Previously on SUPERGIRL

Lex Luthor’s plans are all coming to fruition. The American President is in his pocket and setting the country up for an attack from Kaznia. He has his own Supergirl clone who made the real Supergirl public enemy number one after an attack on the White House. And the country is rounding up extraterrestrials and sending them off to a secret location.

I wonder if Lex was somehow also behind Alex potentially adopting a child and then the birth mother deciding to keep her baby. That’s the kind of sick attention to detail that Lex would absolutely be responsible for. Considering he already knows Supergirl’s secret identity, it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch.

In advance of the next episode’s season finale, the heroes start to fight back. Supergirl manages to escape the President’s secret service detail with ease, but gets knocked out by the Red Daughter clone. Kara manages to escape her, too, thanks to her knowing how to work through the pain of Kryptonite. But with the Red Daughter knowing all of Kara’s secrets, she goes to Kara’s adopted mother to call out Supergirl for a final battle.

Kara doesn’t fare so well in the battle, especially since the skies went dark during the fight, and the clone kills her as Alex tries to come to the rescue. As Alex finally remembers that Kara and Supergirl are one and the same, she desperately yells at Kara to take the sunlight energy from the grass and the trees and the earth and everything around her.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Kryptonians use photosynthesis from other objects to power themselves up, but Kara manages to do it and comes back to life. I think, at this point, Supergirl may have died more than her cousin.

Meanwhile, J’onn, Brainiac 5 and Dreamer go to a secret DEO facility to try and find the aliens that Lockwood’s men have captured. Dreamer and Brainy get captured and while Brainy is being interrogated, he gets knocked in the head. The jolt resets his programming and allows his cold Coluan nature to take over. He viciously attacks and takes out all the guards and then tells Dreamer he won’t rescue her. Instead, she needs to be sent to the secret prison so she can tell Brainiac 5 its location.

This was the most interesting I’ve found Brainiac 5 all season, especially during the transformation, as you can see the fear in his face as he starts to lose his sense of self to the Brainiac part of him. Jesse Rath is so good in this scene and I’m curious to see how far they’re willing to go with a cold, calculating Brainy.

Finally, Lena works with her mother to extract the Harun-El from James and Ben Lockwood. Lena’s mother is still smarting from being betrayed by Lex, but Lena still poisons her and throws the truth alien on her arm to keep her in check. Lena and Olsen also manage to talk some sense into Lockwood, who ends up ripping the kryptonite heart right off of Otis Graves.

The silliness of the photosynthesis aside, this was another great hour, and it sets up the finale nicely. I can’t wait to see how it all ends.