Supergirl: Easter Eggs And Other Things You Might Have Missed In “Crossfire”

Tonight on Supergirl, the deep cuts and Easter eggs took a bit of backseat to a fast-paced plot that cut between multiple stories and featured big reveals and status quo changes for a handful of characters.

To the surprise of nobody, this meant a few less winks and nods to the audience, and a few less inside-jokes for longtime comic book readers…but less, of course, isn’t zero.

So…what did we see? What did we miss?

Read on, and comment below.

SUPERGIRL TAKES ON A RUTHLESS NEW GANG — Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) must beat a ruthless new gang who has been armed with dangerous new alien technology. When Cadmus sends a video to the DEO, the team realizes Cadmus is the one staffing the criminals for a secret mission.

Meanwhile, Kara (Melissa Benoist) gets Mon-El (Chris Wood) a job as an intern at CatCo, James makes an important decision and Lena (Katie McGrath) invites Kara to attend one her fundraisers.

Glen Winter directed the episode written by Gabriel Llanas & Anna Musky-Goldwyn.

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

HEAT VISION HAIRCUT

As we’ve noted before (remember when that whole “how does Superman shave?” thing came up in the run-up to Man of Steel?), the invulnerability that makes super-people so hard to hurt can also have a downside.

Like, you need serious tools, or at least a blast of heat vision, to do simple things like cutting hair and shaving.

We saw Supergirl take a little off the sides for “Mike” today, and do so with her heat vision, a wink-and-a-nod to the way Superman traditionally shaves (by bouncing it off a mirror, or the reflective surface of a piece of his ship)

FASHION MONTAGE

This is, by our count, the third fashion montage we’ve seen on the show thus far. There was a really short one in the season premiere, with Kara trying on a few outfits for her date, apparently at super-speed. Before that, the pilot had an extended, comical one — with dialogue — as Winn tried to figure out what costume worked best for her as Supergirl.

While we’re at it, can we just take a moment to point out that with the bow tie, the checkered shirt, and the sweater, he kind of reminds us of the classic Jimmy Olsen look?

EVE TESSMACHER

In case anybody had any doubts, the “Miss Tessmacher” we met in the season premiere didn’t go with Cat, but stayed on as James’s new assistant.

She’s also EVE Tessmacher, making her presumably the same Miss Tessmacher from Superman: The Movie and Superman II, whom the internet alternately calls “Eve” or “Eva.”

NOTE: Due to poor weather conditions, my digital copy of Superman: The Movie is moving too slowly for me to bother watching it and figuring out which is correct.

THANK RAO

Rao is both the name of Krypton’s red sun, and of the sun god representing the global culture’s most popular deity.

In the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths era, when Superman had memories of Krypton and identified more as Kryptonian than human, he would often use phrases like “Great Rao!” in place of human slang. That was one of the things they specifically removed post-Crisis, when Superman was being treated as somebody who identified as human.

Rao was also recently used as a villain in Bryan Hitch’s JLA, his pre-Rebirth Justice League series.

BRIDWELL AVENUE

One of a number of things in National City named for E. Nelson Bridwell, Bridwell Avenue is where one of Supergirl’s conflicts with the alien-tech-wielding gang happens.

Bridwell was a longtime writer and editor who contributed to MAD magazine and DC Comics. During his many years at DC, he wrote and/or edited hundreds of issues of Superman-related titles including Adventure Comics, Action Comics, The Superman Family, World’s Finest Comics and Legion of Super-Heroes. He was the first person to officially establish a Kryptonian alphabet, and his version remained in use for decades until it was replaced during John Byrne’s The Man of Steel reboot of the Superman mythology.

GUARDIAN

We all know it’s coming, so we’ll just put this right here:

James Olsen is set to become Guardian any day now, and this episode clearly set him on that path.

“James has a pretty big turn coming up. These next few episodes are going to make him realize that being a photographer…is not enough for him, so he’s going to go on a pretty exciting career trajectory that we’re pretty pumped by,” teased executive producer Andrew Kreisberg. “James is going to decide that he can no longer sit back and be a sidekick, so he’s going to become a vigilante. He’s going to become Guardian, complete with the shield, which is going to cause a massive problem in his relationship with Kara, becuase he’s not going to tell her.”

James will recruit Winn to be his “man in the van,” so Winn will be helping both Supergirl and Guardian, but trying to keep his “night job” off the radar of Supergirl and the DEO.

Last season, character actor Eddie McClintock appeared on the series in the role of James Harper, the character known as Guardian in the comics. Over the years, both Malcolm Duncan and Jake Jordan, both men of color, among others have assumed the role of the Guardian. Arguably the most visible iteration of the Guardian was the one in Young Justice, heavily influenced by the Jake Jordan version of the character.

“OPERATION DOUBTFIRE”

This isn’t like last season, when Cat Grant came right out and said she wanted to see whether Supergirl and Kara were on and the same: Lena Luthor certainly seems to be angling that way, but she never said it outright.

For that reason, it seems Kara didn’t feel as threatened, and so decided that instead of using J’Onn J’Onzz to misdirect, she would go ahead and just play the old now-I’m-here-but-oh-I’m-gone-so-here’s-Supergirl game.

Here, they call that “Operation Doubtfire,” a nod to the Robin Williams film Mrs. Doubtfire, in which he impersonates an elderly woman and becomes his ex-wife’s maid in order to get access to his children after he loses custody.