Supergirl
Episode 1.8 “Hostile Takeover”
Directed by Karen Gaviola
Written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Caitlin Parrish
Created by Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg, Ali Adler
Starring Melissa Benoist, Calista Flockhart, Chyler Leigh, Mehcad Brooks, David Harewood, Jeremy Jordan, Helen Slater, Dean Cain, Peter Facinelli, Chris Vance, Jenna Dewan Tatum
CBS
Air date: Monday, December 14th, 2015, 8:00pm ET

Last week on Supergirl, Kara (Melissa Benoist) lost her powers for 48 hours to recharge, leaving National City vulnerable during an earthquake. Cat (Calista Flockhart) gets a feed up and gives the city the Rocky speech, in response to Maxwell Lord’s (Peter Facinelli) dismissal of her. Alex and Hank (Chyler Leigh and David Harewood) get trapped with an escaped alien, and Alex confronts him about her dad. Turns out, her dad saved this alien, J’onn J’onzz, from the real crazy Hank, sacrificing himself while doing so.

Spoilers below.

Supergirl 1.8 “Hostile Takeover” recap/review: Astra and Kara face off, with Astra unaffected by the Krypton knife. Kara gets away, but it seems Astra does not want to hurt her. Her husband has no such qualms.

Cat’s email has been hacked and she is showing her vulnerability. She trusts Kara, James, and the “handsome hobbit” Winn to go through all her emails to trace the hack. Kara uses her super hearing and finds out it’s the board that set her up to get her out. They go after proof a la Lucy Lane. Can I just say that Cat listing all her possible bad emails is just about the best thing I have ever heard? Idris Elba turned her down? Love it!

In a flashback, we see a very different Astra, a loving aunt who came back to see Kara once more before she went away. They had a completely loving relationship.

Back in the present, Astra floats in the air to call Kara out. They have a superbattle. Kara almost killed her, but didn’t. She brought her to the DEO, and there Astra revealed that she is not the bad sister. Kara confronted her mom’s hologram, and got a bit of a confirmation on that. She is floored. It was a ruse though.

Kat’s biggest secret was revealed – she has a son she gave up custody of a long time ago. But Winn and James (Jeremy Jordan and Mehcad Brooks) save her from the very public reveal in the nick of time.

This causes Cat to figure out Kara’s big secret. Yay! It’s about time!

The final scene is a flying-towards-each-other showdown that ends upon contact.

Whoa! Supergirl is a show I’ve enjoyed, but not to the extent of The Flash or Arrow (or Gotham). The fall (ok winter) finale put it up there with them.

I think one of the most off-putting parts was that Cat could not see Kara was Supergirl, which always bothered me about Superman too. Now that she knows, I’m happy. I really do want to know what the hell happened in Krypton and which one is the evil sister.

Supergirl returns Monday, January 4th, 2016.