Supergirl recap: 'Wake Up'

Mon-El’s back, everybody! And he’s really, really bad at delivering pertinent information in a timely fashion.

But first, the story line with the happy ending: Myr’nn’s been rattling around the DEO for three weeks and four days before he finally asks Winn for directions to the restroom, and I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS. He also asks Winn for permission to go, prompting Winn to tell J’onn that he might want to take his father out into the world so Myr’nn will feel less trapped.

The outing to get coffee, a.k.a. brown water, doesn’t go terribly well. While Myr’nn understands the appeal of “kuh-OFF-fee,” he says that he’s not the prisoner of the DEO; J’onn is. Just look how many times he’s glanced at his “smart device.”

J’onn bristles at first but eventually comes around, escorting his father to an apartment where they can both live. Work made him feel useful after he lost everything on Mars, but J’onn says he also lost sight of his father’s lessons to seek out the beauty of life. Myr’nn says Earth is no Mars, but it’s still beautiful, too, and he agrees to move into the apartment with J’onn. This story line makes my heart happy, and I hope we return to it often.

Okay. In less heart-happy news, a submersible investigating the effects of the submarine attack in the season premiere discovers a mysterious ship, which blasts it with a beam of light. Winn uses geothermal cameras to reveal its location. Based on the rock layer, he estimates it’s been down there for 12,000 years, and based on the unknown metal components, he estimates it’s not from Earth.

Rather than let Supergirl spin herself into a drill to tunnel through a city sidewalk (hey, she saw Clark do it once!), J’onn uses his powers to transport them all onto the ship.

There, they discover the red liquid-filled tubes we’ve seen before, one of which is empty. Before they can get their bearings, a man enters the room and opens fire on them. The beam bounces right off of Kara, but she barely notices once she sees past the beard on the man’s face: It’s Mon-El!

“Kara,” he breathes, and she approaches him in wonder. She hugs him tight, while he mostly looks shell-shocked.

The team sets him up in the DEO’s sick bay to recuperate, and he avoids answering most of their questions: Why isn’t the lead-filled air toxic to him? Why was he speaking Saturnian on the ship? Why is he the only one who woke up among the group of people he claims are mere passengers? He says he doesn’t know, but there’s only so much you can blame on the effects of hypersleep, my dude. And Great Rao, will somebody please shave him?

Kara finally kicks everybody out and returns to his side. He says he tried to send a messages to her so many times, telling her he was all right, but before he can continue speaking, she cuts him off and urges him to sleep. But Kara’s perturbed by Mon-El’s distance, and when she confides in James, he assures her that Mon-El would never do anything to hurt her.

Don’t speak so quickly Mr. Olsen. At the first opportunity, Mon-El sneaks into the weapons armory. He knocks out two guards who try to stop him before being rendered senseless by a punch from Kara.

He wakes up in a holding cell with Kara waiting for an excuse he doesn’t offer. Tearfully, she tells him that she doesn’t sleep anymore because when she closes her eyes, she seems him disappearing into space, sees him dying. All she wanted was for him to come back, and now that he’s finally here, he’s different.

Mon-El offers no defense, only a simple apology, and Kara’s tears disappear as she bitterly curses her human heart.

Winn’s the next to approach Mon-El, in case he feels like confiding in someone other than Kara. He does, actually, telling Winn that he needs his help to get back to the ship. If he doesn’t, people will get hurt, including Kara. I think I speak for the entire audience when I say this: EXPLAIN YOURSELF, SIR. Acting like a man of mystery isn’t helping anyone, least of all Kara.

Naturally, she’s the one who discovers Mon-El’s empty cell and tracks the two men down on the ship, where they’re checking the hypersleep pods. Kara’s furious when they say they’re sneaking around for her own good.

A brief altercation between Kara and Mon-El about who’s taking whom back to the DEO results in her mother’s necklace slipping free of his shirt. He hastily tucks it back in, but Kara’s already recognized it.

Mon-El tells her he’s not her problem anymore, and she wants to know how he changed so much in seven months. “No, it’s been seven years!” he shouts.

Mon-El explains that he went through a wormhole, and he’s been on Earth in the 31st century ever since. (In about 400 years, L-Corp develops a cure for the Daxamite lead allergy, FYI.) Kara demands to know if he just forgot about her in that time, and if so, why he’s still wearing the necklace.

