To learn more about Reign, Kara must forge a tense alliance with Saturn Girl, Psi and Livewire to examine Fort Rozz for clues.
Tropes in this episode:
- All-Loving Hero: Supergirl is looking for the Kryptonian priestess Jindah Kol Rozz not to find a way to kill Reign, but to find a way to convince her to stop fighting peacefully. Livewire dismisses this as naive, but Supergirl points out that she managed to get Livewire to stop being a villain.
- Amazon Brigade: Supergirl, Saturn Girl, Livewire and Psi.
- Ambiguous Situation: We never do find out if Psi was trying to betray the team with her attack on Imra or if she genuinely suffered Power Incontinence.
- Antagonist in Mourning: Kara, who considered Livewire as her Arch-Enemy (being the most recurring non-arc villain of the show), feels awful over Leslie's Heroic Sacrifice.
- Beam-O-War: Reign's heat vision and Livewire's electricity. Ignore the fact that neither lasers nor electricity work like that.
- Big Damn Heroes: Psi, surprisingly, when she uses her psychic abilities to cause Sam's fear of losing her daughter to manifest in Reign, briefly allowing Sam to take control before Reign reasserts herself and flees the battle. Combined with Villainous Rescue.
- Boxed Crook: Psi is let out of her prison cell to aid the mission, and sent back afterwards. Supergirl takes the time to get her an upgraded cell for her help.
- Brought Down to Normal: Fort Rozz is orbiting a blue giant, which removes Supergirl's powers. note Unfortunately, Reign's powers come from a different source and she is unaffected.
- Bully Hunter: Alex helps Ruby with a bully problem by showing up on the girl's doorstep posing as the FBI and threatening to have her locked up in Juvie if she continues her cyber-bullying.
- The Bus Came Back: Livewire returns along with Psi.
- Casting Gag: Sarah Douglas, best known as Ursa from Superman II, plays the priestess. The Brazilian dub, as it tends to do whenever possible, played along and had Ilka Pinheiro, who voiced Sarah as Ursa, to voice the priestess.
- Cavalry Betrayal: Jindah Kol Rozz thought Reign had come to rescue her. Reign instead burns a hole through her chest to keep her from talking.
- Character Death: Reign kills Livewire when she jumps in front of the heat vision meant for Supergirl.
- Character Development: Mon-El, even lampshading this himself as he calmly listens to Kara and gives her a few words of advice, something his past self was pretty much incapable of.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: One mental attack from Psi is enough to force Reign to flee.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": Livewire gets annoyed whenever Supergirl calls her Leslie.
- Enemy Mine: Supergirl has to team up with two of her villains because she needs backup on Fort Rozz. Both are willing to work with her since Reign is killing criminals.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Brainiac's frustration at the limitations of the 21st century's technology made him retort that they might as well send a message in a bottle, which gives Winn a brilliant idea of relaying the DEO's signal through the Voyager 2 space probe.
- Expy: The powers of Livewire, Psi, and Imra mimic the powers of the founding members of the Legion of Super-Heroes (Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy, respectively). In addition, Supergirl and Superboy often joined them in the early Legion stories.
- Gendercide: The blue giant emits radiation that kills those with a Y-chromosome, which necessitates Supergirl recruiting some of her female villains for backup, since Alex is out of commission and Imra is the only other hero that fits the bill. All of the male prisoners on nearby Fort Rozz are found dead as a result.
- He Knows Too Much: Reign kills Jindah Kol Rozz to keep her from revealing any information about the other Worldkillers.
- I Know What You Fear: Psi, of course. She uses it first on Imra and later on Reign. We don't see exactly what Imra saw, but she shrugs off the effects without too much trouble, while Reign getting hit brings out Sam's fear of losing her daughter and brings Sam's personality back to dominance for a moment.
- Insufferable Genius: Downplayed compared to most examples, but Brainy doesn't hide how unimpressed he is with Winn, the DEO, and their equipment because of the supposed technological and intellectual differences.
- Internal Reveal: Sam finally realizes something is wrong with her when she fails to show up to an important meeting and doesn't even remember it.
- Irony: Livewire dies saving Supergirl instead of trying to kill her.
- It's All My Fault: Kara beats herself up after Leslie's death, thinking that she would still be alive had she gotten through to Reign. Mon-El helps her over it.
- It's Personal: Many of the criminals Reign killed were Leslie's friends. She also sees Kara as her friend now and gets pissed when Reign threatens her.
- Kill Me Now, or Forever Stay Your Hand: When Leslie talks about helping Kara only out of necessity and being willing to kill her without hesitation, Kara goads her into doing so, proving that she does care about her when she doesn't.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: When Psi's fear attack allows Sam to emerge within Reign for a brief moment, Reign immediately flees rather than risk that happening again.
- Missing Time: Sam has no memory of her actions as Reign. For the most part, the lost time has been subtle enough that she attributed it to stress, but in this episode, it finally gets bad enough that she can't dismiss it, and breaks down to Alex.Sam: I think there's something really wrong with me.
- Mythology Gag:
- In the Post-Crisis universe a blue star powers Kryptonians up; but in the Pre-Crisis continuity, as well as in Post-Flashpoint Supergirl story "Last Daughter of Krypton", blue sunlight weakens her powers.
- "Last Daughter of Krypton" also featured a space station full of corpses plunging into a blue star.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Not that she could have foreseen it, but by just pushing Fort Rozz into space, Kara is indirectly responsible for the above mentioned Gendercide.
- The One That Got Away: Alex is still not over Maggie.
- Out of Focus: Lena appears for about less than a minute and doesn't really further the plot of this episode or her own ongoing storylines. It appears that she had other scenes or at least a longer scene with Sam and these were cut for timing. Her brief appearance appears to be a contractual obligation.
- Pet the Dog: Psi is hardly reformed, but she does earnestly express condolences for the death of Livewire. This, as much as her help in the mission, convinces Supergirl to upgrade her accommodations.
- Pet the Dog: Psi actually rescues Kara from Reign instead of just running away and even offers her condolences after Leslie's death.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Livewire makes some pretty distasteful remarks towards the dead male inmates.
- Redemption Equals Death: Livewire pulls a Heroic Sacrifice and jumps in front of Reign's heat vision to save Supergirl, dying moments afterward.
- Reformed Criminal: What Leslie claims she is in the beginning to escape Reign's justice, working at a diner. In the end, she proves that it was not just all an act by sacrificing herself saving Kara's life.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Supergirl pushed Fort Rozz away from Earth's orbit back in the first season finale, but it somehow made it all the way to another star system... a trip that would take several years if you traveled at the speed of light, let alone with the shove Supergirl gave it.
- Shout-Out:
- Livewire nicknames Imra "Matilda" due to her telekinetic powers.
- Psi sings "Sing a Song of Sixpence," a well-known English nursery rhyme, when she senses Reign's approach.
- Livewire calls Psi "Regina George" after Psi calls her an "illiterate mean girl."
- Taking the Bullet:
- Livewire jumps in front of Reign's heat vision to save Supergirl.
- In the final scene, a woman throws her friend out of the way of a speeding car and gets hit herself... which awakens her powers and personality as a Worldkiller.
- Traumatic Superpower Awakening: In the last scene, we see another Worldkiller gaining her powers via a traffic accident.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Mon-El gives Kara a few encouraging words after the latter beats herself up over Leslie's death.
