her Supergirl symbol and says she’s on her way; she’s still stuck in Obsidian.
I hate when I think I wake up from a nightmare but I’m actually still in the nightmare, but I DO love a good shirt-rip.
And this is starting to remind me of that one episode of Buffy that truly traumatized me deeply and irrevocably and I don’t love it!!
When Kelly gets back to Alex’s apartment, she finds the real Alex still in the sim with her lenses turning red. She tries to jostle her awake, and even shoot her with adrenaline, but nothing is working. So she goes in to get her girl.
A superhero in her own right, that Kelly Olsen.
When Kelly finds Alex, she has just locked Psi up. Kelly tries to talk to her like she’s HER Alex, trying to get her to end her simulation, but SuperAlex is just confused.
I wish Kelly had seen the long, black hair and bangs though. Just to see her reaction.
She thinks Psi messed with Kelly’s head, so J’onn starts to take her to the med bay as Alex flies off.
When Alex is gone, the rest of the fake DEO team starts to turn on her so Kelly ends her simulation and goes back to the real world. Kelly calls Andrea in a panic and explains what happened and is worried that Alex being so upset when she went in might have caused a psychotic break, and that it might be the difference between people who can get out of their simulations and those who can’t.
This is going to be my friends in a few weeks like, “She keeps calling herself Aloy and mumbling about robot dinosaurs.”
Andrea tells Kelly to keep calm and to have Alex face something that is unexplainable that would help her realize she’s not in a true reality, but also something undeniable.
I still am not sure what side of this Andrea falls on. Right now I’m leaning toward “in denial” not “uncaring and/or evil.”
So Kelly sends Alex’s teenage self in after her girlfriend.
Teen Alex finds SuperAlex and talks to her, shows her things to prove she’s really her, and explains that none of this is real. They go to the CADMUS facility and she sees the figure of Jeremiah disappear. Teen Alex tells Alex that nothing they could have done would have saved their father, not even if they were Supergirl. She understands why Alex wanted to try to be Supergirl; she stands for hope, and hope is what Alex held onto all these years. Hope that Jeremiah would come back, hope that they could be close again. But Jeremiah’s life was a result of his own choices. And Jeremiah is gone, but there are still people who love her, care about her, want to help her. And they’re not in here; they’re out in the real world.
And it does seem fitting, that in the end, the only thing that could save Alex in this situation was a version of Alex herself. Because even though she might not technically be Supergirl, the statement still stands. She doesn’t need anyone to save her. She’s Alex Danvers.
:deep Mariah Carey breath: “There’s a heeeeeroooooo, if you look insiiiide your heeeaaaart.”
The VR’s twisted versions of Brainy, Nia, J’onn, and even Eliza show up to try to talk Alex out of listening to the teenager before her, but she instinctively protects her younger self. Her hope. She freezes everyone and turns back to Teen Alex, but she’s gone. Alex doesn’t need her anymore. With a clear mind for the first time all day, Alex ends her simulation.
“Give me pain, if that’s what’s real. It’s the price we pay to feel. The price of love is loss. but still we pay. We love anyway.”
When Alex wakes up, she sees Kelly, and is a little nervous she’s still in the VR; she’s had a false start once before. But Kelly talks to her and feels real to her so she hugs her girlfriend and holds her tight.
KISS KISS KISS
Alex tells Kelly that she loves her and thanks her for not giving up. She apologizes for pushing her away; she held onto so much anger for her father for so long, thinking he’d come back someday, thinking they could still hash it out. So when he died before that happened, all the anger just burst out of her and all over the people closest to her. When the truth is, she was really mad at herself for not being able to save him. She felt hopeless. But Kelly assures her there’s still reason to hope; and that she’s a warrior.
“I finally see what you knew was inside me all along. That behind this soft exterior lies a warrior.”
Alex tells Kelly about Bonnie and Derek being stuck, and how she thinks there are probably more, and Kelly says she’ll catch her up on the work she’s been doing to save those people, but first they have to go to Midvale.
Back at CatCo, William’s NSA friend comes through and tells him that they found the names of the people in Obsidian who aren’t accounted for in real life. They send him an address, and when William asks for the rest, his friend says they’re all at that one address. For some idiotic reason, he decides to check it out by himself, but when he gets to the burrito lair, the Leviathan woman cloaks it so all he sees is an empty warehouse. He does, however, find a hospital bracelet, so he still feels pretty strongly that Lex is involved somehow.
Before heading to Midvale, Kelly calls Andrea to tell her about what she learns, and Andrea finally starts to take things seriously and calls Gemma. When she gets Gemma’s voicemail, she marches out of her office and orders the first person she sees to demand a patch writeup (or something to that effect) and then storms off… but the person she asked looks an awful lot like Eve Tessmacher. Which… I have questions about. Namely how long has she worked there/how long does she plan to work there/is she only there today because Kara isn’t? Because one could argue she’s on the Obsidian side while Kara is at CatCo but those two companies intermingle more than any two queer friend groups.
Anyway, back in Midvale, everyone’s favorite Earth Mom gives Jeremiah a beautiful eulogy.
Still want Eliza Danvers to adopt me.
