This week on Supergirl, Alex gets to play the hero. After an angry spat with Kara and Kelly about not attending her father’s funeral, Alex escapes into VR using the Obsidian Platinum lenses. Everyone deals with grief in their own way. Alex chooses the Supergirl experience and descends upon Virtual National City as Supergirl, donning a very cool costume.
Alex arrives at a mall where there’s a rock concert going on and she meets a girl named Tilly, actually Bonnie, another user. Most of the mall is populated with non-player characters who are designed to make the place feel familiar. A helicopter drops a ladder into the mall and whisks Bonnie away. Moments later an alien dragon on a rampage appears and starts destroying the mall. Alex defeats the dragon and saves the day with her super strength and heat vision and everyone starts clamouring for selfies and interviews.
Next, Alex goes for pancakes. She runs into Bonnie again, and again, Bonnie insists her name is Tilly. Bonnie also doesn’t seem to think that she’s in VR anymore, she thinks this is real life. Flash to the real world where Bonnie is lying on the couch, clutching a photo of her and her sister, and her Obsidian lenses have turned red.
Later, Supergirl is called to the DEO. She jumps at the chance to go back to the place that she has been missing so much. She finds J’onn, Brainy, and Nia all there. Supergirl was called there because Hank Henshaw kidnapped Kara. Down at the warehouse, Henshaw traps Alex in a kryptonite device but she quickly gets out of it and saves Kara. Alex and her team go to the alien bar to celebrate. Alex says she’s never been happier and her lenses turn from blue to red.
Now we get into VR-ception. When another Supergirl comes into the bar, Alex is confused as to why there are two Supergirls. She realizes this isn’t real and wakes up in her apartment and removes the lenses. Or has she woken up? In her ear, J’onn calls for her to stop a Psi attack that made everyone doubt their reality. Clever.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, Kelly is troubled to learn that the failsafe glitch that she has now reported twice, still isn’t fixed. Kelly tells Andrea this and Andrea tells her it’s because of the board and corporate bureaucracy. Conveniently, Lex Luthor is the newest board member. William also shows up at Obsidian chasing a story and trying to find out what Lex Luthor is really up to. Lex just rushed through the approval process for 32 satellites. Kelly welcomes the distraction of waiting for Alex to call and helps William. They are unable to find a link to Lex but they agree that something still isn’t right and decide to call those who have been in the VR for over 48 hours. Kelly still hasn’t heard from Alex, so William tells her to call Alex.
Kelly takes William’s advice and goes home to Alex only to find her on the couch with red lenses. She is trapped in the VR and the failsafe still hasn’t been fixed. Kelly tries an Epi-Pen to shock Alex out but that doesn’t work. So Kelly goes in the VR to tell Alex what’s going on, to convince her to end her simulation. But Alex has lost all sense of what’s real and what’s not. Kelly sends a non-player character of younger Alex into the game to help her make sense of what’s real. Teenage Alex takes Supergirl Alex to a Cadmus facility where Jeremiah was last seen. They approach Jeremiah but he dissolves when Alex reaches out to touch him. Alex confronts her feelings about her dad’s death and is able to end the simulation.
After Alex explains and apologizes to Kelly, the two of them go to Jeremiah’s funeral in Midvale. Meanwhile, William gets a text from his source who says that 337 out of 402 users are legit. The rest of the players who have been in VR for more than 48 hours are all using the same IP address from a location in National City.
Author
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Delaney is a recent graduate of the University of Toronto and has loved TV and movies for as long as she can remember. She may or may not keep a colour coded spreadsheet of all the pop culture things she consumes every year. Delaney spent the first six months of 2018 in Australia and then she wrote a book about it (“Here, There, and Everywhere” is available on Amazon print or e-book). She is currently working on her first screenplay and hopes to work on a movie or TV set one day.