Whole worlds pivot on acts of imagination

Sir Vi has always been denied everything.

Princess Caitlyn has only ever wanted freedom.

When Princess Caitlyn's protector dies in a brutal attack, she finds herself in need of a new knight ; enters Sir Vi who is in desperate need of someone to serve. The two strike an unlikely alliance ; Princess Caitlyn will make Sir Vi her knight, if Sir Vi agrees to her one request : leave her to do as she pleases.

But the Queendom of Piltover needs its princess to fall in line, and the pressure of the court might prove too much for two people who have never quite fit anywhere. As the maw of the castle begins to close around them both and enemies lurk in the shadows, Princess Caitlyn and Sir Vi grow ever closer ; but what can become of them when Sir Vi is not who he says he is and Princess Caitlyn longs for one thing only ?

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And it starts with Kara going for the throat, which I always appreciate 😌

I go back and forth a lot on Sanvers. It's definitely not my favourite Alex ship, but when I'm watching season 2, I easily get caught up in it and it's only after the fact that I take note/remember some stuff. Interestingly this time around, I realised right away that Maggie's behaviour reminds me eerily of not one but two of my exes so I'm really, really happy that Alex stands up for herself when it comes to this.

Because she's right ! Maggie and her are not friends ! They always had that something else going on between them, regardless of the fact that Maggie had a girlfriend, and it was very easy to interpret, from Alex's point of view but also from the outside, that Maggie was angling for something when she suggested Alex should come out.

And now Alex did the hard thing which was coming out to her sister, and she finds herself adrift in this new world because her one anchor to this was her very real feelings for a very real woman, who, as it turns out, does not apparently want to be with her.

(Side note : I love how the camera progressively closes in on Alex as she speaks)

Then Maggie shows up at Kara's (which had me really, really confused because 1. I thought for a moment we were already at the "girls we wanna kiss" moment which felt a bit early, and 2. how the fuck does Maggie know where to find Alex ??) with the look of someone who does in fact have feelings for Alex !

And I actually do really like what she says to Alex because whereas previously she made it sound like it was an Alex problem (Alex was too fresh off the boat), here we can glimpse that it might in fact be a Maggie problem.

So they're going to be friends for, like, one episode, and then they'll get together (I think it's in the next one at least), and Maggie will continue to have a sometimes dubious behaviour towards Alex !

(I like her face)

Now, I am trying really hard to care about the Guardian stuff but the truth is that I don't 😬 Mostly this episode it was two dudes in armour punching each other in not great lighting. Couldn't see shit. Lots of clanging and grunting. I do like James and Winn working together but that's about it 🤷

What I do like about the Guardian storyline ? Alex threatening Winn with her index finger. Top tier Alex moment.

I am a quite simple person, at the end of the day, when all is said and done, I LOVE a good star-crossed relationship, and J'onn and M'gann make me want to eat glass.

(Tea is also the way to my heart)

To save him she had to poison him !

He doesn't understand what is happening to him !

He feels guity for getting closer to her !

Which gets us Kara saying something so understanding and so kind that I think might resonate with a lot of grieving people.

The people you lost would want you to live.

We then take a brief detour to remind us that Alex is, in fact, a doctor (I'm still not super clear on that, especially regarding when she graduated since unless I missed something she went straight from failing med school to training at the DEO 🤨)

And Space Dad is off to fight M'gann...

And I've never befriended my mortal enemy wearing the skin of my genocided people, but...!

He is so angry !

And she doesn't fight back !

And she won't have him kill her when wearing a skin that doesn't fit her anymore !

And ! He does not ! Kill her !

😭

And in the midst of that, there was also something going on with Kara (who is a much, much better person than me because I do not think I would have saved Mon-El 🙄)

I'm not too mad about it (I am a little, Mon-El could have rotted there for all eternity for all I care) because it gets us a wonderful confrontation between Lillian and Kara.

I haven't spent much time discussing Lillian because her character develops quite slowly with bits and pieces in various episodes, but she is such a good character. She is evil, but that sort of evil where she is entirely certain that she is right and that her cause is the only thing that matters.

She is torturing aliens for her children !

She is "saving" the planet for her children !

She is sensing the gay vibes between Supergirl and her daughter !

I love Lillian 😌

But 👆 torture is not okay, and also harvesting people's blood without their consent.

Kara is rightfully scared, she doesn't think she is going to make it, and, like the last time this happened, her last thought is for her sister 🥹

Enters Earth Dad !

And her face when she sees him is so good !

And the hug ! 😭

And he saves her, and all she can think about is that she has to get him out for Alex 😭

And we don't yet know that something fishy is going on, but the fact that he does exactly what he did for her years and years ago, sacrificing himself so she can be safe, is such a Danvers thing to do🥲

This is a family of self-sacrificing idiots !!

