Supergirl Season 4, Episode 16 recap: Red Daughter arrives

This week’s Supergirl flashes back to show the extent that Lex Luthor has had his hand in all the recent events of National City. Here’s our recap of all that happened.

Lex Luthor is in top form on this week’s Supergirl. Through flashbacks we learn that Lex has basically been behind just about everything that’s happened in National City recently. Is anyone really surprised? It’s Lex after all.

Picking up where last week’s episode left off, Supergirl and Lex luthor come face to face and have a major blow out fight. A fight which involves Lex jumping out of his helicopter into his Lexosuit  and ends up on the roof of the Daily Planet. It is pretty cool to see such an iconic location on Supergirl. It’s too bad Lex seemingly destroyed the instantly recognizable globe.

In flashbacks we are taken to Lex’s time in court where both Lena and James testified against him. James testifies that Lex had tortured him and Lena reveals that she wore a wire when Lex turned the sun red and she submitted all evidence of their correspondences to the court. Lex is sentenced to 31 consecutive life sentences, but not before poisoning the judge and jury.

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We are also shown the beginnings of Lex’s relationship with Eve Teschmacher. He first sees her as a wide-eyed girl standing outside the courthouse calling his name as he’s being taken away. Then Otis Graves takes her aside and gets them an introduction.

It turns out Eve has been writing Lex letters because she thinks he’s the only man trying to save them from annihilation, and he actually read them. Lex also realizes Eve is incredibly smart, with degrees from Yale in literature and physics, so he plants her at CatCo to get to James and then eventually at L Corp.

Nothing is ever simple when it comes to Lex and he quickly makes himself at home in the prison. He teaches the other inmates chess and both bribes and blackmails the warden. When he gets a call from the Kaznian embassy he manages to get himself set free for 72 hours.

The call he received was of course about the other Supergirl, the Red Daughter. Lex works with the Kaznian Minister as a “consultant” but in reality is bending the other Kryptonian to his point of view. The only word she remembers when she wakes is “Alex” so when she hears Lex’s name she assumes that he’s the “Alex” that she knew.

Lex gives her books to read, teaches her about the horrors of America, and shows her an extremely biased view of the other Supergirl. All in hopes that she will one day be able to go and take over the place of Kara Danvers.

Unfortunately for Lex the Red Daughter begins to have a mind of her own. First she saves a child whose screams she hears in the distance. Then, during their trip to America (as Linda Lee, a nod to the DC character) she breaks off from Lex and beings to read Kara’s journal and meets Alex and Lena and starts to wonder if maybe Kara Danvers isn’t so bad after all.

Eve is panicked by the Red Daughter’s newfound awareness but Lex is one step ahead. He sends Otis and Eve to bomb the child that Red Daughter had saved and place blame on the Americans. Otis secretly saves the child, but for all appearances he is dead and Red Daughter is beyond devastated.

She ignores Lex’s orders and attacks the ship that she believes launched the missile but is unable to murder all of the men inside, so Lex shows up and does it for her. He is enraged that she didn’t follow his orders and she accuses him of treating her as a pet or a solider, “Alexander’s conquering army”. Lex calls her a disappointment and leaves,  seemingly for good.

After some time passes, the Red Daughter is in the middle of a training exercise and her nose begins to bleed and she becomes very ill. The only thing that can save her is Lena’s Harun-El. So Lex does what any sane reasonable person would do and gives himself cancer in order to guilt Lena into helping him.

As we know, his ploy worked since last week showed us the completion of Lena’s serum. Red Daughter is cured and she vows to be disciplined and fight for Lex in order to destroy Supergirl. Who else doesn’t see this going well?

Part of Lex’s plan apparently is to start a war between America and Kaznia and he will be the only one who will be able to take down or control Red Daughter, thus making him the hero. In order to do this he needs fall guys. That’s where Ben Lockwood comes in, hand-picked by Otis for their purposes.

So this means not only was Lex involved with Red Daughter, Eve, and Lena’s Harun-El but he also is responsible for the rise of the Children of Liberty. He truly has had a hand in almost everything wrong in National City.

As the episode closes we see Eve in the present day leaving a tied up Lena in her office at L Corp with a note while Red Daughter hovers over National City in a new suit that Lex gave her. This story has just begun.

Do you think anything can stop Red Daughter? Will Kara, or perhaps the real Alex, be able to talk her down or will they have to take her down? Let us know your thoughts!

Supergirl airs Sundays at 8pm EST on the CW.