Supergirl Recap: Truth, Justice, and the American Way – Episode 14

Non pays Kara and Alex a visit at Kara’s apartment. He needs Kara to come with him. The girls are nervous, but Kara goes. He wants her to oversee Astra’s funeral rites. Non will return in two weeks, when the mourning period is over, so mark your calendars!

Hank has a line on another Fort Rozz prisoner: Gabriel Philips, who likes to feast on rotting flesh. Alex and a team move in to a warehouse where they have tracked Gabriel, and Hank tells them to be careful; “this one bites.” And any respect I may have had for Hank is gone. The team finds Gabriel in the warehouse, but he is chained up, victim of a kidnapping. A man in a full body suit of armor is there and starts blasting the agents with lasers from his wrists. Gunfire ensues; armor man escapes with Gabriel.

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The armor man is Master Jailer. For the time being, the DEO doesn’t know if he is human or alien. Alex posits that he may be an interstellar bounty hunter. She and Hank go to the local police, posing as FBI agents, asking if they have any clue as to who the masked kidnapper may be. Detective Warren wants nothing to do with this alien nonsense, but his partner, Detective Draper, is more forthcoming. They have known about this man for months. He is responsible for at least five kidnappings. All the victims were found down by the river, decapitated, and all were “weird,” like one had gills. The mayor asked to keep it quiet, which is why Alex and Hank hadn’t heard anything about it.

Master Jailer has Gabriel in a sort of sci-fi prison cell, as he reads the list of grievances against Gabriel. No one escapes, and he demonstrates that by decapitating Gabriel in a guillotine with an orange laser instead of a blade.

Alex figures out that all the victims were prisoners of Fort Rozz, and they are being killed according to their prisoner number. Next up is prisoner number 2445, Professor Luzano. Supergirl flies in to intercept the kidnapping, and she and Master Jailer have a pretty fun fight. Jailer has chains that can shoot out of his suit, so he uses them to fling Supergirl around, and she whips him right back. He ties her up with his chains, which she frees herself from easily, but by the time she is free, he has taken Luzano and escaped.

The metal used is definitely not of this earth, but one of his weapons is an ordinary police baton, covered in human DNA (ew). The baton belongs to detective Warren. Kara is eager to help her sister bring him in: “I’ve wanted to take down a corrupt cop ever since I binge-watched The Wire!” The DEO unscrambles Warren’s GPS and the girls go bring him in.

It is an unqualified disaster. Turns out, it was not Warren who was doing the kidnapping, but his partner, Draper. She shoots Alex and Warren, and absconds with Supergirl. Alex was wearing Kevlar, of course, so she is ok, but worried when she wakes and finds her sister gone.

Draper takes Kara to his makeshift prison, where Luzano is also being held. A red light in Kara’s cell mimics the Krypton sun, rendering her superpowers inert. Luzano admits that he was from Starhaven, and one of his wives got sick. The cost of healing was too high, so he turned to drug smuggling to afford her treatments. Luzano was caught on his first run, and Alura sentenced him to Fort Rozz. He was angry at first, but came to understand that he deserved a prison sentence. When Fort Rozz crashed, he decided to start life anew and became an astronomy professor, determined to only do good with his life. Master Jailer comes in and breaks up the party. He believes that he and Supergirl could be colleagues. Alura dealt out “true justice” and he believes he is carrying on her great work. Supergirl doesn’t agree, but Master Jailer doesn’t care. It is time to move Luzano to the guillotine chamber.

Alex is back at the DEO and is worried sick about Kara. All the other victims were killed within 12 hours of their abduction. Hank thinks that Draper may have been a Fort Rozz prisoner, but Alex finds him in a different database. He was a guard, and he has been spending a lot of time at a remote cabin. Alex and her team move in on the cabin, but find it completely empty, not even a stick of furniture. Then she notices a glow coming from beneath the floorboards. Buried beneath the cabin is Master Jailer’s space ship. They toss some C4 into the hole and blast their way into Jailer’s courtroom.

Alex immediately starts fighting Master Jailer, with little luck. He is trying to get her neck into the guillotine, and seems to be succeeding. Alex fires her gun into the sky. The aim was not to shoot Master Jailer; it was to open up the roof. She succeeds, and the Earth’s sun rays pour down over Kara, counteracting the fake Krypton rays. Her power restored, she tears out of her cage and knocks out Master Jailer with little effort.

Also: Kara has an unpleasant surprise waiting for her at work: Cat has hired a second assistant as a punishment for Kara. Siobhan is a brown noser with a wicked streak, who only cares about getting ahead. Kara tries her best to be nice to her, but Cat doesn’t make it easy: she has made Siobhan assistant #1, leaving Kara in second place. Cat calls James and Lucy in for a meeting, during which Siobhan takes notes. Maxwell Lord’s newest smartphone is making headlines because of a “bug” that makes it possible to eavesdrop on incoming calls. Max hasn’t gotten out in front of the public about this, which makes Cat think he has been kidnapped. She assigned Lucy to use her Pentagon connections, and James to use his investigative powers to find out if Max is just off living a wild, playboy lifestyle, or if he was met with foul play. James has a problem with this because he knows where Max is.

This creates a conundrum for James. He knows where Max is, but can’t risk revealing what he knows. He appeals to Kara, several times throughout this episode, that she has to be better than the DEO. Max is being held in a kind of secret Guantanamo, without due process, in a prison that was meant for aliens. Cat tries to help with a story about when she was first starting out. Her first major assignment was to write about a famous actor. Everyone had wonderful things to say about him, but then in talking to a makeup artist, she found out that he beats his actress wife. Cat gave in to pressure from the studio publicist and put out a puff piece; three months later, the actor shot his wife dead. She always thinks that if she had published the real story, the wife would still be alive.

Things get even stickier for James when Lucy reveals that she tracked Max’s license plates to a secret government agency that tracks aliens. James wants her to drop it, then notices Siobhan is outside, listening. He closes the door and the argument between Lucy and James grows more heated. “You should not mess with the DEO,” James insists. Of course, Lucy said nothing about the DEO, how does James know about it? Then it all becomes clear: this is Supergirl. Lucy gets jealous and storms out.

James finally got to Kara. After the Master Jailer incident is resolved, Supergirl convinces Alex to let Max go. Alex isn’t happy about it, but Supergirl insists it is the right thing to do. Max is relieved, but curious: “How do you know I won’t tell?” Alex has a massive dossier of incriminating evidence against him. If he spills, she will release it to law enforcement. It is mutually-assured destruction. (If Alex’s master plan was to keep Max in prison, why not turn it over anyway? If she has as much proof against him as she claims, it should be an easy case.)

Kara thanks James for pushing her to do the right thing. But now he needs more from her: he needs Kara’s permission to tell Lucy about Supergirl. Kara says nothing. Later, she goes to speak with her mother’s hologram, and asks her about Myriad, something Non mentioned. The hologram goes nutty, flashing red and issuing a warning. The hologram is not allowed to discuss Myriad, and continued questioning about Myriad will result in self destruction. Hank comes in and shuts the hologram down. Kara is mad, but not about that. She is still mad that Hank “killed” Astra, which is something he is willing to take. Kara needs space; she doesn’t know how to work alongside him. Maybe that will be different one day; maybe not.

You can watch a preview for the next episode, titled “Solitude,” using the player below.