Agent Liberty forces James into helping inspire his followers by destroying a monument.
Tropes:
- Bad Boss:
- The false Agent Liberty is ready to immediately execute Tom for helping James escape.
- The real Agent Liberty has no problem leaving his men to be killed in his place if it means staying out of danger himself.
- Bait-and-Switch: The episode makes it seem like Manchester is being brought to Ben Lockwood out of the mask, only to reveal that Ben is in his TV studio while Manchester is meeting a body double.
- Bittersweet Ending: Very heavy on the bitter. The fact that the Children of Liberty's plan was thwarted is all that keeps it from being a straight up Downer Ending; Adam died from exposure to the harun-el, J'onn is tormented by his failure to save Manchester's soul, Manchester now knows Agent Liberty's true identity and will doubtlessly go on seeking revenge, James and Lena remain estranged, and Lena intends to go on with her harun-el experiments. At the end of the day, no one goes home happy and things are likely to get even worse.
- Black-and-Grey Morality: Kara is left confused how she should feel about Manchester Black, as he did some very bad things but still saved her in the end.
- Blatant Lies:
- On TV, Ben Lockwood claims that the 5 Children of Liberty Manchester killed were 'peaceful protestors'.
- The Children of Liberty tell James that nobody is present in the monument they expect him to destroy.
- Body Double: What the "Agent Liberty" on Shelly Island turns out to be behind the mask.
- Brought Down to Badass: Under the effects of the dampening field, Supergirl is reduced to being able to fly up a few feet and can be restrained by steel chains held by ordinary humans. Later, however, she breaks free of them by herself and even retains a bit of her Heat Vision.
- Call-Back: Lena's issue with superpowered individuals assuming they know best seems to come from her conflicts with Supergirl last season (specifically, Supergirl felt that Lena keeping Kryptonite was a betrayal, while Lena saw it as a necessary precaution). Her tone implies that she's far from over the whole thing.
- The Chessmaster: Manchester does a fine job of playing both Supergirl and the Children of Liberty to get a shot at killing Agent Liberty. It doesn't work perfectly, but he does manage to at least get Agent Liberty's real name as a consolation prize.
- Clark Kenting: Downplayed; Agent Liberty's costume covers his entire body, but James still fails to recognize Ben Lockwood's distinctive voice despite having had several conversations with the man.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Manchester didn't just shoot the Children of Liberty in the previous episode, he wounded them with the first shots and then brutally beat them to death.
- Crucified Hero Shot: Supergirl is held down and subdued by the Children of Liberty with chains; one on each arm, and one for both legs.
- Cut Apart: The Sons of Liberty knock on the door of Agent Liberty's office. Lockwood looks up from his work because of a knock on the door. He's in a TV studio miles away, and is being visited by a production assistant, while a fake Agent is in the Shelley Island office.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Turns out that Lena watched her real mother drown when she was just 4 years old.
- Deer in the Headlights: Much as Lena might blame herself, it's not at all abnormal for people, especially children, to freeze up in moments of crisis (like a loved one dying in front of them).
- Demonisation: Lockwood happily smears Supergirl's good name on his television show. If his plan to kill her had succeeded, he intended on praising her death as the end of a threat to humanity.
- Dirty Coward:
- The false Agent Liberty has no qualms about selling out the real deal if it means that Manchester will let him live.
- The real Agent Liberty doesn't come off as much better, using a body double to avoid the danger and watching events unfold over a video feed rather than joining his henchmen.
- Emotion Bomb: Manchester puts a device on J'onn than amplifies emotions and lets him read his mind, putting all the pain he suffered through into him to experience.
- Heel–Face Turn: Tom balks at forcing James to go along with their plan, since he thought he was just bringing James in for an interview, so he tries to help James escape.
- Hero with Bad Publicity:
- Invoked by Lockwood; he uses his new show as a platform to demonize Supergirl, asking the obviously rhetorical question of whether she's a hero or the seed of humanity's destruction. Kara, understandably, is pretty miffed about it. Lockwood's ultimately unused victory speech is meant to further smear her reputation by referring to her as a threat to humanity.
- James is prepared to embrace this to save Tom's life, bending to Agent Liberty's demands despite the fact that doing so would brand him a terrorist and make people believe that he whole-heartedly supports the Children of Liberty. Thankfully, he doesn't have to go through with it, but it says quite a lot about his character that he was willing to.
- Heroic Sacrifice: James is ready to give up his reputation and publicly support the Children of Liberty as long as they spare Tom's life.
- Hope Spot: Despite their mutual agreement and encouragement, Adam dies after the injection, leaving Lena devastated.
