In the penultimate buildup to the series finale, Supergirl and the super friends take drastic action after a loved one is kidnapped by Nyxly and Lex. An unlikely ally steps in to help the team.
Tropes:
- Apple of Discord: Lillian, who doesn't approve of her son becoming romantically involved with an alien, intentionally seeds distrust between the two. This ends up blowing up in her face when Nyxly tries to blast Lex with a piece of the Allstone, and Lillian herself is severely injured Taking the Bullet for him.
- Armor-Piercing Question: When Alex takes the Destiny Totem, Kara asks if she is 100% certain that Lex will keep up his end of the bargain. Alex then asks if Kara is 100% certain that she can save Esme.
- Artistic License – Physics: Basically everything involving the whole "draining the sun to supercharge Kara" plan. Even assuming that the sun would have been merely dimmed heavily (though the dialog seems to imply that the sun would go completely dormant, which is far worse), it would cause catastrophic damage on Earth and kill thousands, if not millions of people, not to mention completely destroy the agriculture industry. Even after they go through with it, Kara also seems to lose all of her enhanced strength as soon as the beam stops, rather than keep what she already gained.
- Beam-O-War: During the final battle, Nyxly and Lex end up doing this with their Allstone fragments.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Lex destroys the bridge he, Nyxly, Alex, Kelly, Lena, Nia, and Esme are on. Despite about a dozen explosions and all kinds of rubble, not only is everyone completely unharmed, even Esme, but their uniforms don't even have a speck of dust on them.
- The Bus Came Back:
- Lillian Luthor returns.
- Philippe, Lex's butler, appears for the first time since "Phantom Menaces."
- Orlando Davis also returns.
- Chaos Architecture: Everyone except Kara, Brainy, and J'onn meet at the bridge to exchange the Totems for Esme. The establishing shot shows said bridge connecting over a deep gorge, with tall cliffs all around. When things go south, Lex blows up the bridge and everyone falls to the riverside below. While the group still ends up at a riverbank, the area around them is completely flat, surrounded by forests and trees, rather than the sheer cliffs shown not even five minutes ago.
- Continuity Nod: Towards Legends of Tomorrow, as the Destiny Totem is the Thread of Destiny from a statue of the Three Fates.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The humans affected by Lex and Nyxly draining their emotions are portrayed that way.
- Evil vs. Evil: Nyxly and Lex fight each other, after the former breaks up with the latter.
- Friend to All Children: Nyxly, surprisingly, though her way of trying to calm Esme down by telling her a story from her childhood has... some flaws.
- Godzilla Threshold: In order to battle the full might of the Allstone, the Superfriends take over an experimental solar satellite in order to power Kara up, despite the huge damage it could cause towards the sun. Kara only calls it off at the very last minute.
- I Gave My Word: Nyxly holds up her end of the bargain and releases Esme once she has the Totems. Too bad Lex had other plans.
- I Lied: Despite promising Nyxly not to betray her, Lex goes against her wishes, planning to harm Esme in order to extract the Dream Totem from her, even though he still does it because he wants to help her (at this point).
- Immediate Sequel: The episode starts right after the Superfriends discover William's body.
- Inspector Javert: Secretary Brown, who understandably objects when the Superfriends try to hijack the solar satellite, which is a joint project between the US government and South America.
- Lizard Folk: How Lex and Nyxly look after the Allstone empowers them.
- Magic Countdown: Kara calls for Brainy to shutdown the satellite mere seconds before the process is supposed to finish. They then spend nearly a minute discussing it before actually shutting the satellite down.
- Mama Bear: Alex is ready to do anything to get Esme back, threatening to outright kill Lex and even going against Kara in planning to hand over the Destiny Totem.
- Mêlée à Trois: After Lex literally blows up the exchange, the ensuing fight over the Allstone turns into a three-way fight between the Superfriends, Lex and Lillian, as well as Nyxly.
- Mexican Standoff: Between Nyxly, Lex and Kara, when all receive one third of the Allstone. While Nyxly and Lex shortly join forces again, blasting Kara away together, they then turn their attention against one another.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Kara stops her power-up through the solar satellite at the last second, seeing how horrified the humans are.
- No Ontological Inertia: Four minutes under the satellite should boost Supergirl's power immensely but also badly damage the sun. She aborts the process mere seconds before it would be complete, which somehow completely reverses the damage to the sun and leaves her with no power boost at all.
- Not Good with Rejection: After Nyxly makes it clear to Lex that the two of them are over, he promptly tries to kill her during the exchange.
- Pet the Dog: Throughout the episode, Nyxly is portrayed as being sincere in wanting no harm to come to Esme, trying to calm her down, protecting her from Lex's attempts to harm her and outright promising her to have her see her moms again. In fact, her acting this way is the reason she finally receives the Love Totem, after several initial fails.
- Power Parasite: Nyxly and Lex slowly drain away all the emotions the Totems encompass from humanity to power themselves up.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: Alex puts her daughter's safety over that of the rest of the world.
- Retcon: Last episode, Nyxly used the Truth Totem to see if Lex was genuinely in love with her and not just using her for his own needs, and was shown that Lex indeed wanted nothing more than to help. When Lillian appears, however, Nyxly strangely doesn't bring this up and begins to doubt Lex, especially when he tries to forcibly extract the Love Totem from Esme.
- Rousing Speech: Orlando gives one to the affected masses, giving them their Hope, Truth, and Love back.
- Shout-Out:
- Lex compares the petals falling off of the flower in Esme's Totem tattoo to Beauty and the Beast.
- Brainy makes one to Cinderella.
- Smart People Play Chess: Or discuss chess, at least. Lillian and Lex discuss the touch-move rule. Then Lillian notes that Lex is repeating a blunder played by Bobby Fischer against the German chess master Wolfgang Unzicker at Buenos Aires 1960. (Which is true: Fischer was forced by that rule to play a very weak move and lost quickly to Unzicker at that event.)
- Taking the Bullet: Lillian takes a blast from Nyxly for Lex, horrifying the latter.
- Would Not Hurt A Child: Nyxly. When Lex argues for cutting the totem out of Esme directly, Nyxly is horrified, and adamantly refuses to let him do anything to harm her. This helps to contribute to the breakdown of trust between them.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: While she gives her a bit of Tough Love at first, Lena encourages Andrea to finally turn her life around.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Lillian's reaction when she hears that Lex fell in love with an alien.
