“Alex” is episode nineteen of season two of Supergirl.
The police are surrounding a bank in National City and Maggie is on the phone with someone inside. She is saying that no-one made him do this, he did it, he and his friend chose to rob a bank and chose to take people hostage. They can choose to put their guns down and not hurt anyone. Then Supergirl arrives, crashes into the building and drags the bank robbers out the front. Maggie didn’t seem entirely happy about this; Kara mentions dinner to her.
At Alex’s apartment later, Kara is accepting pizzas at the door whilst Alex is waving smoke away from the beeping smoke detector. Paella did not work out well. Regarding the bank ro0bbery, Mon-El makes a comment about who even needs cops in the city. Alex apologises; he’s from another planet and doesn’t know what he’s saying. Maggie says that Mon-El is right. Why spend 17 hours talking a guy down when Supergirl can just fly in and force them down. Well, the criminals are in jail anyway is what Kara thinks. Except there’s something called the ‘Supergirl defence’ whereby some criminals get charges dropped due to the use of excessive force and the evidence being contaminated by debris in the pursuit of vigilante justice.
Maggie agrees with Alex that Kara is amazing when up against giant purple monsters and half-cyborg murderers, but most of the time police work requires a delicate touch. And Kara broke the arm of one criminal, gave the other concussion and left a hole in the roof of a National City landmark.
Kara decides to leave and Mon-El follows. Alex just wants Kara and Maggie to get along. Maggie gets along with Kara fine; it’s Supergirl she sometimes has trouble with. She agrees to try harder and Alex goes to follow Kara to give her the same message – to try harder.
At the end of the previous episode, “Ace Reporter”, Rhea turned up at Lena Luthor’s office, dressed like a human and saying she had a business proposition. She’s now in Lena’s office again, and they are talking about the system Rhea was proposing. Lena says the proposal is sound, but theoretical. That’s why Rhea needs Lena. She also kept a few details out of the proposal. Lena is interested.
Kara is at CatCo – she got her job back in the previous episode – when Maggie arrives, asking if she has checked in with Alex. Yes, Maggie did crash at Alex’s, but Alex left to catch up with Kara and never came back. Kara didn’t see Alex though. Winn says she didn’t go to the DEO, nor has she checked in for work. Then Kara’s phone rings; it’s Alex. Only it isn’t, just a man with an electronically-modified voice using her phone. The man says he has Alex, and sends a photo as proof. He also knows who Kara is – she isn’t just a mild-mannered reporter. He wants a Peter Thompson, who is serving a life sentence in a supermax prison, freed in the next 36 hours or Alex will die. He knows Kara can do it. Because he knows she’s Supergirl.
At the DEO, Kara explains this to the others. Mon-Elo asks why they don’t simply spring Thompson. J’onn tells him they don’t negotiate with terrorists. Plus, Maggie says, that doesn’t guarantee the man will release Alex. Alex’s tracker is offline and Winn can’t trace the phone call. Only a limited number of people know Kara is Supergirl. Maggie tells them they are asking the wrong question. They don’t know where Alex as taken, there is no crime scene and no physical evidence. The right question is who is Peter Thompson to the kidnapper?
Lena is having dinner with Rhea. Family comes up, specifically Lena’s mother. Rhea says she is plagued by her son, not her mother. He was the light of her life then met a horrible girl. She and her husband lost her son then her husband died. Which is huge manipulation of the truth.
J’onn, Maggie and Kara head to see Thompson and tell him someone wants him out of jail. He thinks that’s a change. Kara loses her temper and hits the table hard enough to dent it, demanding to know who has her sister. Thompson has no idea – and J’onn read his mind confirming this. Winn has discovered that Thompson has had one visitor, his son, Rick Malverne. Kara wonders why that name sounds familiar. It’s because she grew up with him. Winn has located a house owned by Rick and Kara goes there. Inside, there are monitors showing Alex and Rick is there as well. Rick, who Kara said was always nice when they were young, won’t tell Kara where Alex is, and if they hurt him, she will never be found.
The immediate question is why not J’onn to scan Rick’s mind. The answer is because Rick has conveniently found a way to block the scan. Maggie talks to Rick, who has spent a year planning this. He remembers a day at the beach when Kara, before she started hiding her powers properly, saved some people from a car crash. When Kara moved to National City and Supergirl appeared, he put two and two together.
Maggie decides that Thompson is key to getting Alex back, so they use J’onn to pretend they have freed Thompson. This doesn’t work; Rick knows about J’onn. Alex herself is working on getting out, and manages to get a signal out. Kara rushes off, despite Maggie’s – and Rick’s – warnings, to find it was a fake. Now there’s only four hours to save Alex, as her cell is filling with water. Quite a lot of the episode revolves around Kara actually paying attention to what Maggie has been trying to tell her.
Rhea slipped up with Lena, who confirmed that she was an alien. Lena didn’t appreciate being lied to. Rhea wants a second chance – she thought Lena shared Lillian’s opinion of aliens – and Lena tries to contact Kara for advice. Kara is too upset to help at that point. Which is something that is probably going to come back to bite them.