“Welcome to Earth” is episode three of season two of Supergirl.
At the end of the previous episode, “The Last Children of Krypton”, the man in the pod discovered at the end of “Better Angels” woke up and grabbed Kara by the throat. Not very friendly. The episode opens immediately afterwards with the alien still holding Kara whilst ripping off the various monitor cables. He starts to flee and the DEO tries to stop him. The man’s super strength seems to come as a surprise to him. He manages to escape from the DEO without being stopped.
With the alien on the loose in National City, Hank thinks he picked the wrong time to get rid of his kryptonite. As the president is due for a visit to tour the DEO and sign the alien amnesty act. Kara thinks this is great; finally aliens will be able to come out of the shadows. The president is making history. Hank thinks this is a mistake; in his experience humans and aliens don’t mix. Kara is surprised by Hank’s attitude; after all, he is an alien. Besides, she and Hank are doing okay. Hank says that they can blend in, others can’t. Humans do not have much tolerance for others who look different. He says that as an alien and as someone who has worn the face of a black man for the last 15 years. Alex agrees; she can count the number of good aliens she has encountered using one hand. With two fingers to spare.
Kara is glad that the president doesn’t feel the same way. Hank replies that Kara can tell the president that. When she meets her. Of course the president expects National City’s resident alien to meet her. Kara asks if she’s really meeting the president. Yes – unless, as Alex suggests, she’s too nervous. Kara starts babbling before finally admitting that yes, she’s nervous. Really nervous.
James is holding the editorial meeting and he asks for headlines. Snapper tells him you get the story first, then the headline. Unless James wants to be a pale carbon copy of Cat. James can be a hard news man and make his own mark. James goes along with this, saying the priority interview is with the president, everything else is just icing. Snapper disagrees; everything else is bread and butter. Then takes over the meeting, handing out assignments. Leaving the POTUS interview to last. No, Kara can’t do that, she’s just a rookie. They need someone hard hitting. James tells Snapper that Kara is hard-hitting and Kara says she can pack a punch like he wouldn’t believe. To no avail; Kara gets to interview Lena Luthor.
Kara arrives at the airport and President Olivia Marsdin (Lynda Carter – the President is Wonder Woman! Later on there’s a comment about Air Force One and Marsden says they should see her other jet; as Wonder Woman she had an invisible plane) starts leaving her plane when bolts of fire start hitting the Secret Service agents guarding her. A bolt also hits Kara but she recovers and manages to stop one from hitting the president.
Afterwards, Kara is talking to Alex; the president has been taken to the DEO. Kara thinks President Marsdin is nice and charming. And she called Kara Supergirl. Alex points out that is her name. The signature of the fire bolts matches heat vision. Their missing Kryptonian has been gone six hours and the first thing he does is attack the president. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense frankly. Alex spots someone near the evidence and heads over to it. The person is Detective Maggie Sawyer of the NCPD science division. They handle cases dealing with aliens and things that go bump in the night. She and Alex do not get on very well to start with – although Maggie certainly seems to know what she is talking about.
At the DEO, Marsdin asks Hank if he wouldn’t prefer to live openly as a Martian. He feels that people are more comfortable with him as a human. the president believes her alien amnesty will change that. The DEO’s mission may be to hunt aliens, but they will need to adapt. Hank believes that some will simply not grasp the notion and will take advantage of that. The president tells Hank that the same was said about him once.
Kara arrives at Lena Luthor’s – and when asked if she needed her parking ticket validated, replies that she flew. On a bus. Lena doesn’t think it’s a coincidence, and Kara agrees that it isn’t, that the sister of Earth’s most notorious alien hater is being interviewed for her take on the president’s executive order on the same day the president is in town. L-Corp has designed something new, an alien detection device that will allow humans to detect who is not one of them with a simple skin test. Kara is not happy about the idea, and fries the device slightly before Lena can test it on her. Lena believes that the device will make a lot of money.
Winn has located the missing Kryptonian and ells Alex. He is telling Alex how when he realises she has already gone. As, so it happens, has the Kryptonian. Detective Sawyer is there though when Alex and the DEO team arrive. She’s a detective, she detected. Maggie had heard of a black ops alien strike force; she realises they are the DEO. Alex contacts Winn and tells him the alien could be anywhere. He seems to be at an observatory; he tells the astronomer that he wants to go home. That… could be tricky.
Snapper is reading Kara’s story and she is smiling cheerfully. She’s pleased with it – she has really made clear her feelings on Lena’s alien detector – Snapper clearly isn’t. He objects to the slant on reporting; if he wanted Kara’s opinion on the news he’d have given her an OpEd. There is a difference between truthful reporting and biased reporting, and this is biased (frankly, most news is, some more than others; it’s just not admitted). Kara says that nothing she wrote is inaccurate; Snapper still wants her to rewrite it. Afterwards, Kara talks to James; he is concerned about his ability to do Cat’s job. Kara suggests that he doesn’t be the boss Cat was, be the boss he can be.
Maggie invites Alex to see how the local cops get their information on aliens. Which results in them going to a dive bar. Maggie tells Alex to look more closely – it’s a bar full of aliens. A safe haven, according to Maggie, where they can hang out and get a drink. The waitress brings their drinks over; she is an alien – and an ex of Maggie’s. Maggie says she can relate to aliens, having grown up non-white and non-straight in Nebraska. They discover that the alien has sent a signal out. To Daxam, not Krypton. When Alex reports this, both Hank and Kara know the name. Daxam was a sister-world to Krypton in the same system. The two didn’t get on.
Kara is convinced that the Daxamite is the person who attacked the president, simply because he’s from Daxam. She doesn’t see that she’s being just as prejudiced as many others are. And, eventually, this makes her think – especially when it’s quickly apparent that the Daxamite didn’t attack the president. Kara had tunnel vision because of her own prejudices. There are a couple of surprises at the end of the episode too.