Supergirl: Easter Eggs and DC Comics References In “How Does She Do It?”

Tonight’s episode of Supergirl is a bit of an odd duck. It’s the first time we’ve really seen a non-super-powered character as the show’s primary threat, and the first time we’re getting a significant amount of screen time for some key players.

It’s also airing out of order, since it was pulled from last week’s lineup following a terror attack in Paris.

…And, yeah, it had its fair share of Easter eggs.

So…what did we see? What did we miss?

Read on, and comment below.

“For once in my life, I can finally have it all.”

Is that a 30 Rock reference?

SIEGEL PRIZE

Cat beat out Lois Lane for the Siegel Prize for Women in Media…named for Jerry Siegel, the co-creator of Superman!

Wait, wouldn’t the “father” of Superman be Lois’s father-in-law? That loss has to sting.

SUPERGIRL LOGO

The comics-style Supergirl logo is on the monitor of the tablet Carter is using in one shot.

While that isn’t the logo the show uses, we have seen it in behind-the-scenes photos, where it appears on scripts, the backs of chairs, etc.

TOY MAN

Winn’s desk is covered in toys…which jives with what we know about his father, Winslow Schott, the Toyman.

Mission: Impossible and Revenge star Henry Czerny will soon be joining the cast of Supergirl in the guest star role of Toyman.

At this time, Czerny is only booked for one episode.

In the comics, the character has gone through a number of iterations over the years, with a latter day version written by DC Entertainment Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns which aimed to bring all the various takes into line. In Supergirl Warner Bros. says, “Winslow Schott, Sr. is a classic D.C. supervillain, a mad criminal genius known as Toyman – and Winn’s estranged father. Toyman weaponizes toys to wreak destruction and revenge but is ultimately driven by one thing – the obsessive desire to reunite with his beloved son.”

NOONAN’S

This is my favorite, and the most unexpected, Easter egg of the night.

The restaurant where Supergirl and company all seem to spend a lot of their time is named after Noonan’s, a dive bar owned by former hitman Sean Noonan.

The bar was the favorite hangout of hitmen and other lowlifes in the Cauldron, one of Gotham City’s toughest neighborhoods, including Hitman star Tommy Monaghan and his friends.

Six Pack, the leader of Section 8 was a regular there, and Baytor, a demon from Hell introduced during the Day of Judgment event, was the barkeep.

VIRGIN

If you’re looking for this kind of thing, it’s hard not to notice the non-alcoholic drinks Cat has when stressed.

For the first few years of her existence as a character, one of Cat Grant’s defining qualities was her struggle to overcome alcoholism. Among other things, her propensity for drinking led her to try and seduce a young Jimmy Olsen at one point.

LUCY IS JAG

…And the comic book creators who made her that way have noticed, too.

This will play a much bigger role in next week’s episode, where General Sam Lane makes his first appearance.

CAN SHE FLY?

Can Lucy Lane fly?

Well, not at present…but don’t discount it.

When we first met her in John Byrne’s The Man of Steel, Lucy had recently left her job as a flight attendant due to the sudden onset of an unexplained blindness. She was cured when a version of Bizarro exploded into dust, and the dust got in Lucy’s eyes. It was the second time she had been rescued by the creature in one way or another: at the start of the story, she had attempted suicide by jumping off a building, only to be rescued by Bizarro on the way down.

Lucy would then enter into a relationship with Jimmy Olsen which lasted about two years, but never got particularly serious. The two would make up, break up (usually without drama or even having it depicted on the page), and then re-enter each other’s orbit. Eventually, during one of the times they were dating, Lucy met Daily Planet journalist Ron Troupe, and the two were taken with one another. Lucy didn’t do anything until after she and Jimmy broke up, but it wasn’t long after she was single that she and Ron started dating. The two eventually married and had a son, named after Lucy’s father Sam.

Not long after Lucy and Ron started dating, there was a bit of awkwardness as she served as the Maid of Honor at her sister’s wedding to Clark Kent, and Jimmy was the Best Man.

After the wedding, Lucy vanished from the comics for a while and reappeared in an unexpected way: following General Sam Lane’s apparent death, she learned that he was alive and started working with him on a government project aimed at curbing the influence of Kryptonians on Earth. During the World of New Krypton story, Lucy was given powers from a sophisticated costume and appeared as the masked figure Superwoman, hiding amongst the Kryptonians.

