Supergirl Recap With Spoilers: Red Faced

The episode opens, as most do, with Supergirl flying through the sky. This time, she gets a call from her sister on her earpiece, asking why she's out of the city…but Kara just wants to clear her head. Instead she overhears an altercation in traffic, and has to go break up a couple of alpha males bumpiing at other's cars as they speed through a school zone.

When one of the men gets out of the car and swings at her, and she blocks it and breaks his hand. The kids in the school crosswalk are upset.

At the DEO, Henshaw is upset that Kara didn't control her temper better. On the news, Max Lord is calling for better regulation of Supergirl.

At Noonan's, Lucy asks James to have dinner with her father. She stops and thanks Kara for "the invite" as she leaves, which confuses Kara.

Kara asks James what's bothering him, and he says that he doesn't really get along with General Lane, because he's friends with Superman. Kara asks what "she" invited Lucy to, and James said he invited her to game night.

At Cat's office, her mother has come to visit and is running her down every chance she gets. She doesn't respect Cat's work and wants her to focus more on literature, the industry where she works. She also objects to Cat naming the hero Supergirl instead of Superwoman, and says she prefers Superman anyway because she's old-fashioned.

Kara comes to work, and Alex is there. She wants to talk about her dad, and Kara says no, but Alex wants Winn's help, not Kara's. Winn refuses to break into the DEO mainframe, but is won over when he finds out it's about her father.

Kara gets a call from Henshaw, and so does Alex.

At a DEO base camp, Henshaw and a number ro military personnel show up; General Lane wants Supergirl to help test out a new weapon (and he doesn't like the DEO any more than he likes aliens). Lucy shows up with an executive order signed by the President and Kara agrees to help.

He calls the device a "robot," but Dr. T.O. Morrow, who runs the project, corrects his terminology and introduces her to Red Tornado.

At CatCo, James and Winn tell her she doesn't have to help the Lanes, but she says she needs to prove that she and Superman can be trusted. Winn isn't happy to see that Lucy will be there.

At Cat's office, Cat cleared her calendar for her mother, who bails on her to hang out with Toni Morrison. Overhearing it, Kara brings Cat some layouts, which Cat doesn't like. She tells Kara to oversee the redesigns and stay late. She tells her everyone knows she has a crush on James and she needs to be more professional.

At Game Night, Lucy and James are dominating and being overly romantic. Winn gives terrible clues. Lucy also talks crap about Supergirl.

The next morning at the staging area, Kara is upset and looking for a good fight with Tornado.

Henshaw and Lane have a bit of a pissing match about who has authority over what, and Morrow starts up Red Tornado, which blows Kara into the sky with cyclones and then blasts her with missiles. She flies underground and then comes up behind Red Tornado to knock it over, then gets into an up-close sparring match with the robot. Morrow pulls the plug after the robot starts to experience damage, but Supergirl doesn't hear the call to stand down and damages the robot worse. When she finally relents, it flies away.

General Lane blames her for unleashing "an uncontrollable killing machine" on the city.

At the DEO, Lane tells everyone assembled that he wants Red Tornado found and destroyed. Morrow objects, and Lane fires him for his "failure."

At CatCo, Cat is calling for Kara over and over. When Kara comes in, Cat starts to rant at her about how worthless she is, and Kara finally snaps and yells at her for being mean. She sees Cat's stare afterwords and starts to apologize. Cat tells her to forward the phones; that they're going somewhere together.

At Lord Technology, Alex comes in and asks Max for help tracking down Red Tornado. She appeals to his desire to show her he isn't the bad guy. He declines.

At dinner, General Lane is being characteristically rude to James when Lucy excuses herself. Sam tells James that he knows what Lane is doing with the Red Tornado project. Lane tells him that he isn't good enough for Lucy.

At Noonan's, Cat tells Kara over drinks that women can't get mad at work. She says Kara needs to find a release so that people can't see her go off. She says that she knows Kara wasn't really mad at her, which Kara objects to. Cat says Kara needs to find what she's really mad at and figure it out.

After dinner with the Lanes, James turns on his signal watch when they're attacked by Red Tornado. General Lane orders Red Tornado - which has both arms now — to disengage. Supergirl arrives and the two fight while James carries Lucy away. Tornado turns into a literal tornado, then sets the winds free to ravage the city while he stands before Supergirl. She flies into the cyclone instead of chasing him so that she can save people trapped in the streets by breaking it up.

At the DEO, General Lane is upset that Kara let Tornado go. He tells Kara that she and the DEO will be held responsible if Red Tornado gets away, but Henshaw comes in and tells him off, revealing that Tornado was designed to stop Kryptonians, not terrorists as he was told.

Max Lord calls Alex to see him, and the two commiserate about how their parents both died while working for the government. Lord reveals that the android is a drone — that it's not thinking and evolving as they believe but that the designer is the one responsible. She thanks him and goes to find Morrow.

Kara and James set up "punching bags," Kara's being a car on a crane, and start venting about her anger. She admits to James that she doesn't feel normal and she worries that she'll never have somebody who can really understand her like he has in Lucy. She says her normal life ended when her parents sent her to Earth and that makes her angry. Alex calls her and she excuses herself.

At the DEO, Alex wants to draw out Red Tornado so they can find Morrow. They use General Lane as bait while Alex tracks the scientist...but it's just a hologram of General Lane, created by using Kryptonian crystals.

Turns out there's a telepathic relay via a headset from Morrow, and in order to stop the Tornado, Alex would have to kill Morrow (or, presumably, remove it). She fights him while Tornado fights Kara. As Tornado seems to be getting the better of her, though, Alex shoots Morrow and it stops.

Without Morrow, Red Tornado has become sentient.

And angry. Kara uses heat vision, which has no immediate effect. Tornado marches through it toward her, but she uses her anger to keep pouring it on, flashing back to leaving Krypton and screaming, until Tornado explodes.

At Noonan's, Lucy resigns her commission rather than leave with her father. She tells him that James isn't holding her back and they're on the same team. Lane tells her that he hopes it won't be too late when she realizes what a mistake she's made, and leaves. James holds her.

At home, Alex finds Kara and Winn sitting at a table. Kara tells Alex to sig down, and Winn reveals that he found a file on Jeremiah Danvers's death: he and another agent went to South America to apprehend a hostile alien. Both went missing and were presumed dead until the other agent mysteriously showed up with no memory of the event. The other agent was Henshaw, and he's been redacting and deleting files on their father's death.

Alex immediately assumes Henshaw killed her father, and while Winn cautions her, that doesn't keep her from being suspicious.

At the DEO, Henshaw's eyes glow.

At Cat's office, she's dozing in her chair when her mother starts yelling at Kara for not getting her car promptly. Cat tells off her mother, saying that she doesn't get to talk to Kara that way. Her mother excuses herself, and both Kara and Cat feel much better about the whole situation — although Cat is nursing a hangover. She drops a glass, and Kara cuts her finger on it…surprising herself.