SUPERGIRL Recap: “Shelter From the Storm”

Supergirl — “Shelter From the Storm” Pictured: Chyler Leigh as Alex — Photo: Bettina Strauss/The CW

SUPERGIRL RECAP: “SHELTER FROM THE STORM”

BY CYNTHIA VINNEY

Last week’s Supergirl ended with Lena and James pledging their trust to each other and sharing their secrets, including one we didn’t know: Lena can make kryptonite.

As this week’s episode, “Shelter from the Storm” opens, Lena and James are getting dressed the next morning. Lena confesses to James that she’s glad she can tell him her secrets. Suddenly, Reign crashes in and demands to know where Sam’s daughter, Ruby, is. Lena uses some sort of kryptonite pepper spray to send her packing.

On the Legion ship, Imra, Mon-El, and Brainy are preparing to go back to their time now that Pestilence is out of the picture. Brainy, who has estimated that Winn would either collect dirt or Mets baseball cards, gifts him with dirt from the 31^st century. Winn is thrilled—yes, Winn does indeed collect dirt!

Mon-el and Kara say a heartfelt good-bye. Then the DEO team is alerted to what happened with Reign at Lena’s place. They say their final farewells, while apologizing for J’onn’s absence. J’onn isn’t there because he’s spending the morning trying to lift the spirits of his depressed, increasingly memory-impaired father.

When Alex learns Reign was after Ruby, she desperately wants to protect her. So, she convinces Lena to tell her that Lena hid Ruby at Lex’s mansion, which is cloaked from the prying eyes of the outside world.

While Alex goes to Ruby, J’onn and Supergirl go to protect Sam’s mother, Patricia, the person they believe Reign will target next. Patricia has already figured out that Sam has become Reign. She explains that Sam started drawing a mark when she was 10 years old. When she saw the mark on Reign she put two and two together.

J’onn and Supergirl want to get Patricia somewhere safe, but Patricia refuses to leave. She feels she failed Sam too many times before, she won’t now.

As Reign arrives, the flowers start to die. J’onn and Supergirl realize Reign is now wielding the powers of Pestilence. Reign searches for Ruby in Patricia’s house. Instead in a closet, she finds Supergirl, who shoots an electric rope over Reign. The rope barely slows Reign down. She fights both J’onn and Supergirl, using the powers of all three Worldkillers and injuring J’onn in the process.

Then, Patricia emerges from the house. She tries to talk to Sam. She apologizes for not being a better mother and expresses her belief that Sam can overcome Reign’s control. But Reign mortally wounds Patricia and flies off.

At Lex’s house, Ruby is happy to see Alex. She asks about her mom, but Alex lies and tells her that other than knowing Sam is still sick, she doesn’t have any further information.

On the Legion ship, Imra, Mon-el, and Brain have started their journey back to the future. Brainy updates Mon-el on what’s going on with the DEO team. In particular, that they’ve discovered Reign absorbed the powers of Pestilence and Purity when they died. It turns out that Brainy is now invested in what happens to the team. So, he bugged the dirt he gave Winn in order to keep tabs on them.

When he learns Reign now has Pestilence’s powers, Mon-el grows concerned that it means the Blight could still happen in the future. But Brainy reassures him that it’s completely certain the Blight no longer happens. They have people in stasis on board who were sick from the Blight. But after Pestilence’s demise they are now fine. Whatever Reign does it won’t result in the terrible sickness that the Legion team was trying to prevent. Well, that gives us an answer to one of our burning questions from last week, even if that answer seems strange in its convenience.

At the DEO, Patricia dies from her Reign-inflicted wounds. Realizing how deadly Reign can be, James goes to Lena and tries to convince her to tell Supergirl that she can make kryptonite, because James believes it may be the only way the team can take Reign down. Lena is reluctant. She doesn’t think Supergirl will take the news well, but James convinces her.