After an accident involving Supergirl left her presumed dead, she would return again later and go on a crime spree for which Supergirl eventually brought her to justice. Her return was explained because while the accident had destroyed the suit that gave her powers, it had by then altered her physiology, leaving Lucy actually superhuman.

With Sam Lane expected to play a major role on Supergirl and both the DEO and Maxwell Lord scared of the impact aliens have on humanity, it seems possible if not likely that the Superwoman story will be explored at some point. Much of the story thus far has made references to the Supergirl run by Sterling Gates and Jamal Igle, during which much of that story was dealt with.

KNOX

While there isn’t actually an Ethan Knox in the DC canon, it’s worth mentioning that there are in fact two of them who have appeared in DC screen adaptations.

The first, Alexander Knox, was a reporter for a Gotham City newspaper in Batman (1989).

The second, Dr. Curtis Knox, was a scientist played by Dean Cain on Smallville. Of course, Cain was Superman on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and plays Kara’s adoptive father Jeremiah Danvers on Supergirl.

HEADLINE NEWS

Apparently, among the headlines hanging on the wall in Cat’s office, we have one of the earliest stories about Superman.

I can’t tell what the paper on the right says, but the one on the left says “Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Who is this heroic mystery man?”

It doesn’t even seen to feature him in costume — so maybe it’s the headline from when he saved the plane? In The Man of Steel, that was a split-second decision and not a deliberate coming-out as a superhero…so maybe that’s how it was in this world, too?

Probably not — it doesn’t appear to be a front page. Could this be a story Cat did back before Superman was even publicly outed, looking at some of the super-feats he did in the world before being revealed?

TIME ZONES

While the fictional cities of the DC Universe often defy conventional geography, there’s a disparity in tonight’s episode regarding time zones.

When Kara is on the phone with Cat, it can be seen to be dark in Metropolis, but not in National City.

Since National City is a coastal city, and since Metropolis is often understood to be on the East Coast, it’s fair to assume that the show takes place on the West.

CARTER GRANT

On TV, Cat’s son is named Carter, not Adam.

Adam likes Supergirl, though, whereas Adam was afraid of Superman.

JUST LIKE LOIS

…No, not Lucy.

“You don’t have to hide with James; he knows your secrets and he likes you,” Alex tells Kara.

And, of course, she’s right. If you want to have a real, adult relationship as a superhero you kind of have to tell the other person who you are.

I’ve long maintained that one of the reasons the marriage to Lois was so important in the post-Crisis Superman comics is that it allowed Clark to truly be himself and not hide anything without having to fly back to Smallville to hang out with Lana and his parents to do so.

RR

That double-R logo on the Super Train?

It seems innocuous until you think of how similar Maxwell Lord is to Lex Luthor in this show (more on that later)…

…And then the alliterative, double-lettered logo seems a bit on the nose.

MAX THE PUPPET MASTER

Remember a couple of weeks ago, when we speculated that it was possible Maxwell Lord actually arranged for Reactron to attack his lab and kidnap him?

Yeah…this episode kind of shows why we thought that was a reasonable guess.

Max manipulated Knox, AND did so to make Supergirl show off her powers. And he lets a guy die just so he can play his little game.

In the comics, Maxwell Lord has been known to stage supervillain attacks to push his agenda. He got Booster Gold into the Justice League by hiring the Royal Flush Gang and targeting his OWN TEAM, then setting Booster up to swoop in and save the day.

While under the influence of a computer that used New Gods technology, Lord set up a disturbed would-be terrorist as a villain for the League to defeat, resulting in the man’s death. Per the DC Wiki, The would-be terrorist believed he had a bomb connected to his heartbeat, but in fact, Max had disconnected it.

Just like Kara and Alex figured out he COULD have done with Knox.

THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME

Look, this time around it’s Supergirl and Maxwell Lord…but I’m old enough to remember this scene happening when it was Superman and Lex Luthor.

A nearly-identical scene — from Superman flying up to Luthor’s residence and waiting outside to be invited in, to the “I know and you know but you can’t prove it and I won’t confess, so this isn’t over” talk, happened in the pilot to Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

Seriously…it’s nearly identical.