No One Escapes Master Jailer
Kara continues to mourn Astra’s death with Alex when they receive an uninvited visit from Non. Surprisingly though, he comes in peace and asks her to attend Astra’s funeral. Once that’s over, Non says they’ll take a two week mourning period and then they’ll be back at war with each other (thank goodness, for a moment there I was afraid the Kyptonian plot would see some actual progress).
Meanwhile, Hank tasks the DEO with apprehending a Fort Rozz fugitive that feeds off of rotting flesh. They’re able to find the fugitive without much problem but when they do, he’s begging for the help before being abducted by a mysterious man in armor called the Master Jailer and killed shortly after. Figuring this is likely not an isolated incident, Alex and Hank ask a couple local detectives, Warren and Draper, if they’ve come across any similar cases. Warren is less than forthcoming but Draper proves to be more helpful. He tells them that whoever did it has been around for months and has already killed at least five people who all turn out to be Fort Rozz escapees.
Master Jailer shows up again to abduct another escapee but this time Supergirl flies in to intervene. The fight choreography is a noted improvement from the usual and it also doesn’t hurt that it requires much less of the show’s dodgy CGI. The bad news is that Master Jailer gets away and has taken the prisoner with him.
Absolute Justice
Back at the DEO, they realize that Master Jailer had been using a standard police issue baton and has Detective Warren’s DNA all over it. They go to arrest him but Detective Draper reveals himself as the real culprit when he shoots at both Alex and Warren and then abducts Kara off screen. Alex was naturally wearing body armor so she’s fine but since Warren is never seen or mentioned again, I’m just going to assume he’s dead.
Kara wakes up inside a jail cell that simulates the red sun of Krypton, thus neutralizing all of her powers. She uses her time inside her jail cell to bond with the Fort Rozz prisoner from earlier. He admits that he got into drug trafficking to help his sick wife but was quickly caught and sentenced to 18 years at Fort Rozz by Alura. He tells Kara though that he bears no grudges to her or Alura and when Fort Rozz crashed on Earth, he decided to use it as an opportunity to get a fresh start, which he used to become a college professor. Unfortunately, Master Jailer spoils the moment by telling the professor the time has come for him to be executed. Kara tries talking him out of it but her pleas fall on deaf ears and he just decides to execute her too.
Back at the DEO, Alex figures out that Draper wasn’t a prisoner at Fort Rozz but that he was in fact a guard. The DEO gets another solid lead when one of the agents discovers that Draper has been spending a lot of time at a remote cabin. When they get there, the cabin appears to be empty until Alex notices glowing under the floorboards and discovers he has a hidden basement (it was really quite embarrassing how long it took them to figure this out). Alex comes in just in time to free Kara who in turn takes out Master Jailer. She then decides to free the professor, reasoning that he already served his time at Fort Rozz.
Afterwards, Kara is seen talking with AI Alura. After talking a little bit about her time with the professor, she mentions that Non had been talking about something called the Myriad. When Kara asks Alura what it is however, she starts freaking out and threatening to self-destruct. Just once could Alura tell us something useful?
CatCo/Maxwell Lord
Kara’s conflicts with Cat have apparently gotten worse this week as Cat decides to hire a second assistant named Siobhan Smythe (Italia Ricci) to further spite Kara (she even adds to the insult by correctly pronouncing Siobhan’s name). Okay, I understood Cat being about Adam for maybe a week but come on they went on like two dates, now might be time to move on. Unsurprisingly, Siobhan spends the majority of her screen time making Kara look bad.
Meanwhile, Cat has begun to notice that Maxwell Lord hasn’t been seen in quite awhile and figures he’s been kidnapped. She decides to have James and Lucy look into it to see if they can figure out what happened to him. James isn’t comfortable with having to lie about knowing where Lord is and tells Kara as much, though she insists imprisoning him at the DEO is the only way to stop him.
It doesn’t take long for Lucy to start getting on the DEO’s trail but when she tells James about it he tries talking her out of pursuing it. Lucy is smart enough to tell though that his hesitance is because of Supergirl and wonders just how close the two of them are.
Cat having been tipped off by Siobhan about James and Lucy’s argument, tells James about an article she wrote when she was first starting out at the Daily Planet. She found out that an actor she was assigned to profile had been abusing his wife and instead of reporting it she caved to studio pressure and opted to write a puff piece. That decision came back to bite her in the ass three months later when the actor ended up killing his wife. She uses this story as her way of telling James that regardless of the consequences, as reporters they are obligated to tell the truth.
James then confronts Kara once again about Lord and says that keeping him locked up without due process is wrong. He says he understands why she’s keeping him locked up but that if she continues to do this she’ll end up being no better than Lord.
Between James and the mad ravings of Master Jailer, Kara decides the time has come to cut Lord loose. Alex warns him though that if he reveals Supergirl’s identity, they’ll turn over all their evidence against him to the cops.
Back at CatCo, Kara finally cracks and tells Siobhan that she doesn’t like her. Siobhan is unfazed by this though saying that she’s only using the assistant job as a stepping stone to “build her brand.”
Meanwhile, James may be glad that Kara finally decided to let Lord go but that still doesn’t fix his problems with Lucy. He comes to the conclusion that their relationship won’t work as long as he keeps lying to her about her relationship with Supergirl. He then asks Kara if he can let Lucy in on Kara’s secret identity. Yes, let the woman clearly jealous of Supergirl and with extensive military connections know Supergirl’s secret identity. What could possibly go wrong?
Analysis
Master Jailer may have been a rather on-the-nose metaphor for the dangers of Kara and the DEO’s ethically questionable imprisoning of Lord but despite the show’s usual lack of subtlety, he wasn’t a terrible villain. The fight scenes were well done (at least by this show’s standards) and served as an effective, if a little obvious, morality tale for Kara. Of course, the armor he wore made it really hard to take him seriously since it looked like a mix between Murphy in the Robocop remake and that stupid armor given to Jason Voorhees at the end of Jason X.
Sadly, for the second week in a row, the episode’s CatCo story drags down the plot. Siobhan is already coming off like like a one-dimensional foil, especially when she just flat out tells Kara her plans to “build her brand.” First of all, since we already know she’s just going to end up as a villain anyway, it feels annoyingly pointless to keep this subplot going for what appears to be at least another episode (oh joy). Second, the fact that Cat doesn’t seem to be catching on to what a transparent suck-up she is is starting to undermine Cat’s development as well.
Tune in next week when Supergirl visits her cousins iconic fortress in ‘Solitude.’