Supergirl season 4, episode 2 recap: A beacon of hope

Supergirl continues its fourth season with a strong stand on current events and higher stakes than ever. Here’s a recap of all that happened in the second episode.

With rising anti-alien sentiments in National City after the president was revealed to secretly be an alien, Supergirl is struggling to keep the peace and convince the people to talk to one another. She manages to stop a riot and gives her support to the new president after the former president was forced to step down. The image of Supergirl stopping the riot and catching the falling pole with the American flag wasn’t exactly subtle and as she holds up the American flag, Supergirl pleads with people not to fight with each other.

The President’s secret alien identity being revealed also has repercussions in the DEO. Alex breaks up an argument that is brewing between her agents and has to remind everyone that the DEO is a place of work and any political discussions need to be on their own time. She also makes it clear that the job of the DEO is to protect ALL citizens, including aliens. Suffice it to say some agents aren’t exactly thrilled by this.

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J’onn also stopped by the DEO to seek Alex’s help for his missing friend Fiona, who unbeknownst to him has been murdered. Unfortunately, Alex already has a lot going on being the director of the DEO so J’onn decides to do it on his own. He asks around for information and checks Fiona’s apartment searching for clues.

The clues lead him to a disgruntled police officer and then to what appears to be a meeting of an anti-alien hate group. Supergirl certainly isn’t beating around the bush with their politics this season.

Alex is unable to get much information out of Mercy Grave’s brother other than the fact that there may be one other person working with her. Kara heads over to L-Corp to see if she can get some information out of Lena and she brings some Big Belly Burger with her for good measure.

Lena opens up about Mercy’s past with the Luthors and the fact that she was practically a surrogate big sister to her. She also admits that she felt abandoned when Mercy left Lex and the Luthors (Lena clearly needs years of therapy after all the family drama she’s gone through, the poor woman).

While Kara and Lena are discussing Mercy, Eve comes running in and informs them the building is on lock-down because an L-Corp engineer in charge of their image inducers has been murdered and his laptop stolen. Mercy is using the L-Corp employee’s laptop to try to hack into the image inducers and shut them down but Lena manages to stop the hack before too much damage is done.

Lena may have been able to stop the hack into her system but not before Brainiac 5’s image inducer temporarily went offline while he was trying to order pizza. Unfortunately for Brainy the man he was ordering pizza from does not take kindly to him being an alien and Brainy is hurt and confused because he thought they were friends. Luckily Nia Nal happened to be there and she steps in to help him.  Nia bravely steps between Brainy and his would-be attackers and in no uncertain terms tells them they need to back off and they are the real traitors.

It’s definitely a stand out moment from the episode. As they leave the restaurant Brainy wonders if he’s seen Nia before. Nia says she doesn’t believe so which means it’s likely that Brainy knows one of her descendants, Nura Nal.

Nia is shaken by the incident with Brainy and confides in James that she is a transgender woman and she knows what it’s like to be discriminated against. She can’t stand by and let it happen anymore and she wants James to write an editorial. James is touched by Nia’s story but tells her he’s hesitant to write an editorial too soon because people on the other side of the aisle may shut him out or call the newspaper biased.

However, by the end of the episode, James does step up after he sees an employee play a “prank” on another employee who happens to be an alien. He gives a rousing speech about how at CatCo they respect one another and he begins to write the editorial.

Meanwhile, Mercy Graves comes to L-Corp in an attempt to get into their servers and Kara has to find a way to protect Lena and L-Corp without giving away her secret identity. A task made harder by the fact that Lena doesn’t want them all to separate, which is only natural since as far as she knows Kara is merely a plucky reporter with no means of protecting herself.

They find out that Mercy has taken one arm of the Lexosuit, which Lena has kept hidden, and Lena takes the other arm of the Lexosuit and goes head to head with Mercy. She manages to hold her own pretty well until Supergirl arrives.

Mercy and her brother are locked up by Alex and Kara and it would seem all is well. Kara knows that the only way through this is to heal the hearts and minds of people and ease their fear. She gives a lovely speech on television encouraging the people of National City not to be afraid, to accept one another and to know that aliens like her love this country too. Again, not subtle on the politics and I expect this trend to continue through the entire season.

Unfortunately, while Kara is attempting to be a beacon of hope for people Mercy and her brother are able to weasel their way into Agent Jensen’s mind. She convinces him to help them escape and once on the loose they release green kryptonite into the air and the episode ends with the cliffhanger of Supergirl seemingly crashing down to Earth.

Supergirl airs Sundays at 8 p.m. EST on the CW.