Previously on SUPERGIRL…
(Editor’s Note: This episode aired on March 31 and I have no idea how I missed it. I’m slowly working my way through the season of the ARROWVERSE now and hopefully will be fully caught up soon…)
Betrayal hits pretty hard this week, as Lena Luthor, Alex Danvers and Supergirl all try and come to grips with Lena’s assistant, MISS TESSMACHER! being in cahoots with Lena’s brother the whole time. But now that they know the truth, the women have to work together to stop Lex from doing whatever he plans on doing now that he’s free from prison and has given himself superpowers thanks to Lena’s work on the Harun-El.
Unfortunately, Lex is still a few steps ahead of them, because he has a perfect clone of Supergirl under his command, and he uses her to great effect in this episode.
While we’ve spent most of the season following the political machinations of Children of Liberty leader Ben Lockwood, it becomes clear here that Luthor has been positioning him all along, eventually getting Lockwood into a Cabinet position in Washington, where he pushes a repeal of the Alien Amnesty Act. While the repeal initially looks like it’s going to fail, a little persuasion from MISS TESSMACHER! on a Senator gets Lockwood what he wants. And that gives Lex the perfect opportunity to bring Supergirl down.
While MISS TESSMACHER! traps Supergirl in a Lexo-Suit, her clone invades the White House, attacking everyone celebrating the passage of the repeal, and forcing the President to declare Supergirl an “enemy of the people.”
Jon Cryer’s portrayal of Superman’s archnemesis may be a little uneven so far, but the presence of Lex Luthor this season, even though he didn’t physically appear in this episode, has really brought out the best in the show.
There has been a lot of frustration with SUPERGIRL’s fourth season and the political bent it’s taken so far, but everything that’s come before has set this moment up perfectly. And thankfully, we seem to have moved past the worst of the preachiness and gotten into an area where we can tell an effective story.
As compelling as the episode’s main story was, the secondary plots just did nothing for me. James Olsen is dealing with some PTSD from being shot and nearly killed and J’onn J’onnz has to come to terms with his inability to be an agent of peace. Both have to work through issues with family members. For James, his sister is pushing him to open up about his issues. And J’onn has a visit from his dead father. The family members have varying degrees of success in getting through to their troubled kin. The scenes were fine, but ultimately I just wanted the show to pivot back to Supergirl and and the main arc.