'Supergirl' Standout Katie McGrath on What Drives Lena Luthor and How She Deals With Kara's Baggage

10/16/2017 05:26 pm EDT

In last week's season premiere of Supergirl, fans got a look at a new, somewhat uncomfortable dynamic between Lena Luthor and Kara Danvers: Kara turned to Lena when she needed help, but did not seem to have much time for her friend when the time came for plain old conversation.

Katie McGrath, who plays Luthor in the the CW superhero series, says that while Kara is gradually starting to find her footing again, the relationship will continue to be on shaky ground for the first few episodes while things find a new "normal."

"I think it's difficult because obviously Kara is having a very tough time, and she's hurting," McGrath told ComicBook.com. "Kara thinks that she's dealing with it fine and from the outside, everybody else can see that she's not. It's always difficult as a friend when you see somebody in pain and that person doesn't think they need help. I think that's where their relationship is at the beginning of this season: Lena's waiting for Kara to ask for help."

Of course, one of the things that fans of the show will know is that part of the beauty of their relationship is how two-sided it has been; both of them, for slightly different reasons, sometimes feel lonely and have trouble fitting in, and it's that connection that makes them an interesting pair. That Kara is now struggling with the loss of her boyfriend -- something that Lena knows she was directly involved in -- means McGrath finds herself playing a character who knows enough to give her friend space, but struggles with what to do with herself while she does so.

"It is isolating for Lena, because it is difficult for her to make friends because of her last name," McGrath said. "I think that's why she and Kara have become so close; for both of them, it's difficult to have people who they can be vulnerable with….I think that's how they've gotten so close, so quickly, and at the start of season 3, there's a bit of strain in that because obviously Kara doesn't want to be Kara anymore, and that makes the relationship between her and Lena difficult."

While Kara is looking to abandon her personal identity and subsume herself in the world of Supergirl, Lena hopes to abandon the big-picture world of being a Luthor and find something for herself as an individual at CatCo.

"I think what drives Lena is that she wants desperately to have an identity that's her own, not her family," McGrath told ComicBook.com. "She doesn't want to be perceived as a Luthor, she wants to be perceived as Lena, and I think partially that's one of the reasons she does buy CatCo is so that she can do something outside of L Corp. If she can make a success of that, it's something for herself, it's not a Luthor thing — especially as a company that has nothing to do with the tech company that he family has built. She's constantly driving for her own identity and to be accepted as her own person and not as a Luthor. That's why Morgan Edge gets to her so much, si she keeps trying to be an individual and he keeps dragging her down to being a Luthor."

Supergirl airs Monday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.

Disclosure: ComicBook is owned by CBS Interactive, a division of Paramount. Sign up for Paramount+ by clicking here.