Supergirl: Easter Eggs and Other Things You Might Have Missed In "Welcome to Earth"

It was a warm welcome to Earth for a number of aliens this week on Supergirl as The President of [...]

By Russ Burlingame - October 24, 2016 11:10 pm EDT

It was a warm welcome to Earth for a number of aliens this week on Supergirl as The President of the United States -- or was it? -- signed into action an alien amnesty act which would allow extraterrestrials to live in the open without fear of being hunted for just existing.

That legislation rubbed everyone the wrong way, from the DEO to a number of criminal aliens, one of whom tried to kill the President of the United States (a few times).

Meanwhile, we learned that Krypton had a sister planet -- another life-sustaining world orbiting the same sun -- which was rendered uninhabitable when Krypton exploded. Their last survivor -- the mysterious Mon-El, who showed up at the end of season 1 in a Kryptonian pod -- is another curiosity altogether.

All of this against the introduction of Maggie Sawyer, a local detective with a soft spot for aliens who has a long history in both Metropolis and Gotham City in the comics.

...Oh, yeah. And we met Miss Martian, played by Sharon Leal, throwing a real monkeywrench into J'Onn's whole "nobody can relate to me ever at all" thing.

So with all that story going on, did they have room for the knowing winks and smiling nods at the comics, pop culture, and the like that have become a staple of Supergirl's second season?

Not as much as the first two episodes, but oh, yes...there were some doozies.

So, what did we see? What did we miss?

Read on, and comment below.

RACHEL TALALAY

We'll give like half a point to director Rachel Talalay, who is best known in comic book circles for directing the cult classic film adaptation of Tank Girl.

She also tackled an episode each of The Flash and DC's Legends of Tomorrow on The CW last year.

Next?

Well...

Today pic.twitter.com/UCqZl71Ryy
— Rachel Talalay (@rtalalay) October 13, 2016

...looks like she'll be hanging around with Mark Hamill and John Wesley Shipp on episode 309 of The Flash.

LYNDA CARTER

SPG203b_BTS_0273b_1 — (Photo: The CW/Warner Bros. TV)

Lynda Carter, the President of the United States in tonight's episode of Supergirl, is best known to comic book fans by being Wonder Woman in the 1977 Wonder Woman TV series, one of the earliest attempts to adapt superheroes to TV.

Carter remains beloved among comics culture, and has never shied away from her history as a geek goddess, playing roles in films like Sky High.

Most recently, she delivered a rousing speech about feminism and hope at the United Nations as Wonder Woman was awarded an honorary ambassadorship to the United Nations.

MAGGIE SAWYER

First introduced during John Byrne's run on the Superman titles, Maggie Sawyer spent years as a Metropolis cop with a broken marriage. Eventually, she developed a same-sex relationship with a reporter (not, as you might be asking, one from the Daily Planet).

Eventually Maggie became one of the most prominent characters in Superman's supporting cast, and one of the earliest major players at Marvel or DC who identified as a homosexual.

She would eventually move from the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit to the Gotham City Police Department, where she would work for years, eventually developing a relationship with Batwoman Kate Kane. The pair were engaged, before things fell apart and Maggie returned to Metropolis to take charge of the unit she had previously worked in.

SCIENCE POLICE?

The "Science Division" is a precursor to the Science Police, an organization seen primarily in the Legion of Super-Heroes but sometimes referenced in other DC books (particularly those set in the future).

In the comics, the Science Police first surface in Metropolis and Midway City in the early 21st Century, a replacement for the Special Crimes Unit (which later came back). They work with, and are staffed by, local police officers but fall under federal jurisdiction and work on crimes perpetrated by aliens and metahumans.

In the future, they're essentially the official law enforcers of the United Planets, and work (sometimes not so harmoniously) with the Legion of Super-Heroes.

ALIEN DETECTION DEVICE

L Corp Device — (Photo: The CW/Warner Bros. TV)

It's not really an Easter egg, per se, but it's worth noting that the alien detection device being developed by L Corp is pretty similar to the app created by Harrison Wells on Earth-2 (on The Flash) to detect metahumans nearby.

Ultimately, it didn't help to stop any actual metahuman crime, but it did give us some humorous moments along the way.

Probably also worth a mention that the aliens here are worried about forced registration. This is typically something Marvel has wrestled with over the years, particualrly with mutants, but with the Marvel Cinematic Universe going all-in on an adaptation of Civil War, it leaves the questions of whether registration is a good thing open for Supergirl to raise.

MON-EL

Wow. Where to start with Mon-El?

When I was a teenager, Lar Gand (more popularly known as Mon-El) was known as Valor. Spinning out of the events of Eclipso, the character was a Superman-level power who was having vague memories of a past life.

