Supergirl – S1E9 – Blood Bonds

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Previously on Supergirl, ‘Hostile Takeover’

It turns out the fight we left off with last time didn’t last very long: Non quickly gets the upper hand, but when Hank steps in, Non kidnaps him. Since the DEO has Astra, he proposes a prisoner swap and gives the DEO 48 hours to decide.

With Alex acting as Director, Kara decides to try to see if she can suss out of Astra where Hank is being held. She tries to leverage Astra’s emotions, but Astra calls her out for not having the strength to do so because she’s scared of the truth about her mother. Astra reveals that she ordered Non to not kill her, which throws Kara off, particularly when Astra accuses of her of abandoning her own lineage.

At CatCo, Jimmy, Finn, and Kara are watching the coverage of the aftermath of the attack at Lord Industries. Max is covering up the fact that it was a superhuman attack, which prompts Jimmy to go in and see what Lord is really up to. Naturally, Max confronts Jimmy, because dude just wants to be left alone.

Before that, though, Jimmy has to remind Kara to put her glasses on… you see, she’s visibly shaken by having to keep up her secret identity now that Cat is on to her. She even burns through a coffee meant for Cat because of her nerves.

When Cat does show up, she demands to speak to Kara privately and grills her with personal questions about her past. When Kara gets each one correct, Cat knows she is lying, because only a liar gets everything right all the time. She gives Kara an ultimatum: either prove she isn’t Supergirl, or pack her things, because she can’t participate in her ruse any longer when innocent people could be being saved while Kara is at work. Fair point.

Meanwhile, General Lane has shown up at the DEO and reveals that the President has given him authority over Alex. His orders are to locate the alien garrison and return Henshaw to his post. As it turns out, Hank is holding his own pretty well at the garrison – he’s able to resist the mind-reading of one of Non’s henchmen. (Of course, we all know why.)

General Lane pays Astra a visit. After a speech about respecting enemies, he goes full on enhanced interrogation and injects Astra with a vial of Kryptonite-laced truth serum while Kara looks on in horror.

That night, Jimmy decides to enlist Winn’s help in breaking into Lord Technologies. Win proves himself a very adept – if slightly unbelievable – hacker, and gets Jimmy all the way to a mysterious door locked with a biometric scanner. Unfortunately, before Jimmy can figure out what’s behind the door, Lord shows up and knocks his lights out.

Lord ties Jimmy up and demands to know who is helping him get through his security. Then, he breaks out a wrench and obliterates Jimmy’s camera. When he turns the wrench toward him, Jimmy lets out a gasp of genuine fear, but Lord stops there. He’s only warning him. Next time, what happened to the camera will happen to Jimmy’s head.

Before he gets back to CatCo, Kara has made a decision regarding Cat’s ultimatum. She will not reveal herself as Supergirl, so she decides to resign immediately. Unfazed (cold!), Cat suggests she at least finish out the day.

Frustrated, Kara goes up to the Super-Friends Hangout, where Jimmy is giving Winn a rundown of what happened. When Kara sees Jimmy’s condition, she is furious and wants to go get Lord right then and there, but Winn advises against it because she’s beginning to sound a lot like Astra. Worse, Kara says that she’s beginning to think Astra might have a point. Luckily, Suave Jimmy returns just in time to talk her down, and the three of them hold hands.

Thanks in part to Jimmy’s pep talk, Kara decides to march into the DEO and take matters into her own hands. After a heart-to-heart with Astra, Alex and Kara march her out and inform General Lane that they will be making the prisoner swap, despite his objections.

After the women and his soldiers basically commit mutiny, Lane further solidifies himself as a completely incompetent General by standing aside. Before Astra walks out, however, he at least warns Kara that it’s probably a trap.

Unfortunately, he’s right. Non is not a man of his word, because as soon as Hank and Astra switch places, more flying Kryptons show up and surround them. Their eyes burn as they charge up to do the heat-vision thing, and Alex leans into Hank and suggests that he “transform.”

Astra, to her credit, calls off the attack before Hank gets the chance to blow his cover. Warning her to not mistake her compassion for weakness, Kara agrees to just call it a “start.”

Later, Kara confronts Hank about what exactly Alex meant by telling Hank to transform. He reveals his secret to her off-screen, and then a plan starts hatching in Kara’s eyes: since Hank can shape-shift, he can help convince Cat that Kara is not Supergirl.

Meanwhile, at Lord Technologies, a lab tech is introducing Maxwell to a burn victim with no relatives and no connections of any kind. She was hard to find, apparently. And she was what was behind the mysterious locked door, in addition to things like schematics for the recovered arm of Red Tornado, from a few episodes back.

Uh-oh.