Fortress of Solitude
The episode opens at Kara’s apartment with Alex trying to get her to start working at the DEO again. Yeah, apparently Kara still hasn’t forgiven Hank for supposedly killing Astra, so she hasn’t set foot at the DEO since last week. Granted, this had been mentioned last week but it had been written so clunky that I barely noticed and therefore didn’t find it worth mentioning. Anyway, Kara tells Alex that she has her doubts about whether she’ll ever return to the DEO and thinks it might be better if she operates without the DEO’s help.
That gets put to the test pretty quickly when a mysterious hacker starts messing with traffic lights causes several crashes throughout the city though on the plus side Kara is able to save a family from getting t-boned by a semi. Unfortunately, that proves to be just the beginning since news reports start coming in about the entire National City mainframe being breached and Winn says this could lead to a worldwide economy collapse.
Winn wastes no time using his own hacking skills to track down the culprit at Kara’s apartment while Kara and James wait patiently. The hacker saves Winn the trouble however by materializing out of his computer and revealing herself to be Indigo (played by Laura Vandervoort who played Supergirl on Smallville). She attacks Kara and is on the verge of killing James and Winn before Alex and Hank show up to scare her off (so she isn’t afraid of Supergirl but two random agents with probably useless guns are what send her running?). This probably would all have been pretty cool if not for the fact that Indigo looks like she’s doing a cheap Mystique cosplay at ComiCon.
Indigo then goes to some random part of National City and runs into Non and the two apparently have a history together. The two start talking about Myriad, which Indigo says is a stupid plan that should’ve died with Astra (I’m sure I’d agree with her if the show would give us the slightest inkling as to what the hell Myriad is). To prove this she says she’s going to start an apocalypse that only she and the Kryptonians will survive and as she leaves Non has a noticeably uneasy look on his face.
Bombs Away
Afterwards, Winn is once again recruited by the DEO for help against Indigo, which leaves Kara less than thrilled since she now has no way of figuring out just who Indigo is and how to stop her. However, James suggests they pay a visit to the Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. After opening the place up with a comically large key, we get our first look inside the fortress and it’s actually pretty impressive and included in Superman’s display of souvenirs is a Legion ring (here’s hoping the show gets a chance to use that someday). Once they finish with the brief tour, Kara is able to find out that Indigo is a descendant of the Superman villain Brainiac and had been imprisoned on Fort Rozz for trying to kill everyone on Krypton.
Kara and the DEO both independently come to the conclusion that Indigo’s previous attacks were a prelude to her ultimate master plan which is to nuke National City. Indigo is then seen breaking into a missile silo and despite Supergirl’s best efforts to stop her, she ends up launching a nuclear bomb. Kara flies after the bomb and finally decides to set her feelings with Hank aside and ask for the DEO’s help in disarming it. Hank and Alex are able to talk her through it and the bomb lands harmlessly into the ocean. To prevent Indigo from launching another missile, Winn uploads a nasty computer virus into her (because the writers apparently watched Independence Day the night before writing this episode) which causes her to disintegrate. Before that happens though Indigo reveals that she was the reason Kara was able to escape from the Phantom Zone in the first place.
Kara stops by the DEO afterwards to tell Hank that despite her feelings towards Hank that she’ll resume her DEO duties. Alex however, not being to live with the guilt any longer, tearfully confesses to Kara that she was the one who killed Astra. Kara once again showing the compassion she has become known for instantly forgives Alex and they hug it out.
CatCo
Well, things at CatCo have gotten more soap opera-ey than usual this week and for this show that’s certainly saying something. CatCo’s plot opens with a dating site for adulterers being hacked by Indigo and the data is sent to Cat (the show make so little effort to hide that this was inspired by Ashley Madison that they even mention them by name). Cat, however, having herself been the victim of a cyber attack very recently, refuses to publish the data and orders Siobhan to destroy the thumb drive in a microwave.
Speaking of Siobhan, the cold personality she displayed last week starts showing some cracks. For starters, Cat seems to have taken her off the pedestal she was on last week and now treats her the same as Kara for the most part. She also finds out that her dad is a fairly prominent member of the not-Ashley Madison site, which turns out to not be the first time she caught him cheating on her mom, which she ends up confiding to Winn about. Winn is able to sympathize with this given his own problems with his dad which somehow causes the two to start making out in an elevator. Okey dokey.
Meanwhile, James continues to have relationship problems with Lucy and once again pressures Kara to let Lucy in on Supergirl’s identity. His problems also aren’t helped by the amount of time James has been spending with Kara lately both as Kara and Supergirl to the point that he ends up blowing off a date with Lucy to show Kara around the Fortress of Solitude. Kara tries helping James by talking to Lucy which unintentionally ends up doing more harm than good. Kara mentions James telling her the story about how his dad gave him his camera just before he died which surprises Lucy since James never talks to her about his father. This proves to be the final nail in the coffin and she breaks up with James ironically just as he was on the verge of revealing Supergirl’s identity with Kara’s blessing.
Cliffhanger
Non is holding a spinning ball in his hand which ends up having the effect of partially reassembling Indigo. As he stands over Indigo’s remains he asks her “Are you ready to do things my way?”
Analysis
Indigo was actually a pretty cool villain despite the rather cheap looking costume and makeup given to Laura Vandervoort. Even though it’s obvious she’s going to serve as a Brainiac surrogate in much the same way Maxwell Lord does for Lex Luthor, I was actually more than willing to overlook that. Indigo is probably the most dangerous villain Supergirl has had to deal with on paper so far apart from the Kryptonians but thanks to Vandervoort really playing up the crazy eyes she feels even scarier than them too.
As for the CatCo stuff I have mixed feelings. While I was once again really irritated at how much screen time is spent on James and Lucy’s relationship, it was a relief to finally see that subplot put out of it’s misery. I actually have no problem with Lucy as a character but it had been obvious from the get go things wouldn’t end well with them and really the Kara-James-Lucy love triangle has felt like a waste of time.
The stuff with Winn and Siobhan was better but not by much. I appreciate the show trying to expand on Siobhan and give her at least some personality besides what we were given last week. I wouldn’t even mind the romance between her and Winn so much if there had more buildup towards it. Let them become friendly for another episode or two before they start making out with each other at least. Not that it would matter much I guess, since there’s already production photos surfacing of her as the Silver Banshee so presumably they won’t last long anyway.
Supergirl will be taking a break next week but come back in two weeks for ‘Falling’ where Kara will be infected with red Kryptonite.