But at that moment, warning sirens blare. Mon-El redirects power to all the chambers save one, where the inhabitant starts to struggle in the red liquid. He desperately tries to break the glass, but can’t. (Give him a break; it’s white dwarf glass!). So Supergirl steps up and breaks it, and young woman tumbles out. (Next page: Mon-El’s been keeping secrets)

Now the DEO sick bay has a new inhabitant, but all Mon-El will say is that her name’s Imra, she’s from Titan, and he’s worried she’s been without life support for too long.

After he leaves, Kara glumly says to Alex, “He’s from the future.”

“Yeah, I can safely say I was not expecting that,” Alex replies.

Kara joins Mon-El on the balcony. He apologizes again, but says he never thought he’d see her again and had to keep on living. He still has her necklace as a reminder of everything she taught him, but no matter what century, universe, or world he’s living in, he’d never forget her. Then they have a cute spat about going out for all-you-can-eat, limited-time-offer ribs, and Kara remarks that it’s the first time he’s smiled since he’s been back.

Then, finally, he tells her it’s good to see her, and naturally, that’s when Imra interrupts. Mon-El races over to kiss her and introduces Kara to his wife. THAT IS NOT HOW YOU BREAK THIS NEWS, MON-EL. Also, welcome to the show, Amy Jackson, and, uh, good luck being the third point in this particular love triangle.

Hookay, final plot of the night: Samantha conducts one more test of her invincibility by sticking her hand into a pot of boiling water, which seems like a risky little game. When nothing happens, she sends Ruby to a friend’s and heads to a house in the country.

She greets the woman at the door as Patricia, and we quickly learn that this was her adoptive mother who kicked her out of the house for getting pregnant as a teenager. There’s clearly heaps of unresolved issues here, and rather than travel the same frustrating ground, Sam states the real reason for her visit: Was she an unusual child? Hard to injure? Capable of lifting heavy things? Patricia says no until Sam explains her newly discovered invulnerability to bullets.

Patricia then leads her to the barn, where she’s stashed an alien pod covered in a tarp. I swear, the No. 1 purpose of barns in the DC universe is for storing alien spacecraft.

“I lied. I didn’t adopt you. I found you, in this,” Patricia says. She meant to tell Sam about it when she turned 18, but by then, Sam and Ruby were gone, and Patricia convinced herself it would let Sam live a normal life.

When Sam approaches the pod, her touch activates it, and it ejects what looks like one of the obelisks from The Faithful. So once more, Sam leaves Ruby in the care of a babysitter, telling her she’s taking a trip to get some answers, describing it as “a really good thing.” She promises that Ruby is her heart, and she’ll tell her everything when she returns.

So Sam follows the obelisk into the scrubby dessert, and when her car overheats, she sets out on foot until finally, the ground beneath her rumbles and brown pillars erupt from the Earth. Cool, a Fortress of Sand-itude!

She enters the cavern, inserts the obelisk, and the woman from her visions appears. She introduces herself as science, magic, information, and Sam’s friend, and she welcomes Sam to the Fortress of Sanctuary, a piece of Sam’s home world, Krypton.

Sam’s thrilled to hear that she’s like Supergirl, but the woman corrects her: Sam is so much more than that. She’s the culmination of centuries of work, a being designed to execute justice. So that makes Sam a hero, right? Not quite. “They will call you Worldkiller,” the woman says. “Your justice will burn the world of man.”

Sam’s horrified, and the woman doesn’t help when she explains that Ruby was an unfortunate error that delayed the realization of Sam’s powers. No matter, though; Sam will forget all about Ruby when she emerges as Reign.

Then Sam starts to scream and falls to her knees in agony. It passes quickly, and she rises with glowing red eyes, a Worldkiller newly born.

Snaps of the cape:

• Yes! Sam finally discovered her true nature, and I can’t wait to see how the fantastic Odette Annable handles full-on villainy. Poor, poor Ruby, though.
• Speaking of amazing performances, Melissa Benoist basically played every emotion at Mon-El’s return: elation, confusion, fury, heartbreak, each one more beautifully done than the last.
• So let’s talk about Mon-El. To say he was divisive last season is an understatement, but I’m looking forward to learning what kind of man he’s become after seven years. That he married another woman is heartbreaking for Kara, and honestly, when her heart breaks, mine does, too. But at the same time, he’s not really the bad guy in this situation; he was trapped hundreds of centuries away from Kara and made the decision not to let his life ossify. Of course, my feelings about this could change when we learn more about his situation in future episodes. (And wow, do I hope he has a good reason for being so secretive about every single thing this week.)
• That being said, he’s still wearing Kara’s necklace, which can’t mean good things for his marriage, right?
• What about you, Super-friends? Are you pleased at Mon-El’s return? Interested in his character development? Furious that he dared seek the touch of another? Let me know in the comments!