We start off with a flashback to 13 years ago, the days when Kara was still in her pod and stuck in the phantom zone, her pod’s onboard computer comes to life with the three dots arranged in a triangle to form the logo for Brainiac. Back in the present Kara is still reeling from the death of her Aunt Astra at Hank’s hands (as far as she knows.) Alex has tried to convince her to come back to the DEO, and I’m starting to wonder how long it’s going to go before Alex tells the truth, and arguably more importantly, how Kara is going to react when she finds out Alex has been lying to her. Astra’s death was in episode 13 and at this point I’m hoping the truth comes out before too many more episodes.
At CatCo, Kara seemingly starts to get back into Cat’s good graces when Siobhan commits the heinous act of handing Cat a package without opening it first, prompting Cat to question “what if it’s anthrax.” It’s kind of funny the two sides we often get of Cat; in public she puts on this face of being dismissive of those she deems beneath her, as if they should feel fortunate she spoke to them. But in private moments she can show amazing depth, as I’ve commented before. Later in the episode we (very) briefly see this depth again (when she mentions forgoing dinner plans to spend time with her son), but it’s certainly come up a few times throughout the season.
The package contained information on a dating website for married people to have extra-marital affairs. When Cat ignores the drive (instructing Siobhan to microwave it) the hacker that sent the drive takes over all of CatCo’s monitors and claims she will set off an age of chaos. This hacker is played by Laura Vanderoort, who portrayed Kara/Supergirl on the long running series ‘Smallville.’ I really appreciate the way this show honors the past performances by those in an “S” shield. Previously we have seen Helen Slater (Supergirl in the 1984 movie) and Dean Cain (Superman in the 1990s tv show ‘Lois and Clark’).
James begins to investigate the hacker, and more or less brushes off Lucy’s ideas to help. Lucy is clearly getting more and more frustrated by James not including her in his life, instead running to Supergirl for help. In his defense, he wanted to tell her who Supergirl really is but Kara told him not to. Despite the fact that Winn had set up a secret room for just this type of purpose, he set up a mobile workstation with various computers and tablets and worked to find the hacker on the internet. I really thought it was strange they were not using their secret office at CatCo for this, and the only explanation is the show writers wanted a way for an attack to happen on Kara and the others, without the fight taking place in CatCo. While not a huge deal, it admittedly took me out of the story for a minute. The hacker, traveling through the web and emerging from Winn’s screens, reveals herself to be Indigo, and has the Brainiac logo on her. After a brief fight with Supergirl, which Indigo was winning, she makes her escape when Hank and Alex arrive to help. Despite their aid Kara refuses to go back to the DEO, and we are starting to see where their lack of teamwork is making it harder on everyone to stop the threat that Indigo poses. Once again I found myself wondering when Alex was going to confess the truth to Kara.
Staying with Indigo, she has a run in with Non and it’s revealed that she is actually Brainiac–8 and wants Non to work with her. She claimed that He’ll was coming, and only herself and the Kryptonians will survive. Clearly these two have a history, but Non took offense to the way that Indigo put down Astra. I have to wonder how much history these two have, and hopefully we will find out more in the future, but sadly nothing else was revealed in this episode.
A couple episodes ago, I mentioned liking the way that Winn was asked to help the DEO. Once again, they came to him for assistance in tracking Indigo. I’m still hoping he is formally recruited from CatCo. He would still be able to serve as one of Kara’s friends, but I feel his talents are wasted where he is currently at. He told Kara he wouldn’t go if she didn’t want him to, but she reluctantly agreed. I was briefly worried that Kara was going to act more petty and tell him not go go. Looking for a way to track Indigo, without Winn, James suggest they go to the Fortress of Solitude for help.
After some jokes about her flying abilities compared to Superman’s, James shows her where the key to the Fortress is. The key happens to be a super-condensed piece of dwarf star that only someone of her power could even lift. Growing up, I always thought this was a silly concept, even for comics, but I have to give them credit for making it work here. One thing this show has never done is shy away from it’s comic-based origins. Once inside, James welcomes her to the fortress. I was wondering why she had never been there before but it was quickly revealed that Superman often invited her, she just didn’t want to go for fear it would make her to home sick. Inside the fortress James and Kara learned about Indigo, coming from the planet Colu and being one of the Brainiacs. I would have expected more of a reaction to the name from Kara, but it’s certainly possible she just never heard of him back when she was a child on Krypton.
Once they’v returned to CatCo, Lucy tells James that she figured out who the real target being the affairs website was, a military general with access to nuclear launch codes. James fills her in on what he learned with Supergirl and it’s pretty clear at this point that Lucy, made James was working with Supergirl instead of her, is probably going to leave him. Later in the episode, that’s exactly what she does, ironically after Kara gave him her blessing for Lucy to be let in on the big secret. Lucy even told James that he clearly loved Kara, and vice versa. I have to wonder if she will be leaving the show at this point, since it seems her story arc (of pushing James towards Kara) is mostly complete.
Tracking Indigo to the military base, Supergirl confronts her but not before she was able to launch the Nuke and send it to National City. Supergirl finally had to work with Hank again, and talking her through it they were able to stop the missile. I really liked the effects here of her flying, and struggling to keep up with, the missile. Going back after Indigo, Supergirl was able to match her, and may have even beat her, but it was Winn who got the knock-out by uploading a virus to her. She’s not destroyed for good however. Non was able to recover her pieces and began the process of reassembling her.
In the aftermath, Kara admits she wouldn’t have defeated Indigo without the DEO and agrees to come back. I was glad to see this was resolved relatively quickly. I was even more glad to see that Alex confessed the truth regarding Astra. It was great to see that Kara embraced Alex rather than run away like I had expected. While this may not be the last we have heard of Astra’s death, it looks like the bulk of it has passed.
Random Thoughts:
- Winn seems to have won over Siobhan, without really trying, and at the end of the episode she comes on to him. But not without telling him she will kill him if he tells anyone. That’s an interesting pairing and I’m curious how Winn will take it when she turns into the Silver Banshee.
- Inside the Fortress, we got a great look at a Legion Flight Ring, which could signify two things. 1) Superman most likely has had adventures with the Legion of Super-Heroes, something he frequently did when growing up in the comics. And 2) that cameo of Supergirl on ‘The Flash’ a few episodes back wasn’t the only thing from her world, as we also saw the Legion ring there.
- I had expected a longer scene in the fortress, especially since the episode is titled ‘Solitude’, but it’s clear what was really meant was Solitude from her friends as Kara had to work with an ever-shrinking team.