Alex and Kelly show up and Alex sidles into the pew next to her sister. Kara stares straight ahead until Alex apologies, then her whole body softens and she says she understands. She’s just glad she’s here now. And she snuggles into her big sister.
I love them so much it hurts me? That’s normal, right?
I really loved this episode, as I always love one that centers Alex, and I hope you did, too.
If Supergirl airs as originally planned, next week will be Melissa Benoist’s directorial debut. It’s called “Deus Lex Machina” so I imagine we’ll be seeing a lot of a certain man, but I’m hoping we see the triumphant return of one Lena Luthor.
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“…and William suggests the very man thing to suggest, which is to ignore her need for space and go see her anyway.”
Well, why wouldn’t he suggest that? I mean Kara told him to give her space as she didn’t want to date him, he ignored that, and was rewarded with Kara’s affections. He, and the men in the audience, would naturally assume that women don’t know what they want.
Loved the episode and I especially loved all the screencaps, Valerie.
Bravo to Chyler Leigh and her acting especially in the first 5min of this episode. Everything that she put forth in that 5min was oh so relatable for me personally because woo, yeah that was me not that long ago.
Also, it’s really hard to watch Alex and Kara argue/be mad at one another…I don’t like it one bit.
Also, also…more Dansen please!
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Thank you for this recap. This episode was excellent!! I haven’t watched SG in a long while but absolutely unequivocally LOVE Alex Danvers so wanted to see this ep in its entirety. Well worth the time.
In some ways this reminded me of when Jeremiah returned back in S2. I had to look up the scene, but Alex drinking wine from the bottle and Kelly commenting on it, was particularly reminiscent of a scene in 2×14. Maggie stops in to see Alex, who downs a glass of whiskey and when she goes to pour another shot Maggie took the bottle, moved Alex’s feet from the stool, talked to her about how she can tell her anything, and ended with Alex crumpled, sobbing in Maggie’s arms after Maggie asked about Jeremiah’s first day back. The parallels in the scenes, and the differences between the two girlfriends’ responses was fascinating (tho I guess in fairness to Kelly, Maggie wasn’t yelled at to go away).
I’m glad Alex got to work thru some of her pain this ep via virtual reality and I wonder about her first comment about Kara making things look easy — do you think she has greater empathy for SG now? I also wonder about that time Kara nearly got permanently stuck in a reality where Krypton wasn’t destroyed and Alex went in to try to convince her to “come home”. I guess I bring that up because it’s interesting to see how difficult it is for both sisters to leave a reality where their lives are freer of their deepest pains, and much different than their “real world”.
Tl;dr I am Always here for Alex Danvers centered episodes!!
This is starting to remind me of that one episode of Buffy that truly traumatized me deeply and irrevocably
One episode? Only one episode of Buffy traumatized you?
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The VR pulls on Alex’s subconscious to project her friends onto the NPCs, which means it’s an exaggerated view of how she sees them. It reminds me a lot of that one episode of She-Ra where they’re playing D&D and we get to see the cast from Bo and Glimmer’s point of view.
Obviously, Alex sees Nia Nal as a babe because her NPC avatar had hair porn that would make an Earp jealous.
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I see that Ms. TessMACHER! is back, and because of the Crisis that suggests her entire backstory is changed. What mischief will she manage this time?
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A Nia centered episode, an Alex centered episode, and a Luthor centered episode. As much as we enjoy this bounty brought on by the need to free up Melissa’s schedule to direct the latter, I wish the writers would do more to weave plots for the supporting characters into the season arc instead of giving us these occassional, but delightful, one offs.
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“In case of blueberries.”
Do you think Violet Beauregard’s fate gave a young Kelly nightmares?
Another Series of Supergirl is coming and every season is superb I repeated this again and enjoying a lot all episodes. Residency Citizenship
I loved this ep and Chyler was amazing!
“She keeps calling herself Aloy and mumbling about robot dinosaurs.”
I spat out my tea reading this, I’m playing Horizon atm….
Alex Danvers said she would buy the flowers herself.
Thanks, Chyler, I have missed your amazing acting chops. I think, there haven’t been too many opportunities for her to shine (since season 2), which frankly makes me a bit sad/mad. But she smashed this one with a funny wig.
Even Kelly had a bit of story here— since she isn’t usually in the centre of things, it’s a bit difficult to connect to her character when she steps in the circle. The writers really have to find a way to balance things out for many of the characters.
But back to Alex who is grieving and at breaking point, so why not escape and be Supergirl in VR. Interesting choice, I must say. Like thinking that your little sister used to have it easier somehow, because she didn’t have to carry that huge burden of protecting the family (yet). Because with super powers you’re somehow safe from very human pain (when we know that Kara is riding high on emotions). Alex wanting to be Supergirl is explained as looking for hope (and punching something). I get that, but still think an episode with Alex trying to confront her (virtual) dad would have been stronger (was Dean Cain not available?!)
We don’t get that closure though, so that’s probably more real than anything.
Stay safe everyone!
PS: What’s up with the spam in the comments…?
“If you have a contact at the NSA, now would be a good time to mention it. Not, say, 100 phone calls from now.”
I LOL’d!