Supergirl S1E8 - "Hostile Takeover" Review

                                            

Episode 8 of Supergirl is called, “Hostile Takeover”. I’m still reeling after the events of last week’s episode and I’m curious to see where the show is heading going into the Winter Finale. This episode picks up exactly where last week’s ended, with Astra confronting Kara. Kara manages to escape, however. We still have no idea what Astra is really up to.

Catgo has been hacked. But more importantly, Cat has been exposed and embarrassed publicly. Cat tasks Kara, James, and Winn with sifting through her emails to find embarrassing information before someone else does. There’s also some tension between Winn and James, which I don’t really understand. In this instance, I do feel like it takes away from the show a little bit.

Astra and her lieutenant are having a conversation about their plans. There’s some hesitation on Astra’s part. Kara is her niece, after all. She tells her lieutenant (who is also her husband) that her will is strong and she will see their plan out, even if it kills her.

Kara and Alex are sparring. In between their sparring, Alex tells Kara that she might have to kill Astra and that she has to be ready for it. When Alex probes her, Kara walks off and we’re greeted with a flashback between adolescent Kara and Astra back on Krypton. We get a glimpse of Astra that we haven’t seen thus far; she’s caring. We know that she doesn’t want to see another planet die like Krypton and we know now that she had done something back on her home planet to try and prevent that very fate from coming to pass. Still, she has to leave. The two sisters meet face to face.

The next scenes focus on Catgo, the company, and the board. We’ve never seen the board and up until this point (if you didn’t know a thing about business), you’d think Cat ran the company by herself. But here, she is speaking with board members who urge her to distance herself from the company, save for one member, Dirk Armstrong. Somehow, I suspect he’s behind all of this: he seems too eager to be on Cat’s side. And of course I’m right. Kara uses her super-hearing to overhear Dirk admitting to leaking things to the press. So Team Supergirl goes to Lucy for legal advice and she actually offers up some good stuff.

While all that is happening, Astra appears in National City in public, wanting to speak to Kara. Kara has no interest in speaking. The two duke it out all over National City. The two cause destruction all over. Kara can’t bring herself to finish Astra, however. She takes her to the DEO. Team Supergirl, courtesy of Winn, figures out how to bring Armstrong down. It’s up to James to plant the bug in Armstrong’s computer, which he’s able to do with his effortless charm.

Astra is awake but will only talk to Kara; she’s handling so much on both fronts today. She wants to tell Kara the truth. We find out that Alura used Kara to send Astra to jail. Astra pleads her case, wanting to save Earth from the same fate, but Kara is too angry to listen. She runs to the conscious of her mother, wanting answers, but because it’s only a program, the HoloAlura can only tell her so much. Regardless, we get some powerful scenes from Kara here.

Back at Catgo, we discover one of Cat’s secrets. She has a 24 year old son, Adam Foster, who she’s been giving money to over the years. She didn’t raise him as she was busy building Catgo. In order to spare him any unwanted public drama, Cat decides that she’ll graceful stepdown from her company. I love all the Cat scenes. While she’s getting ready to meet the press, Lucy, James, and Winn stop her. They finally have proof of what Armstrong was up to. Cat meets with him and lays it all out and he’s taken away.

Okay, I’m about to take back what I said about James and Winn. Man are they doing the James character right! He acknowledges that Winn has feelings for Kara and tells him that he should tell her. I was really worried that this was going to be some weird triangle thing.

At the DEO, Alex and Henshaw (still gonna call him that for “reasons”) are discussing the last fight between Astra and Kara. They discover that Astra wanted to get caught. Turns out, whatever plan she has in motion is already being enacted. Her soldiers go to Lord Technologies.

Now to the moment of the hour, the moment I wasn’t expecting and didn’t know I wanted. Cat, being the journalist extraordinaire that she is, deduces in front of Kara that she’s Supergirl. While Kara tries, in vain, to deny it, Cat knows. I really didn’t think they would reveal Kara’s secret to Cat, but part of me is glad that they did.

There’s a fight going on at Lord Technologies, with Astra’s crew doing heavy damage. The episode ends with Supergirl and Nom, Astra’s husband, fighting.

All in all, this was another strong episode that focused on characterization. We learned more about Astra’s motivations, as well as some deep seated feelings within Kara. We also learned a lot about Cat, the things she cares most about. And most importantly, now she knows that Kara is Supergirl. It’ll be interesting to see what she does with that information, if she does anything at all.

Supergirl airs Mondays at 8pm Eastern Standard Time on CBS.