Kara deals with a new boss at work as well as a new villain while Lena makes her own dark moves.
Tropes:
- Anti-Intellectualism: Andrea's position is to abandon any kind of authentic journalism in favor of light, fluffy pieces with no thought to accuracy.
- Artistic License – Physics: J'onn and Kara should have been immediately spaghettified by the black hole, and everything and everyone nearby should've been either pulled in or destroyed by intense radiation.
- Augmented Reality: How the Obsidian Lenses work.
- Bag of Kidnapping: Eve gets kidnapped this way.
- Bait-and-Switch: It looks as if after Kara reveals her secret, Lena is ready to forgive her, including not giving Andrea the proof that Kara is Supergirl as she had promised. Instead, Lena confesses to Hope that she's still not ready to forgive Kara, but is simply changing her plans.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
- Andrea has a warm and cheery demeanor, but as soon as somebody goes against her, she outright threatens to ruin the lives of those employees.
- Lena spends the episode faking affection for Kara while spitefully taking shots at her and plotting to expose her identity. Even when they seem to have made peace, Lena fakes forgiveness while simply adjusting her plans for revenge.
- Broken Pedestal: While Kara is initially excited to have William Dey on board, due to him being a prolific journalist, she is quickly disappointed by his Yes-Man attitude towards Andrea.
- Clothing Damage: Kara's cape gets damaged, which prompts Brainy to make her an entirely new suit.
- Creepy Child: What Malefic J'onzz masquerades as.
- Cruel to Be Kind: Brainy has been keeping his distance from Nia despite their relationship to never unwillingly hurt her again like last season. She eventually convinces him to stop and they share a Big Damn Kiss.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Andrea's entire plan to transform CatCo into a place emphasizing "clickbait" stories over actual journalism clearly emulates how numerous media sites have fallen to the same fate.
- Election Day Episode: A US Senate special election serves as the backdrop, with Kara lamenting that voter registration for it is down.
- Evil Is Petty:
- While Lena may not have gone full evil yet, it's clear that her selling CatCo to Andrea and not telling Kara and James about it was driven by her anger at them keeping Kara's secret from her. That this means the company is transformed into a clickbait tabloid and James loses his job doesn't seem to matter much to Lena.
- Lena plan to out Kara also comes under this. She doesn't seem to care that this will mean all of Kara's family and friends (which ironically would include Lena) would suddenly be put at risk from villains who would either want revenge on Supergirl or leverage against her. This would include ex-employees such as Nia, who Lena is unaware has any powers.
- Face–Heel Turn: As noted above, while Lena hasn't yet turned fully evil and refuses to see herself as thus, this episode shows that she hates Kara for a perceived betrayal and would have revealed her secret to the world. She only stops when she realizes that she can now manipulate Kara to further her own plans. Viewers now know that the Lena of the last few seasons is gone.
- Hollywood Law:
- The non-compete agreement that's so important to the dramatic conflict from this episode is actually specifically unenforceable in the state of California. This fact is frequently cited as being one of the major "secrets" behind the success of Silicon Valley, making tech employees able to switch jobs and share ideas with ease.
- Further, it's implied that Andrea unilaterally rewrote the contracts, whereas in real life she wouldn't be able to give all the reporters 3-year contracts with non-compete clauses without their knowledge or agreement. They would need to knowingly sign them, and something inserted later wouldn't be binding.
- There's mention of a special election for US Senate. While the US House of Representatives, aka the "People's House," are required to have special elections to fill vacancies, Senate vacancies are left to the states. Some are filled by the governor of the state appointing a replacement, others by a special election.
- The non-compete agreement that's so important to the dramatic conflict from this episode is actually specifically unenforceable in the state of California. This fact is frequently cited as being one of the major "secrets" behind the success of Silicon Valley, making tech employees able to switch jobs and share ideas with ease.
- Insane Troll Logic: Clearly, Kara's reaction when Andrea claims that her winning a Pulitzer Prize means the paper is less important to casual readers as it's now "pedantic and dull". Kara openly calls it "insane."
- Internal Reveal: Subverted as Kara thinks she's doing this revealing her secret identity to Lena, unaware Lena already knows.
- It's Personal: Lena's feelings towards Supergirl can now be described as little more than spite; she tries to publicly expose Kara's identity, and even after deciding otherwise, continues to plot about how to use Supergirl to achieve her goals and obtain a measure of revenge.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Andrea does have a point about a newspaper having to make profit, like any other company.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: J'onn fought and defeated Midnight in the past, but can't recall how because of Malefic's psychic attack at the museum. When Malefic confronts him directly, J'onn can't even recall having a brother, much less why Malefic holds such enmity towards him, though Malefic likely didn't cause that lapse in memory (or at least, not intentionally); he's infuriated that J'onn doesn't remember him or why he hates his brother.
- Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Invoked, as Lena clearly has a ball castigating herself for not telling Kara about selling CatCo, since Kara is such a better person than she is and would never keep any secrets from her.
- Obliviously Evil: Lena says, in so many words, that she's not a villain. She follows that statement by describing her goal as "fix[ing]" humanity, and explicitly plans to use a superhero who has slighted her to achieve her goals; that anything she's doing might be morally sketchy or outright evil doesn't enter Lena's mind for a second.
- An Offer You Can't Refuse: Andrea basically forces every unwilling employee into her service, as she'll ruin their career in journalism if they dare to get out of their contract.
- Old Friend: Lena and Andrea Rojas apparently go way back.
- Opening Narration: Dropped as of this season.
- Outside-Context Problem: Midnight basically came out of nowhere on Mars and started assisting the White Martians in their genocide.
- In a meta-sense, he's a curveball thrown at the Supegirl-verse by Novu, since Novu freed Midnight and loosed him on National City as a teaser from the previous season's finale.
- Plot Hole: This can apply to Lena's actions up to the Crisis Crossover. Her Face–Heel Turn is based on every person she called a friend or loved, gave betrayed her. She seems to have forgotten Jack did not betray her and neither did Samantha. Also, in season 3, she made it clear to Alex that other people’s secrets are not for another party to reveal. Yet she is angry and hurt because the people that she considered friends, chose not to reveal Kara's secret.
- Proscenium Reveal: In the opening, Lena confronts Supergirl about her Secret Identity and punches her through a bus. It's then revealed that Lena is merely running a simulation as a means to relieve her anger.
- Revenge:
- Lena plans to share the pain that Kara's lies inflicted on her, and even when Kara reveals her secret and begs for forgiveness, Lena, despite pretending to forgive her, only modifies her plans for revenge.
- Midnight hates J'onn for imprisoning her in the Phantom Zone, and seeks some payback when Malefic releases her.
- Malefic bears some unspecified grudge against J'onn and their father, enough to consider the both of them "evil". Whatever Malefic's grievance is, J'onn has no idea what it could be.
- Sadistic Choice: When James threatens to have the staff walk out in defiance of Andrea's new direction for CatCo, she in turn threatens to use the non-compete clauses in their contracts against anyone who quits, effectively ruining their journalism careers.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: James, unwilling to compromise his journalistic ethics for Andrea, quits his job.
- Shout-Out: Brainy, Nia, Alex and Kara argue who is the best movie villain. Brainy says Miranda Priestly, Nia thinks it's Hannibal Lecter, Kara nominates Voldemort, while Alex says it's Hans Gruber. Kelly later gives the same answer as Alex.
- Skewed Priorities: Brainy is more concerned about the damage done to Supergirls cape than the fact that the stolen Kryptonian pod contains enough antimatter to make a bomb capable of destroying all life across three solar systems. Something the others call him out for, though Kara agrees with Brainy that the damaged cape is making flying difficult.
- Start of Darkness: After being teased several times since season 2, this episode sees the start of Lena's descent into villainy.
- Starter Villain: Midnight is the first villain Supergirl and her friends face for the season.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: Lena seems to have decided on this.
- Thinking Up Portals: One of Midnight's abilities.
- Took a Level in Cynic: As a result of finding out Kara's secret (and probably in no small part because of how she found out), Lena has totally abandoned trusting other people and is setting out on a crusade to achieve her altruistic but morally questionable goals on her own, with getting revenge on Kara being a side benefit.
- T. Rexpy: Malefic J'onzz shapeshifts into a T-rex to life to fight Kara.Kara: Well, this is new and terrible.
- Unexplained Recovery: James appears to have regrown his missing eye and healed whatever scarring he had.
- Unrealistic Blackhole: Kara saves J'onn from one created by Midnight.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Lena describes her goal as "fix[ing] humanity", and as the episode ends, she starts pondering about how best to manipulate Supergirl into helping her achieve those ends. Her nobility is undermined somewhat by the fact that using Supergirl has less to do with saving the world and more to do with getting back at her.
- The Worf Effect: Midnight fights off a collective attack from Kara and all of her friends.
- Yes-Man: William Dey seems to be a professional one; when Kara praises his writing style, he shrugs it off as just going with the house style wherever he works and has no problem with bending to Andrea's anti-intellectual method without a fight.
