I see a bunch of confusion over the fight Kara was describingto Zor-El. Here’s my take. It was a combination of bad editing, sloppy writing & a flubbed line. In the opening sequence when Kara’s eyes go white she is looking around and seeing all of her friends/loved ones dead. Normally, we would get an edit here of what she was seeing, but they just skipped over that. She says, “No, no, no, not again!” She is actually looking around as she speaks as if she is seeing bodies because the Phantoms are torturing her & making her see things over & over again. We aren’t being shown what she’s seeing & usually we would.
Zor-El mentions that Kara must be a mirage because the Phantoms have been torturing him to also see things that aren’t there.
Kara says, “This place is nothing like I remember. It’s worse.” That’s because she was safe in her pod the first time. Zor-El comes back with
“Indeed. From the safety of your pod, you never faced the Phantoms.”
Kara reacts by recoiling a bit thinking of the Phantoms. This made some think maybe they did get to her pod, but I do not think that is what the story intended. I think what they are actually trying to convey is that it IS worse because the Phantoms got to her THIS time. Zor-El’s dialogue in response to her reaction is,
“They got to you, didn’t they?” Now, that might make some think the Phantoms got to her in the pod, but clearly that is NOT what is being said because she responds with events that happened far after her pod time. He asks her, “What did you see.”
He is talking about what she saw before he reached her. We have no idea how long she was out there. Remember, it was supposed to be the finale when we left her trapped. A significant amount of time would’ve seemed to have passed if it had been the finale.
Her response goes along with what we saw her doing at the beginning of this episode.
“I was in a cavern, a fortress of one of my enemies. She was dead, but so was everyone I ever loved.”
It’s easy to see why many people thought she was talking about Reign, and she might be, because it is a memory, but a memory that the Phantoms took and expanded and made worse, not the actual memory as it happened in reality which is why she said, “Not again.”
She continues with, “Cut down, while they were trying to save the world, and I just stood there among their bodies...horrified.”
Now it sounds like Crisis. Most likely because the Phantoms combined the Reign memory and the Crisis memories into one terrible nightmare. If they had given use a visual in an edit, we’d have a better grasp, but no.
She continues with, “I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t wake up.” So we are supposed to understand it wasn’t real. She did save them in both instances. She then says, “I wanted to die there with them.” This is what makes me think she saw this more than once before Zor-El reached her. It was replaying. Each time she tried to save them & each time she failed. Part of her knew it wasn’t real, but another part kept buying into it because it was made up of things that have been real for her. Then she says, “But I couldn’t do that either.” Which is incredibly dark because it means she reached a point where she tried, but the Phantoms didn’t let her & instead started the mirage over.
All of this should have been shown. The torture, the hopelessness, the fear, the trauma, but in true CW fashion, we skipped the show for a tell.
Zor-El responds to her with, “A terrible vision.” She comes back with, “Not a vision. A memory. One that I thought had finally stopped haunting me.”
What I think they were trying to convey is that her memories of losing people, Alex in the plane, tank, VR, Lena multiple times, Mon-El in the pod, CRISIS, etc., etc. Those memories of (almost) losing people are still with her. She has mentioned on multiple occasions that losing the people she loves because of who she is, is her greatest fear. She’s dwelled on it. The Phantoms made it all real. And she thought she had moved past those traumatic events when in reality, they haunt her. Every moment. She just pushes them back & ignores them.
She then says, “But it was crystal clear. It felt like it would never end.” So this lets us know it WAS a mirage. It was the Phantoms. Not an event that has actually transpired.
She then mentions Fort Rozz. I saw some posts about this as well. Again, the writing here is a bit confusing, but I think we had a misread line as well. Kara says, “Mother once told me that Fort Rozz is rooted in space above the rocks by an anchor.” Now, I have hearing issues, so I use Closed Captions. The caption read “WAS rooted in space” which makes more sense with what she says after as well as the fact that we all know Fort Rozz broke free and crashed on Earth. Basically, Fort Rozz broke free FROM its anchor. The anchor is still there. Kara goes on to explain, “The guards come and go through a portal at the base. If we can find the anchor—“ Then Zor-El cuts her off. The anchor that was left behind after Fort Rozz broke free is still there as is the processing base and the portal the Kryptonian guards used to bring prisoners back and forth, to & from Fort Rozz.
I don’t know how they manage to convolute that scene so much, but they did and wow, these are professionals? Anyhoo, I hope I cleared that up for anyone that was confused.