- Hypocrite:
- Once again, the Children of Liberty use alien materials (in this case, a volatile mineral) to support their xenophobic cause.
- Lena says that she wants to see power in the hands of people who are responsible, not just someone who would assume they know what's best simply because they have powers. She goes on to say that she feels fine choosing said responsible people because "[she is] a very smart woman", showing the same level of arrogance she derided not a full minute before.
- I Am a Monster: Lena laments that no matter how much she tries to be different than them, deep down she is a Luthor too.
- Internal Reveal: Manchester is the first of the protagonists (for a given value of "protagonist") to learn Agent Liberty's true identity.
- Irony: The Children of Liberty use an island originally meant to welcome aliens to Earth as a hideout.
- Kick the Dog:
- The Children of Liberty try to force James to not only blow up a monument, but to unwittingly kill Supergirl in the process.
- Manchester uses an empathy-enhancing device to drive home to J'onn that he's too far gone to be saved, leaving J'onn a sobbing wreck.
- Lack of Empathy: Agent Liberty flat-out admits to James that he doesn't feel any empathy for aliens.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Lockwood uses a body double to avoid danger. Said body double sells him out to save his own skin.
- Manly Tears: J'onn breaks down crying in Kara's arms after experiencing Manchester's pain and realizing he was wrong about him.
- Motor Mouth: Adam talks quite frequently at first, to mask his insecurity.
- My Greatest Failure:
- Adam's was that his brother died instead of him when he donated his kidney to him.
- Lena's was not doing anything to help her drowning mother.
- Mythology Gag: Supergirl's powers are reduced to being more like Superman's originally were.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Manchester kills several Children of Liberty.
- An Offer You Can't Refuse: James is kept prisoner as long as he doesn't agree to publicly support the Children of Liberty and then they threaten to kill Tom to further motivate him.
- Playing Both Sides: Manchester screws over Supergirl to get close to Agent Liberty, whom he plans to murder. To his credit, he does intervene to help her and James, but it doesn't excuse his original act of treachery.
- Power Nullifier: Shelly Island has a dampening field which limits alien powers as they're processed for immigration. It was abandoned following President Marsden's resignation, making it the perfect hiding place for the Children of Liberty and a good trap for Supergirl.
- Real Name as an Alias: Lena uses "Dr. Kieran" as an alias during her harun-el experiments. "Kieran", as we learned last season, is Lena's middle name.
- Revenge:
- The main motivation for the attempted destruction of the monument are the murders of the five Children of Liberty at the hands of Manchester last episode.
- Manchester himself of course is hellbent on revenge for Fiona, even willing to risk Supergirl's life for it.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: It's implied that Manchester killed the false Agent Liberty after he gave him the intel on the real one, as he told him that "Disloyalty should be rewarded."
- Sacrificial Lamb: Adam, the test subject, who dies to further give Lena motivation and guilt.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The Nalcyite is said to have an explosive factor of 8,000 joules per gram, which is compared to a nuclear explosion. In reality, 8 kJ/g is just above dynamite. When the Nalcyite does explode, it behaves much like dynamite.
- Smug Snake: Lockwood composes a victory speech about his plan before the plan has actually succeeded. The look on his face when it all falls apart is priceless.
- Tainted Veins: Adam's veins go black when Lena injects him with her serum.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Lena has fully embraced this; she performs human trials with the harun-el in the hopes of both curing disease and giving humans superpowers. The death of her test subject hurts deeply, but she gleans useful knowledge from the experience and has no intentions of stopping.
- Wham Shot: The end scene implies that Manchester knows Agent Liberty's real identity now; he pulls up outside the now abandoned Lockwood family steel mill.
- What Measure Is a Mook?: Actually subverted for once, as J'onn tries to tell Manchester killing Agent Liberty will destroy his soul, but he actually doesn't know about all the other Children of Liberty Manchester has already killed, and is left with no hope for him after finding out.
- What the Hell, Hero?: J'onn confronts Manchester after he sold out Supergirl for his revenge. It doesn't cause him to back down from it however.
- What You Are in the Dark: Given the choice between letting Tom die or giving in to Agent Liberty's demands, James chooses the latter, preferring to see his reputation destroyed than to let an innocent man die while it was within his power to save him.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: Lena and Eve genuinely think that peace is the only possible result of giving humans superpowers comparable to those of aliens.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
- Lena and Adam keep trying to encourage each other throughout the episode.
- J'onn tries to convince Manchester that he can still pull himself back from the edge. As it turns out, Manchester's already too far gone to care.J'onn: No vengeance is worth your soul.
Manchester: What soul, old man?
- You Are Number 6: At first, Lena only refers to Adam by his test subject number to avoid getting attached.
