Events have been building to a head since the Crisis rolled through and changed the world and people’s memories. Lex is nearly unassailable, Leviathan has tentacles everywhere, and Brainy convinced himself to work for one of the nastiest villains on the planet. Supergirl and her amazing friends have been having a rough time of it, although they’ve managed to get one of their old allies back. There are some weird developments and at least one thing that might be looked on as a victory for the good guys in “The Missing Link.”

During the battle with the Sun Eater from last episode, the private prison owned by the Luthors (and that’s a phrase to fuel nightmares) has some problems, and Lena’s Non Nocere project hits another snag, and once again, the hapless Steve is caught up in the chaos. That man can’t catch a break. Back in the present, Brainy surprises Lex as the villainous mastermind makes further preparations to get on Leviathan’s good side. It’s a tense meeting, and Brainy is far from happy about his alliance with the evil Luthor. I suspect when all this is over, there will be many drama flakes about the fallout for Brainy and Nia’s relationship. Over at the Tower, Dreamer, Alex, Miss Martian, and Supergirl try and figure out a way forward, stymied by both Leviathan and Brainy’s lack of cooperation. After some debate about Lena’s role in all this, Alex suggests they focus on finding out what they can about Rama Khan, which leads to a field trip to the Congressional Library. I’m not sure what that’s supposed to be, as the Library of Congress is in Washington, DC on the other side of the country. While Supergirl fumes about the Luthors, Lex checks in with Lena and tries to throw some more blame Supergirl’s way, but Lena is at least too smart and intellectually honest for that.

Andrea Rojas is continuing her favorite pastime, pitching the wonders of Obsidian. She’s worse than those damn pop-up ads. William Day and Kelly Olson bring some concerns to her, and in the finest mayor in a disaster movie tradition, she blows them off. Kelly’s friend, Pete, at the Congressional Library, is the guy we saw impersonated several episodes ago, but this is the real deal. He’s very much into cryptography and languages, and makes some uncomfortable observations about Kara’s writing. He’s very intrigued by what they have to say, and happily dives in to the fray with them.

Perky and annoying Gemma Cooper goes to visit the imprisoned Rama Khan. After some power measuring, she reveals she has a task for him. Alex, Kara, and Pete do research, turning up strange symbols and old crop circles among other things. Yet another anti-Lena muttering gets interrupted when Kara gets a call from William. She takes off to check in with him while Alex and Pete keep digging. While Pete explains some new complications to Alex, Lex goes to work on the inmate who is having problems, and doesn’t get the results either he or Lena expected. Steve mopes in the background.

While things keep getting worse at the Luthor Lockup, William shows Kara something he discovered about Margot the Leviathan hitwoman. It seems like an improbable discovery to me, but it sends their investigation in a new direction. J’Onn returns from an extensive search, claiming there is no Leviathan outpost anywhere within 300 miles of them. J’Onn and M’Ggan have a nice moment, interrupted by comic relief time from Dreamer. Steve informs the Luthors about worsening conditions, and the two geniuses start to figure out what’s going on. Dreamer’s search nets her a weird dream about Brainy and Rama, and then finally a hint about where Leviathan might be heading next.

A running joke on the show seems to be that Kara really loves her food. She raves about William’s cooking as they make some partial progress toward finding out some of what’s wrong at Obsidian Tech. When J’Onn calls Kara and gives her a warning about what Leviathan is up to, Kara babbles horribly, makes really bad excuses, and then finally leaves William behind to go do battle with Rama Khan. Sadly, there’s no mention of his sister Chaka. Supergirl, Dreamer, and the Martians all turn up to confront Rama, and Brainy somehow hears about this and sends backup. Lena thinks she has an idea of how to fix the most recent disaster, but they have to take a dangerous trip to do it, in which Lex is surprisingly helpful and effective.

While the Martians deal with some serious complications, Supergirl and Dreamer manage to team up and take down Rama Khan. Brainy and his DEO crew arrive after the fight to take charge of the prisoner. The heroes argue with Brainy about some of his methodology, but end up going with him. Meanwhile, Alex’s attempt at breaking and entering gets repulsed by a never-seen bad guy who apparently has the generic action movie gun with the never-ending ammo supply. At the DEO, the arguments continue. While I very much disagree with most of what Brainy’s been doing this season, he does raise a good point in his argument. Supergirl is troubled by how Brainy is acting, and Dreamer is dealing with some “bad vibes.”

Having survived the attack on them, Alex and Pete go their separate ways, after Pete gives Alex some advice which is partially good and partially based on a few improbable things. William goes to Kelly for some help running down his and Kara’s new lead, and we see who the mysterious Obsidian employee is. This scene highlights that Kelly has been made aware of the changes from Crisis, and William hasn’t. That seems a bit like they’re setting him up to get hurt by lack of knowledge, but what do I know? Brainy’s interrogation of Rama Khan goes badly, from making the others suspicious when he changes languages to Rama revealing what he’s really up to. A new battle erupts, and it doesn’t go at all well for the good guys. While Lena tries to fix their most pressing problem, Lex proves to be resourceful, slick, and borderline heroic. Lena gets a partial success, but there’s a side effect that saddens her.

The fight at the DEO escalates, and the heroes lose on every level. Brainy gets in one act of heroism that, as far as I can tell, goes unnoticed, and there’s a loss of something that’s been around on Supergirl for a long, long time. In the aftermath, Brainy manages to find out that everyone is surprisingly, improbably unharmed, and then Dreamer lays into him. She’s well within her rights, but I felt a bit bad for him anyway. Andrea continues to ignore people bringing concerns to her, and ups her reaction to threats.

Lex’s sociopathy finally rubs Lena the wrong way in the wake of their host of problems. Lena has a minor breakdown, and Lex, like the animal he is, turns on her at this sign of weakness. It’s an ugly scene, and another example of Lex stupidly burning his bridges. Supergirl feels overwhelmed at the series of losses they’ve had, and J’Onn gives her a pep talk. After Supergirl flies home, there’s a development between J’Onn and M’Ggan that’s been a long time coming. Alex also makes her way home, she and Kelly compare their days, and Kelly gives her some advice.

Just to make everything more frustrating, Lex gets something he’s really wanted for a while now as he commits more acts of destruction and murder. On a roll, Lex has a very smug meeting with Brainy, who is even less happy about this partnership than he was before. William does something foolish that ends up turning out like a vintage Lois Lane scene. The episode ends with a very tense scene that took a lot of guts on one of the character’s parts. It could be a major turning point, and I’m hoping it means the end of a long running subplot I’m heartily sick of.

 

What I liked: I’m glad M’Ggan is back. It’s good to see most of the heroes working well together. I am hopeful about that final scene I alluded to above. Kelly gave Alex some good advice that could result in an interesting change. I give them points for getting rid of the long-running support thing they did in this episode.

 

What I didn’t: Lex does dumb things for a genius/master strategist. Pete’s background doesn’t really make a lot of sense as presented, and whoever went after him had a truly improbable amount of ammunition. The show is suffering a bit from not really adjusting to the new, shared world. They’re happy to talk about changes from the Crisis, but considering they have allies and the fate of the world is literally at stake, I’d like an explanation as to why they aren’t calling Flash, the Legends, or Black Canary and/or Siren. Where’s Superman in all this?

 

It was a decent episode, if not one of the greats. I’ll give it a 3.5 out of 5.