In Supergirl #105, Kara struggled to keep her double life in check when she is tasked with babysitting Grant’s son, Carter, while a mad bomber with a grudge against Maxwell Lord begins a reign of terror. Meanwhile, Lucy Lane continues to try to win back James.
In yet another, “Everything happens” episode, “How Does She Do It?” managed to strike the perfect balance between an action packed episode and a heartfelt emotional story with a good lesson at the end. Though Carter Grant was essentially a person to rescue this week, his fascination with Supergirl had a great payoff when he played a part in saving the day at the end.
Yet again, we see a more sensitive side to Grant, who essentially gives Kara the life lesson of the episode after being MIA for the main action. Lucy Lane also makes a return, and we see a more dimensional side to her as she confesses to Kara why she and James really broke up. The parallels between James’ devotion to Superman and Kara’s devotion to her own alter ego are interesting and it feeds into James basically choosing Lucy in the finale.
But the big point of the episode is the revelation that Maxwell Lord is evil (?), having planned out Ethan Knox’s bombings in exchange for saving the life of Knox’s daughter for as of yet unexplained reasons. Yes, the whole confession scene was obvious- not to mention DEO agent Kara should’ve had a wire to record the thing- but it’s refreshing that the villain A: gets away with it, and B: doesn’t spill the whole story in episode 5. A smart villain keeps us guessing and that makes for great mystery.
Speaking of mystery, Henshaw’s alien nature was explicitly spelled out this week, with Kara and Alex being clued into his duplicity. Although, not much else was made besides that, (Until next time?) it was still a development.
“How Does She Do It?” was another great episode, and it’s great that four out of five episodes have had that honor. It was action packed and story heavy, but still had character and heart, and isn’t that what every superhero show should be?