The episode begins where the last one left off — with Supergirl and Non taking to the air for a fight. They’re briefly interrupted by a plane that blows past them, after which they wrestle, and crash to earth outside of Lord Technologies. Non starts to get the upper hand, but when Henshaw comes to Kara’s rescue, Non grabs him and flies off.
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At Lord, Max tells DEO security to stay away from his property, kicking out Alex when she starts to challenge him. She asks Max what the aliens were looking for, and he kicks them out without comment.
At the DEO, nobody is sure who’s in charge because Hank had classified the line of succession. Alex discovers that she’s the boss now, and while everyone else hops to, Kara is suspicious. She wants to ask Astra where Non took Henshaw.
Near her cell, Kara tries to get information from Astra, even threatening to call in Superman, but Astra isn’t have any of it. She says Kara is compromised by her feelings about Alura.
Astra says she ordered Non to spare her, “because blood bonds us all.” They argue, and when Kara tells Astra that she’s in the cell because of her own actions, Astra says that Kara has chosen sides.
On Krypton prior to its destruction, Alura makes a “blood binds us all” speech as she sentences Astra and Non. He is defiant as she sends them to the Phantom Zone.
At CatCo, Kara is confused because Max Lord has covered up the attack on his company. She starts to panic when she hears Cat coming, and tells Winn and James that Cat thinks she’s Supergirl. Nervous, she overheats Cat’s latte with her heat vision and then nearly forgets her glasses when she goes to bring her a mug of coffee instead. Cat comes in and is immediately questioning why Kara is still playing normal. She’s not convinced when Kara tries to make a joke.
At the DEO later, Kara brings Alex lunch from a food truck in Chicago. They receive a message from Non who proposes a trade — Henshaw for Astra within 48 hours.
When they come to the staging area, General Lane has a presidential order giving him control over the DEO.
At Lord Technologies, Max confronts James when he comes to find out what he’s planning on doing, then he has him escorted off the property.
At CatCo, Kara comes to see Cat, who has been digging into Kara’s past. She gives Kara a quiz on her own biography, but when Kara gives answers that are too good, she’s even more convinced.
At Non’s headquarters, a mind-reader tries and fails to get anything out of Henshaw, and then Non kills him in a vain attempt to intimidate him.
At the DEO, Lane goes to interrogate Astra. He tells her that he is, by Kryptonian standards, a man of honor and that he takes no pleasure in what comes next. A group of soldiers come to him with a syringe full of Kryptonite. They start torturing her and then Alex has to drag a screaming Kara out of the room when she interrupts the process (and gets depowered by Kryptonite almost immediately).
At CatCo, James tells Kara that he didn’t learn anything from Max. She’s called away by Cat, and Winn calls him on lying. James wants to recruit Winn to help him break into Max’s facility and find out what countermeasures Max is developing against the Kryptonians.
On the patio outside her office, Cat asks Kara to sit down with her and tells her that every minute she spends at CatCo, somebody out in the world is not being saved. She tells her to prove that she’s not Supergirl, or clean out her desk tomorrow.
At Lord, James kicks his way in after Winn disables the alarms. There’s a laser grid in the next room, which Winn disables and James works his way down the hallway taking photos.
In Room 52, there’s a biometric security entry point — it’s the only one not protected by a keypad. When James stops to check it out, he’s knocked unconscious by Lord and two security goons.
The DEO believes they’ve got the information they want from Astra, and are going to move in on the Kryptonian base. Supergirl comes along, but the location they’ve been given is a container yard and the containers are lined with lead, so Supergirl can’t see through them.
Non and his men are preparing for the attack when Kara finds Henshaw strapped to a chair inside a container…but it’s a hologram, and a bomb goes off. Kara manages to protect a couple of the men and Alex, but almost everyone is killed by the blast. Astra played them.
In a lair, Max has James chained to a chair and interrogating him about who helped him break into Lord Technologies. He roughs James up and then smashes his camera with a wrench, telling him next time he won’t stop there.
Back at CatCo, Kara tells Cat that she can’t tell her she’s Supergirl — and that CatCo is more important to her than Cat realizes. She says that she relies on Cat to help her make important decisions, and that she needs Cat more than she ever has. Cat tells her that she knows what she has to do, then, and Kara quits. Cat tells her to finish out the day.
In the room where James and Winn have set up the headquarters, Kara comes in to find James nursing his wounds, and is infuriated that her team lied to them. She swears that he’s evil and that she’ll do whatever it takes to stop him. James tells her that she sounds like Astra, and Kara tells him to get out of her way — but Winn stands in the doorway and bars her leaving. He tells Kara that she can’t go off half-cocked, or it proves Max right. Kara says that she’s lost everything — she can’t help Henshaw, stop Non, salvage her relationship with Cat or even find comfort in memories of her mother. James and Winn sit her down to tell her heroes find a way.
At Astra’s cell, Kara says she’s ready to listen now because she understand what it is to be scared to lose everything — but that they can’t let fear control them. She says she still has faith there’s good in Astra, and that everyone deserves faith. She asks what really happened on Krypton.
In the flashbacks, Alura tells Astra that she believes Krypton faces annihilation, and that she’s only condemning her because she’s a murderer. Nothing can change that. She promises Astra to fight for Astra’s cause, not with violence but with compassion and reason. She says it’s the only hope to save their world — and then she sees her sister away to Fort Rozz.
In the present, Astra tells Kara that her mother never stopped believing in Astra — and that Kara is so much like her. Kara tells Astra it’s not too late, and asks her to tell them where Henshaw is. Astra says the only way to save him is to make the trade, and that the humans will never agree to that — but Kara says it’s a good thing she’s not human.
Supergirl and a group of DEO agents bring Astra into the staging area, and Lane has his men try to stop them, but Supergirl manages to stare them down — because Supergirl saved them at the blast site. Lane objects, but Supergirl has faith they won’t be betrayed.
At the site of the exchange, Non brings Henshaw, and Supergirl hands off Astra — who had been in Kryptonite cuffs but is released. Henshaw objects to negotiating with the terrorists, but thanks them. Supergirl hears something; it’s Non and Astra’s troops. As they prepare to attack, Astra commands them to stand down. She tells Non to honor the agreement, and after a tense moment, he does so, ordering a withdrawal. Non flies off angrily, leaving Astra, who says this is not a truce. Supergirl tells her to call it a start.
Back at the DEO, they kick the army out, and then Supergirl asks Henshaw what Alex meant by “You have to transform,” something she said during battle and Kara heard with her powers. She says they could have told her — that she can keep a secret, and they both say she can’t.
Supergirl arrives at Cat’s office, followed shortly by Kara, who introduces herself to Supergirl. Supergirl excuses herself, taking to the air, as Cat offers Kara her job back, as long as she doesn’t tell anyone that Cat thought she was Supergirl.
On the roof of the building, Kara joins Supergirl, who transforms back into Martian Manhunter, and then into Henshaw. She thanks him for his help, and he says that he wouldn’t have minded her coming to the DEO full time. She says she can’t leave CatCo, that it’s more than just a secret identity — that her friends stopped her from making a big mistake today.
Later, Clark texts her to ask if she’s okay and if she needs help. She says she will ask if she does — and he tells her to remember he’s there, and that blood bonds them all.
James and Winn come to check on Kara, who thanks them for their help and says things are alright with Cat. The plan is to expose Max Lord and put him away.
At Lord Technologies, Max enters Lab 52. Aside from a hologram of the Red Tornado arm, he has a “Jane Doe” who apparently died from brain trauma. It’s a young blonde, who opens her eyes — they’re entirely black.