Hello, friends! Have you missed my LenaCaps? What a ridiculous question. Of course you have. I know that they’ve missed you. The last few weeks have been jam-packed with Lena-rific goodness, and I thought about going back a few episodes and writing about those, but I just had to jump right into this episode. You could say that it was…a shoo(e)-in.

I’ll see myself out.

We open on a couple of besties about to hop on a plane to THE vacation destination of 2019, Kasnia. It has everything — purple lightning, self-destructing bunkers, paper. Kara tries to get Lena to stay home so she can fly alone…faster…if she flies commercial, but Lena designed this plane herself, Kara. It’s safe as can be, and also is filled with Kara’s favorite snack.

Er, snacks. I meant snacks.

Lena apologizes for not telling Kara she was working with Lex, because, well, it’s hard for her to trust people. Which is understandable, looking at her recent history of family and loved ones. Her entire living family tried to have her killed, Eve double-crossed her on behalf of her brother, and Sam went all Evil!Kryptonian and said super mean things to her. Oh, and also tried to kill her. Are we sure Sam’s not a Luthor, too?

So, in between designing a killer pair of shoes (FORESHADOWING), a new Super Suit, Herun-el serum, and a Kryptonite shield, Lena also designed a self-driving plane. She points out that a human pilot would make a mistake, and then when the plane starts to go down —

Not like that, Kara.

Ahem. When the plane starts to go down, Lena jumps into action, because she will fly this fucking plane herself, despite the crippling fear of flying we learned she has in her premiere episode.

Consistency, schmontristincy.

Anyway, she gets things under control, then HOT-WIRES THE FUCKING PLANE, then thinks she lands safely, but really that’s Kara, who’s managed to…sneak out and in of a moving plane undetected in order to gently help her gal pal go down land the plane, and then definitely doesn’t oversell that she was passed out in her seat the whole time.

Lena and Kara happen upon Lex’s abandoned bunker (what is this — Purgatory?) and find evidence that Lex was experimenting on aliens from the DEO, something that Eve Tessmacher confirms for them when they find her. Except Eve is more ditzy than usual, and that’s saying something. Remember when she slept with Mon-el and tried to buy him stuff?

Eve tries for approximately .5 seconds to convince them she turned on Lex, but just gives up. She may love SuperCorp, but she loves Lex more.

But…how could anyone ever love Lex more than Lena?

Also, she’s very clearly not herself. It was pretty obvious to me early on that she was just like that Chekhov’s Copy they mentioned earlier, so let’s just say she’s acting all wonky, SuperCorp notices, but they don’t put two and two together and come up with “Where the Eves Never End.”

They follow the Claw-Marked Road and end up in a lab, where Lex had some vials of Herun-el and a giant trunk of Kryptonite. Lena immediately closes the lid to the Kryptonite for absolutely no reason, almost as if she thinks there’s a Kryptonian in the room with her. Wild.

I literally asked you what your Kryptonite was. I KNOW.

They realize Lex is working with the Kasnian government to attack the United States, and then Eve has some sort of Copy!Breakdown, and Lena rushes to her side. Because she may have betrayed her, but she’s going to keep her safe, at least until they get any possible information out of her they can.

Kara presses a not-at-all-subtle Luthor button —

No! Not what I meant!

Kara presses a “hidden” button on Lex’s battle plans (which is literally a map of the world with munitions emojis pointed at Lee Greenwood’s favorite place wherever they’ll fit) and discovers footage of the Red Daughter. Kara insists Supergirl would never get in bed with a Luthor —

OH, FFS.

Kara insists Supergirl would never willingly work with Lex to overthrow the United States, and Lena points out that she may be wearing Supergirl’s face, but she’s not Supergirl. She has Supergirl’s strength and powers, but she wasn’t raised by a kind caring family, like Lena assumes Supergirl was. You know, whoever that may be. She was influenced by an oppressive regime and a follicly-challenged sociopath. Lena sees “it” as a weapon with Lex’s finger on the button —

YOU KNOW WHAT? NO, LENA. NO.

Lena sees the Red Daughter as a weapon wielded by an unstable government, but Kara, in true Luke Skywalker form, wants to go down to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters believes that there must be good in her. But this homage to that single Star War is interrupted by another Eve, who absorbs the glitching copy, attacks them with some Kryptonite (you don’t question why Kara is affected by that, Lena?!), then sets the building on self-destruct. All in a day’s work.

They come to a fork in the warehouse and split up. Lena finds a dead end, and Kara? Kara finds something that terrifies her more than anything. You see, as we all know, the Red Daughter has been studying Kara’s life and treating her personal journal as required reading material. Her cell wall looked like a teenage SuperCorp fan’s locker, with pictures of the happy couple plastered everywhere.

And suddenly, we see Kara the most freaked out she’s ever been in four seasons. The weight of everything begins to hit her — she has a maybe-not-evil-but-definitely-not-great twin running around out there, impersonating her; said twin has been in her apartment and gone through and taken her stuff; the twin knows her alter ego, as does Lex Luthor; she and Lena are in a building in Kasnia that’s about to explode, and all she can think about is keeping Lena out of that room. Not because she doesn’t want Lena to find out, but because she doesn’t want Lena to find out LIKE THAT. She wants to be the one to tell her, on her own terms.

I know I’ve used a lot of pictures of Kara in this LenaCap, but Melissa’s face was just SO GOOD in this episode. So good. 