My final thought on this is that I know Alex has a lot going on right now but the fact that she wasn't a little more worried about Kara vanishing from the face of the Earth for a hot minute is a bit weird ^^ Especially when in only a few episodes she is going to lose her entire shit over Kara going missing and they're going to use this to create strife in her relationship with Maggie in a way that, to this day, many, many years after first watching it, still fucking pisses me off 😬

(Side note : when she runs to Kara, she is wearing a bulletproof vest that she definitely didn't have in the previous scene when she is actively arresting someone who has an automatic weapon strapped to his arm 🤨)

Closing thought : Kara, don't heat-vision a plastic container. You are going to be eating so many micro-plastics 😭

I literally do not know where to start with this episode so I feel like my best option is to get the stuff I don't like out of the way first 😬

I do not like Mon-El, I do not like how much he is in this episode, I do not like that he has to be talked into helping, and I absolutely despise the way he talks to Kara.

Also, I fail to understand where they were going with the climate change thing. It feels like one of these moments (which will come more and more often) when the writers of this show decided to do something "big" and "relevant" and "political" but it's not actually that important to the plot and also does a major disservice to an issue that is very much real.

I'm also not super fond of James here. He radiates entitlement for the whole episode ; Winn has to make him a suit and the suit has to be ready right now and he has to be the one who saves Kara (which, by the way, how did he think that was going to go ? Kara was drained and almost died and she's extremely powerful, he's just human 🤨).

And I'm fairly certain that Kara did in fact irradiate at least a full city block so even though I do like how cocky she gets sometimes when she fights I think that this wasn't a particularly smart move.

But I did like (loved (I'm on the floor about it)) M'gann saving J'onn even though she knows it will ultimately expose her 😭 If she does not help him, he will die, but helping him means changing him in the worst of ways, and she knows he will not forgive her about this !

But she does it anyway ! And then ! She stays ! With him ! Until ! He falls asleep !

😭

When I think about Alex I often think about her in the way she developed in the later seasons (Director Danvers is peak Alex to me) and so I tend to forget how fucking tiny she is.

But look at her ! She is small and she is scared and she is about to do one of the hardest thing she's ever had to do 🥲

I know her coming out means a lot to a lot of people and I'm not sure I can do justice to it because quite frankly my notes about this amount to : "Alex :( :( :("

But I do love this scene, and the thing I love most about it is how fucking realistic it is. This is a show about aliens, about a woman from outer space who shoots beams out of her eyes and lifts spaceship. This is a show that requires a massive amount of suspension of disbelief, and in the midst of it, there is this quiet, normal moment, that depicts perfectly what a lot of us have gone through.

And I didn't go through exactly what Alex went through. I came out to my friends at 17, to my parents at 19, and it wasn't particularly revolutionary (my mum wasn't cool with it at first but she came around, it's fine), but I do know that heart stopping moment when you want/have to share a part of yourself with someone who means the world to you and when you don't know how it's going to go, only that it's going to radically alter the perception they have of you and nothing will ever be the same.

Kara is the most important person in Alex's life, and if she reacts badly, it'll break her.

And then there is the repression... Which feels so fucking real...

She knew about this part of herself, or at least, had an inkling, and she shoved it so far down she forgot about it, and now that it's all coming out, she has to reevaluate her whole knowledge of herself, of her life, and maybe one day she'll be able to look back on this, on her entire life, and laugh at all the little details she should have picked up on, but right now, in the raw beginning of it, it fucking hurts.

Fortunate then that Kara is here with her and that Kara is, in fact, okay with it.

I LOVE their conversation in Kara's apartment. I love how even though Alex is unsure, even if she's scared, she still goes to Kara because she cannot leave this thing to fester, and I love how Kara apologises and acknowledges that a lot of their teenage years where about her, and that this left no space for Alex to understand herself. I love also that Alex's first instinct is still to tell Kara it's not her fault, to protect her, even though this time, this space, is for Alex herself.

And I think ultimately, Alex could do this on her own. At some point in your life you have to do the thing regardless of whether or not you have the support of your loved ones, but this is definitely made easier by the fact that Kara is here, that Kara will not leave her to do this alone. Alex has shared this huge, difficult part of herself, and there was someone here to hold her hand the whole way through

(Fuck, I'm going to make myself cry)

I don't want to dwell too much on the actual rejection from Maggie (I've been there, girl who seems into you and is not actually, it sucks 🤷). I'm in two minds about it anyway. I feel like Alex should not come out just to be with Maggie, but also that it's perfectly alright that Maggie is the catalyst (and also that's something that happens a lot in real life). And I also feel like Maggie has been acting in a way that is outright confusing to Alex and that has nothing to do with Alex being freshly out.

The main takeaway for me is that Alex gets her heart broken in a way that is achingly realistic and this leads to yet another incredible scene between the sisters.

I did not cry watching this, but by the time Kara forces her way into Alex's apartment I was teary eyed. Because Kara promised Alex she would not face this alone, and so she will not leave her alone.

Because beyond coming out (but certainly heightened by it), it is horrible to put yourself out there only to be rejected.

And the awkwardness that transpired from that rejection, how clearly uncomfortable Maggie was with the whole thing, it is humiliating and it does fucking hurt.

But Kara will not leave her sister to suffer through that pain alone.

😭

I feel like I can't end on Alex bawling her eyes out or it's going to haunt me forever, so, here, have this very funny line that I couldn't fit in earlier ^^