Supergirl - 'Supergirl Lives'

Where everyone knows your name...

Aaand we're back, as Supergirl leads the return of the Arrowverse to the CW. This episode is notable for two reasons. The first is that it marks the Supergirl debut of director Kevin Smith; the second is that, beyond the echo of the comic story title 'Superman Lives', 'Supergirl Lives' is a title with no connection to what this episode is about. Seriously; no-one thought that she didn't.

Kara is pondering her place in the world, after Guardian gets the credit for another joint crimefighting op (in part because James uses his authoritah to push his version of the story onto Snapper Carr(1),) and Carr chews her out for being all crusade-y about her reporting. She takes on a story about a missing girl, and teams up with Mon-el to investigate a mysterious medical facility where suitably fit volunteer test subjects are sent through a portal to another world.

That's right, dear readers; we're going interplanetary!

Kara pursues the fleeing chief medic to the so-called slaver's moon, where a red sun leaves her powerless. Mon-el follows, rather than summoning help as she asked, and they end up stranded. They meet a friendly alien chap with good English, and in the absence of their usual advanced face-punching options Kara opts to get captured and work out a rescue from the inside; which is also how she learns that the alien slavers a) are using Roulette as their local Earth contact, and b) appear to be selling humans to the Dominators.

I confess, I'm torn between 'call it a Stargate' and 'you've got red on you' as a
caption.

Supergirl's refusal to bow down, despite her powerlessness, inspires the rest of the captives to rise up and they break out, meeting up with a rescue team led by Alex, who followed the same trail as Kara to find the portal. The Dominator prevents someone shooting Mon-el, for reasons as yet unknown, Alex provides a blast of yellow sunlight courtesy of a special solar grenade, and Wynn - who has been suffering doubts after getting smacked around while trying to help Guardian - beans an alien with a rock and then makes the portal work the other way. As a capper, Alex patches things up with Maggie after going all crazy after Kara's disappearance, and it turns out that Maggie worked out who Supergirl was already.

In the stinger, the slaver is visited by two hooded figures looking for Mon-el who murder him after learning that their quarry is on Earth.

Aside from the meaningless title, 'Supergirl Lives' is a solid episode. Alex's total freakout about Kara's peril being linked directly to Alex being happy is a bit out of character, but there may be some backstory there. Kara/Mon-el continues to niggle at me for various reasons, but in and of itself is an inoffensive budding romance with a bit of chemistry. I just really want to see them stay friends, because I don't want the show to feed into the ideas that a) a strong woman needs a strong man, b) a woman needs a man, or c) that a man and a woman can't just be friends.

(1) Apparently nothing is worse than James with authoritah, because he never used to be this much of a dick.