She manages to head off Lena before she sees KK’s stalker wall, and she is still PANICKED. Lena calms her down, explaining they’ve gotten out of tougher spots than this. They’ve got this. There’s nothing they can’t do together.

Take my hand; take my whole life, too

Lena goes up the air vent, but Kara doubles back, saying she needs to get her “tape recorder,” because she’s a journalist from 1997. She takes the opportunity to laser through seemingly only the pictures of herself, but not of Lena. I’m sure it’s just how they shot it, but in my pure SuperCorp shipper’s heart, it’s because Kara couldn’t bring herself to harm even a picture of Lena.

They happen upon a shit ton of actual paper records and discover that the president’s chief of staff is the one working with Lex and authorizing his work on aliens. Art imitates life, and the presidency is garbage. Awesome.

Lena takes off after Eve and tells Kara to grab the evidence while she fights the villain. Oh, Lena. Always the hero complex.

She finds Eve in the plane and squares off for a rumble. And then she honestly surpasses what I ever thought Lena Luthor was capable of. While on the run from a crap ton of Eve copies in an abandoned alien testing facility, she managed to turn these spike heels…

Lex: I haven’t been the same since that house fell on my sister.

…into these maybe-more-of-an-Oxford-heel-but-I’m-not-a-shoe-person-sorry.

The point is, Lena’s heels grew three sizes that day while she was in the air vent.

Listen. I’m not legitimately complaining. I loved her fight scene with Eve (which she obviously won). I loved her shoe weapon, like she’s fucking James Bond (she is). But, like, for me to notice Lena’s SHOES in a scene? Well, it has to be pretty obvious. Eve does manage a killing blow with Lena’s own shoe horn, but it’s stopped by Kara’s recorder, which Lena tucked carefully next to her heart. A tropey romantic trope if I’ve ever seen one, but here we are.

While Lena’s shoo-ing away her Eve, Supergirl is taking on about a dozen of them. This scene was fun, well shot, and super enjoyable. I love it when shows don’t take themselves seriously. I think the writers’ room has been hanging out with the folks from Legends.

Kara manages to escape, and Lena runs to her and hugs her. Again, written kind of gay and romantical trope-y but at least the actors aren’t playing it super gay, so whatever. I’m into it.

Eve disappears, and Kara realizes that maybe the real Eve Tessmacher was the friends we made along the way.

That was a terrible joke, Cathy.

Back on Lena’s self-driving superjet, Lena is trying to explain. She saw Eve and just…snapped and took off after her, not thinking about Kara’s welfare. Kara says she was fine, but Lena just wants to apologize. As Lena anxiously paces away, Kara tries explaining, again, that, no, the explosion couldn’t have hurt her, and she…takes off her glasses.

She stands up, and she’s ready. Ready to tell her best friend the truth. Ready to stop living a lie with one of the most important people in her life. Ready to make Lena safer and more in danger at the same time. Ready to get out from underneath the crushing guilt of lying to her best friend every fucking day.

She stands up, and she assumes her hero pose. Because that’s what she is — a hero. She’s going to tell the truth and be herself, regardless of the consequences.

There’s only one thing that could stop her, really.

Lena explains to her that she almost didn’t make it through all this betrayal business with Eve. It only reinforced her reluctance to let people in, to trust anyone, and if it weren’t for Kara — strong, honest, lovely, good Kara — she may not have made it through. And Kara hears her this time. And she does one of the hardest things she’s ever done. Not telling Lena all these years may have been the selfish choice, but today? Being honest would have been. Because Lena’s not ready. Lena’s telling her that she just can’t handle another betrayal today.

So Kara slips those glasses back on, hoping that maybe this will be the last time. But this is what Lena needs right now.

Do I think Lena knows Kara is Supergirl? I do. Do I think this was her “subtle” way to tell Kara she’s not ready for a coming out just yet? I also do. Did I think the reveal would actually happen in this episode? I did not. I think it’ll come with great pain, when Lex and/or Lillian tell Lena before Kara gets a chance to. Did this stop me from absolutely screaming at my TV when Kara took her glasses off and did The Pose, loud enough to scare my cat? It did not. I did that, and I am not ashamed.

Monica’s Random Thoughts of Randomness:

• Kara is SO BAD at keeping her identity a secret.
• Lena had some really good lines in this episode, like Eva Braun and “snake on a plane.”
• Kasnia really brings out the Irish in ol’ Lena Kieran.
• Andrea Brooks KILLED IT in this episode. It was so fun and so well-done.
• “Lex likes to keep his plans compartmentalized” sounds a lot like “tiny boxes” to me.
• The look on Alex’s face when Kelly mentions that she was engaged to a woman? I’m pretty sure she learned that one from Sara Lance. Alex must be an Earper, because she has NO CHILL.
• Nia Nall and I have another thing in common — we both want to hit James in the face with a giant Thor hammer.

Well, friends, two more episodes. If I know one thing for sure, it’s that Lena is going to go through hell. If I know two or three things, it’s that she’s going to make it through okay, and she’s going to look really, really good while doing it. I think the Kara reveal will be the cliffhanger of the season, with hopefully Alex also finding out (and having all of her memories restored as well), too, so she can be there for Kara and Lena to counsel them through the inevitable fallout. They both will need a friend, but I truly believe they’ll find their way back to each other and be eating potstickers together in no time.

Final thoughts:

Stay sexy and do Lena’s missions!