History Recap / Supergirl2015S4E2Fallout

* RealityEnsues:
** The revelation that the President of the United States is an alien has Marsdin facing both demands for her resignation and impeachment as well as huge protests across the country. She steps down and refuses a pardon to help defuse the situation.
** Lena uses an upgraded ArmCannon against Mercy, but quickly becomes overpowered since she's just not a fighter.

* ComingOutStory: Nia tells James she is transgender, while explaining why she'd stoop up for Brainy since it had reminded her of transphobia.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Agent Liberty's rally, if you were to remove the few people of color there, is disturbingly reminiscent of a white nationalist rally. Even his reference to Marsdin being revealed to be a Durlan could be taken as an example of someone pushing the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama isn't an American citizen, since he doesn't use specific names when referring to Marsdin or her species.

* CategoryTraitor: Mercy denounces both Alex and Lena as "Earth-traitors" for helping aliens (or, in the case of Lena, choosing not to join Mercy's crusade against them).

** The nature of Brainy's human disguise (that its technology provided by L-Corp) is at odds with how it was explained in Season 3 (that it was either a device Brainy created or 31st century tech).

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Agent Liberty's rally, if you were to remove the non-white incidentals, is disturbingly reminiscent of a white nationalist rally. Even his reference to Marsdin being revealed to be a Durlan could be taken as an example of someone pushing the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama isn't an American citizen, since he doesn't use specific names when referring to Marsdin or her species.
* DontCreateAMartyr: Agent Liberty warns Mercy not to do this to Supergirl when Mercy reveals she has a sample of kryptonite.

* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** Otis brings up the lead dispersal bomb while noting how the DEO has killed its fair share of aliens, even betting that it's still in the building, so it's not much of a surprise that he and Mercy steal that on their way out.

** Unsurprisingly, neither Mercy nor her mooks, despite their pro-human mission statement, have any problem harming humans; Mercy murders an L-Corp employee simply to steal his laptop, and her henchmen have no qualms about shooting at three apparently normal humans (one of whom was actually Kryptonian, but none of them were in a position to know that), even before Mercy denounces Lena as an "Earth-traitor".

* MetaCasting: Nia Nal turns out to be transgender, just like her actress Nicole Maines.

* PragmaticVillainy: Agent Liberty balks at the idea of using kryptonite, not out of any moral issue, but because killing Supergirl would just make her a martyr for the other side. Mercy ignores him at the end of the episode by using it in the dispersal bomb.

* BewareTheNiceOnes: Nia refuses to stand by while Massimo, the owner of the pizza parlor Brainy frequents, and his employees harass and attack Brainy, verbally tearing the man a new one for his actions.

* RealityEnsues: The revelation that the President of the United States is an alien has Marsdin facing both demands for her resignation and impeachment as well as huge protests across the country. She steps down and refuses a pardon to help defuse the situation.

* VillainHasAPoint: In-universe, much to Kara's shock, Lena says that she thinks Lex was right in that humans should be just as powerful as aliens.

* MythologyGag: This isn't the first time [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/SupermanII an imprisoned Otis has been replaced by a projection to delay the discovery of his escape]].

** During the attach on L-Corp, Kara declines to put earplugs in, despite the fact Mercy used a similar sonic weapon to incapacitate her in the previous episode.