Meanwhile, J’onn and Supergirl debate the best way to get through to Reign. Supergirl asks J’onn if any of the Green Martians were ever able to get through to their oppressors, the White Martians. The only Green Martian who ever managed it was none other than J’onn’s father, so they go to talk to him. M’yrnn protests that he can’t remember. But J’onn takes the form of a White Martian to trigger his father’s memory. M’yrnn remembers appealing to the White Martians by telling them he had the knowledge and secrets of their sacred scrolls in his mind, so killing him would effectively eliminate that knowledge. By meeting the White Martians on their terms, M’yrnn was able to get through to them.

On the Legion ship, Imra tells Mon-el to go back to the DEO to help fight Reign. She knows Mon-el is conflicted about his feelings for Supergirl. She also knows he hasn’t dishonored their marriage. But she doesn’t want him to be torn the way he is. She wants him to return to the past to figure out what he really wants. Wow, Imra may be the most understanding wife ever!

Lena goes to the DEO to try to give Supergirl the kryptonite she made. As Lena suspected she would, Supergirl freaks out when she learns not only does Lena have more kryptonite but that she can make it. She demands Lena surrender any remaining kryptonite to her. It’s the only thing that can kill her, after all. Lena points out that there are a lot of things that can kill her, and they aren’t all banned, but Supergirl is unwavering in her self-righteousness.

At Lex’s mansion, Ruby asks Alex again about her mother. Alex tries to reassure her, but Ruby doesn’t believe her. Ruby steals Alex’s phone and calls her house, where she leaves a message on the machine pleading with her mom to contact her. Reign hears the call and triangulates Ruby’s location, where she disables the mansion’s cloaking device and enters the house.

At the DEO, an alarm sounds to alert the team to the breach at Lex’s mansion. J’onn is still injured but says he can help the team by handling the kryptonite against Reign. Mon-el makes his grand re-entrance and says he can help with the kryptonite too.

At the mansion, Supergirl, Mon-el, and Alex fight Reign. Ruby tries to help, but just as she reaches for the kryptonite gun, Reign’s mask falls off and Ruby realizes Reign is her mother. She is devastated. Ruby’s hesitation gives Reign time to ominously approach her. But Supergirl gets between the two. Instead of punching her way out of the situation, Supergirl makes an appeal to Reign’s ethical code, telling her that her goal is to punish sinners, but Ruby is innocent and therefore not someone Reign should kill. As Reign pauses, Mon-el shoots the gun of kryptonite bullets at her and brings her down.

The team brings Reign to Lena’s lab where Supergirl apologizes to Lena yet again. Supergirl questioning Lena’s motives and then apologizing for it by the end of the episode is becoming a trend. Their relationship is clearly struggling, although Supergirl seems to believe her apologies should make up for her behavior.

At her apartment, Alex is trying to convince Ruby that Reign is not her mother. Lena and Kara go to see Ruby. They run into each other in the elevator up to Alex’s place where Lena confesses to Kara that she doesn’t trust Supergirl anymore. She says Supergirl’s use of James to infiltrate her vault is something her villainous mother would do. Kara is surprised and disturbed by this revelation. It’s still hard to understand how Lena can be so smart about everything else and not realize Kara is Supergirl.

The episode ends with a young woman named Tanya stealing one of Thomas Coville’s journals from the Cult of Rao as people yell and chase her. Hopefully we’ll learn more about who Tanya is and why she took the journal in next week’s episode.

“Shelter from the Storm” brought some big developments in terms of the use of kryptonite to capture Reign, but the episode felt a little hollow overall. The emotional stakes for characters like Supergirl and Mon-el didn’t show much evolution from last week’s episode and Supergirl’s constant distrust of Lena is getting a bit old. While Lena hasn’t always been forthright, Supergirl has also been close minded in her reactions to Lena and it’s been detrimental to a formerly positive partnership.

Also, while it’s good Reign is now contained, she’s back in Lena’s lab, right where Sam spent several episodes having Lena experiment on her earlier. And while I feel bad for Ruby, there’s really not much more drama that can be mined from the revelation that her mother is Reign. Hopefully the writers have a twist of some kind up their sleeve when it comes to the Reign story line because we still have quite a few episodes left in the season. Perhaps Tanya and the stolen journal we glimpsed in the final seconds of the show is a hint at an interesting new plot to come. We’ll find out on next week’s Supergirl!