Supergirl‘s 100th episode, “It’s a Super Life” gave the Girl of Steel a unique opportunity. Thanks to the help of Mxyzptlk (guest star Thomas Lennon,) Kara (Melissa Benoist) got to have a do-over of sorts when it came to revealing her identity to Lena Luthor (Katie McGrath). While the exercise was intended to offer Kara a chance to fix things, it had some unexpected results. Those results, according to series showrunners Jessica Queller and Robert Rovner, had one important thing at their heart. According to the pair, it was time for Kara to stop apologizing.
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Spoilers for tonight’s episode of Supergirl, “It’s a Super Life” below.
In the episode, Kara goes to different points in time to see what happened if she had told Lena the truth about her identity. When they end up having some seriously unexpected consequences — such as her own death, Lena and Mon-El’s death, and even one in which everyone she loved was murdered — Kara then tries a version where she never became friends with Lena at all and it’s somehow even worse. In the end, Kara realizes that things would never have played out perfectly and that it’s not all her fault. She realizes that she can’t keep apologizing for not coming clean with Lena sooner.
But Kara has a larger realization as well. She also realizes that Lena needs to take responsibility for herself and so, at the end of the episode Kara lays out her own ultimatum. Lena can either forgive Kara or she can continue to work with Lex and Supergirl will handle her as though she’s any other villain. Period. It’s a huge step, one that puts the ball in Lena’s court when it comes to her actions and, for the series’ showrunners, it’s a product of it being time for Kara to just stop being responsible for things that aren’t her responsibility. When asked if they thought it was letting Kara off too easily, they said simply no.
“No, I don’t think so because there was a lot of debate in the room all year about who was in the right and who was in the wrong, and we feel that it’s the really shades of gray as life is usually shades of gray,” Queller told ComicBook.com. “And that, Lena has some culpability in how she responded and how she acted. And Kara had reasons for doing what she did and has apologized and apologized and apologized to them. So in fact, we felt like it was time for Kara to stop apologizing. She’d spent a lot of the season apologizing and to let this storyline bring us to the next level of, ‘Look, I did what I did. I took responsibility for what I did and now we have to live in the present and move forward and I’m not going to keep apologizing.’ We feel like that was earned.”
Rovner added that it’s a major moment for Lena as well.
“And I think just to add to that, I think Kara in this episode is taking responsibility for her part in it,” he added. “And I think what she’s imploring Lena is that she needs to take responsibility for what she’s doing.”
And it looks like Lena will choose to go the villain route. The synopsis for the upcoming March 8th episode “The Bodyguard” reveals that Lena moves forward with Non Nocere… with Lex’s help.
Supergirl airs Sundays at 8/7c on The CW.
