Hey look! Supergirl and Kara Danvers both got bangs over the summer. How fun! Interesting no one else in National City has noticed…no one other than Lena Luthur.
“Event Horizon” picks immediately up on the season four cliffhanger where Lex, with his dying (?) breath, finally reveals to Lena that Kara (and basically everyone else she interacts with with any regularity including her own mother) has been lying to her for years. Kara. Is. Supergirl. A month has passed and it turns out Lena has not been handling things well. Despite her VR-facilitated fantasy, she doesn’t actually want to kill Kara for betraying her. She’s not evil, as she explains to her new AI assistant ominously named Hope. She just wants Kara to experience the same pain she feels for being betrayed, and it seems like Lena is well on her way to making that ambition a reality when this episode begins.
During this last month, she secretly sold CatCo to an old friend and fellow powerful businesswoman Andrea Rojas (played by Veronica Mars‘ Julie Gonzalo), who wants to convert the newspaper (which totally used to be a magazine but sure nevermind who cares) into a clickbait infotainment sensation much to Kara’s chagrin. Also Lena is planning on giving Andrea the scoop about Supergirl’s secret identity on the very night Kara is set to receive a Pulitzer Prize for her expose on Lex’s dastardly deeds at the end of last season. She’s also apparently been twisting the knife in Kara every chance she gets by passive aggressively (though seemingly sincerely to Kara’s ears) going on and on about how honest and virtuous her dear best friend Kara is. Katie McGrath, who plays Lena, is at her comedic best in these moments, playing wide-eyed, faux sincerity with aplomb.
Meanwhile, Kara finds every encounter with Lena to be excruciating because, you see, she finally decided to tell Lena the truth at the end of last season but hasn’t exactly found the time to do it yet, since she knows it will be a tremendously hard conversation to have. This entire dynamic was fun for the length of the episode, but part of me was dreading the idea that we might be mired in this “who blinks first” back and forth for several episodes. Luckily it all gets resolved when Kara finally comes clean (after one false start earlier in the episode) right before Lena presents her with her Pulitzer Prize. Melissa Benoist (Kara) is excellent here, explaining how this all began out of a belief she was protecting Lena, but eventually she kept up the rouse because it was easier and less scary than just being honest.
It’s a heartfelt declaration where she truly takes accountability for her actions and begs for forgiveness. McGrath lets a million different emotions cross Lena’s face during Kara’s monologue. She’s truly shocked Kara actually confessed, and maybe she’s even touched by how significantly Kara takes responsibility for her choices. Maybe she’s even beginning to forgive her. By the episode’s end, all we really know is that she eventually chooses not to send Ms. Rojas that big mysterious scoop she promised her, and we know she tells Hope she has even greater plans for revenge now. However, McGrath plays such a level of emotional complexity in Lena’s initial reaction to Kara’s declaration of truth that it’s a bit of an open question just how committed she will be to this revenge mission long term.
Meanwhile, the rest of the episode is mostly devoted to table setting for the new season. Andrea Rojas, it turns out, has decided to not only buy CatCo but become its Editor in Chief, demoting James in the process. She lets the staff know that the paper is moving in a new direction and anyone who isn’t on board can walk before reminding them they all just signed new three-year contracts with non-compete clauses (epic power move). She also brings in a new journalist who is as handsome as he is amoral, which means Kara clashes with him right away (potential love-interest alert!).
Oh, by the way, Andrea also bought the whole building CatCo is in, not just CatCo, and she’s moving in her new VR tech firm, complete with it’s very own member of the Olsen clan, as trauma psychologist Kelly Olsen (Azie Tesfai, who seems to be sticking around for the moment after a brief arc towards the end of last season), James’s younger sister, has just started her new job helping soldiers use VR to process PTSD. Between everyone suddenly using VR to Andrea running a tech company to Lena getting a virtual assistant (after her last assistant, Eve, turned out to be a double-crossing Lex obsessed spy, or so Lena thought anyway), something tells me technology will be a new thematic element to this season. Kelly, I should note, is still happily coupled up with Alex, after sparks flew between them towards the end of last season.
Also still coupled are Nia Nal (aka Dreamer) and Brainy (aka Brianiac-5 aka Querl Dox, as Nia briefly reminds us this season). These two love birds finally got together in the season finale after a season of “will they/won’t they” followed briefly by Brainy going evil and sort of letting her get kidnapped by zenophobic terrorists for a few hours. That last point has been making Brainy afraid to be anymore physically intimate with Nia than giving her a good handshake. Nia assumes this is because she is his first romantic partner. He lets her know he’s had plenty of romantic partners over the years (…but has he?), though she’s the first one he’s actually loved. The problem is he’s afraid to let his guard down and be vulnerable in case evil Brainy comes back. She promises him that won’t happen. They kiss, and it’s all very sweet. However, it seems like this was mostly an excuse to remind viewers that Brainy broke bad last season and, in a season seemingly all about tech, maybe he could again.
Finally, the villain of the week subplot mostly revolves around an old prisoner of J’onn’s, Midnight, being released from the phantom zone by a mysterious literal girl with glowing eyes. Also there’s something to do with a blackhole in an assembly hall and a giant dinosaur fight where Kara’s cape gets torn, giving Brainy an excuse to give her a new costume made from totally-not-Tony-Stark brand nanotech. With so much other plot, it’s all an afterthought beyond the final reveal that the little girl is actually…J’onn’s brother who we saw the Monitor (cough_Crisis_cough) release from some sort of prison at the end of last season. Turns out, J’onn believes he has no brother, so he’s very confused. He tries to mind meld with him and he fails. We also get a quick tease of former evil assistant Eve being kidnapped, presumably by whatever Leviathan is.
The emotional core of this opening arc of season five seems to be the Kara/Lena relationship, which is the right move based on the other lingering threads they left dangling at the end of last season. However, I am a bit nervous at how overstuffed this premiere was without a central theme or villainous force that can bring all these strands together. Season 4 was as strong as it was because all its characters’ storylines were united by the threat of xenophobia and the rapidly changing politics of a nation they didn’t understand as well as they had thought. Season 5 is starting out as a bit of a grab bag of disparate elements. There’s plenty of potential, but it seems unfocused and overstuffed.
