written by Cara Russell
SPOILER WARNINGS ARE IN EFFECT
Now with a certain Kryptonian’s DNA, the time-travelling away team returns to find that the home team has spent their time preparing for a trip to the Phantom Zone, complete with J’onn revealing he turned his command tower into a freaking awesome interdimensional space ship. From here, we get a ride through the nightmares of each of our heroes, starting off with a reference to the work of a real-world bogeywoman which we all could’ve done without. In a series that seems to want to be recognized for their positive work with trans characters, they somehow still keep finding new ways to be jerks to the community at large.
On arrival, their pet phantom escapes and Alex is infected during the scuffle to re-contain it. She puts up a good fight, but ultimately she’s stuck confronting her fear of being the expendable, superfluous teammate. Lena and Fake Nia are chased down by a kelpie, Lena’s personal terror. Fake Nia gets forcefully contained, while Lena has an awesome Alien 3 moment attempting to resist. Unfortunately she’s stuck where she is not in control of the current situation, facing a manifestation of the thing that killed her mother (drowning, which kelpies are known for).
Kelly gets her own creepy horror movie callback when confronted by the other three women, acting in sync and manipulating her own feelings of insecurity among heroes, along with her fear of abandoning a comrade-slash-girlfriend. The real Nia has a vision inside her nightmare, and convinces Fake Brainy to investigate it with her by the phantom’s containment chamber. While there, the hull breaches, and she’s unable to save Fake Brainy because even though her vision gave her all the clues, she lacked the experience needed to decipher them.
J’onn comes to after some turbulence to find the rest of the team passed out, save for Brainy, who is having a lucid nightmare of falling balloons. They theorize that J’onn is immune thanks to previous mind-melds. Brainy isn’t, but he’s still able to function well enough to assist in deploying their sun bomb, freeing up J’onn to distract the phantoms and assist the ladies in defeating their nightmares. It works well enough, and while Kara is having her own personal meltdown in the Phantom Zone, a new dawn arrives thanks to the sun bomb. She feels the hope that she’s usually the one to inspire, whisking herself and Zor-El to the ship with her restored powers.
As they turn to leave, we also get to see a certain fifth-dimensional stowaway holding onto the hull, which hopefully will ensure some mayhem and madness as we close in on the end of the second quarter of this final season. Will it continue to be entertaining? Who knows, but it will take effort to be dull with Nxylgsptinz in the mix.
Supergirl airs Tuesday nights at 9 Eastern/8 Central on the CW. Cara can be found on Twitter @virtualcara.