That's just one of a handful of different versions of Lar Gand/Mon-El, and there's a lot of confusion that comes with him. In some stories, he's actually been slotted in to replace Superboy due to retroactive continuity changes that made Superboy appearances impossible.

He's from Daxam, a fictional DC world with a people who have powers and abilities similar to those of Kryptonians -- but instead of being weakened by Kryptonite, it's lead that kills them.

Lar Gand studied "forbidden lore" on Daxam, including stories of Krypton. When he decided to follow Kal-El's rocket to Earth, he crashed and lost his memory. Given his similar abilities, a then-teenage Superboy supposed that the two might be related, and Lar Gand took on the name Mon-El. Later, when exposure to lead nearly killed him, Mon-El was placed in the Phantom Zone, where he emerged in the 30th Century to be healed by (and join) the Legion of Super-Heroes.

It's as a Legionnaire that he had the most connection to Supergirl, particularly during Mark Waid's Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes run. He would also serve as Earth's primary super-protector during "World of New Krypton," headlining the Superman titles while Superman himself was living with thousands of unsettled Kryptonians on the moon.

Ah, comics.

It seems likely that version -- one who is fascinated/obsessed by Kryptonian lore, and who comes to Earth believing himself to be Kryptonian or wanting to be part of the El heritage -- will be the one they use on the show. Of course, this being a Berlanti/Kreisberg show, it's just as likely he'll turn out to be evil and just playing dumb.

If he's not, though? Could we see Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes on TV?!

"E.T. PHONE HOME"

Okay, yeah, this one is the kind of references that's so in-your-face that it seems pretty much impossible to miss...

...but whenever we don't mention those, we get yelled at. So here goes:

In Steven Spielberg's family/sci-fi classic E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, the titular alien didn't want anything here; he was stranded and just wanted to return to his homeworld. As he started to develop rudimentary English skills and a very basic sense of how things worked on our world, he attempted to use the telephone to contact his people for rescue.

Hence "E.T. phone home," which became probably the most quoted line of the movie.

DO THE TWIST

c3ff71fd51e707cd73f3c069c382e284 — (Photo: DC Entertainment)

That little maneuver Supergirl used to put out the fire on her costume? A pretty clear nod to Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman twirl — the way she used to change into her costume on the '77 series.

It was used in the comics and in animation at times, as well, but it's most commonly associated with Carter's iconic performance on TV.

WHO'S THAT LADY?

arrow-cave-2 — (Photo: DC Entertainment)

"She hangs out down by the foundry," says one alien of this week's villain.

That's a fun word: foundry.

For years, Oliver Queen's base was in a former foundry, and while fans called it The Lair or the Arrowcave or whatever they called it, it was officially "The Foundry."

Since there have been a handful of jokes in-universe about bad guys' propensity for hanging out in places like abandoned warehouses, the word feels like it might have been intentional.

"MY OTHER JET"

Of course, the President's reference to "my other jet" is a nod to Wonder Woman's invisible jet which, admittedly, is cooler than Air Force One...

...but maybe "you should see my other jet" was a poor choice of words?

MISS MARTIAN

Near the end of tonight's episode of Supergirl, Martian Manhunter went into a bar -- and what he found there surprised even him.

Coming right at the end of the clip posted above, the bartender Hank creepily followed out into a dark alley reveales herself as M'gann M'orzz, the "last daughter of Mars."

The character, a major player in Geoff Johns's run on Teen Titans, is probably best known to TV audiences from her appearances on the animated cult hit Young Justice.

She's played here by Sharon Leal, who has a number of notable credits to her name, including multi-episode arcs on Private Practice, Hellcats, and Grimm.

M'gann is actually a White Martian who decided to become "good" and elected to look like a Green Martian instead. The concept of White Martians was introduced in the eleventh episode of Supergirl's first season, when Martian Manhunter had to face one down.

Miss-Martian-Supergirl-002 — (Photo: The CW/Warner Bros. TV)

You can check out more images in the gallery attached.

There had been some speculation that due to the on-again, off-again Titans series that Warner Bros. Television was trying to develop, Miss Martian may have been off the table for Supergirl. At this point, that show looks like it won't happen.

Supergirl hasn't been shy about drawing from Teen Titans and other fairly recent material like the "World of New Krypton" arc in the Superman titles from about ten years ago, so it wouldn't be surprising to learn that Miss Martian first showed up as an operative for the White Martians before being turned on Supergirl.

The character will play a bigger role on next week's "Survivors," an episode that centers on an underground fight club for aliens run by Justice Society villain Roulette. You can see a trailer for that episode here.