Flashbacks show Lex's machinations from the Crisis to the present day.
Tropes:
- Arc Welding: Much like the premise of "The House Of L", this episode shows that nearly all of the seemingly unrelated crimes and unfortunate happenings since Crisis ended were orchestrated by Lex.
- Artistic License – Geography: Lex Luthor travels to Brazil and the caption identifies the place as the city of São Paulo. There is only one big mistake: the location where Lex is is clearly the Lapa Arches... located at the city of Rio de Janeiro. For foreign audiences who do not know Brazilian geography, it is basically the same as saying that the Empire State Bulding is located in Pennsylvania.
- Asshole Victim: Although she's ultimately a casualty in Lex's machinations, it's hard to feel bad for Margot when she was a prominent member of a Nebulous Evil Organization.
- Badass Boast: Gamemnae is quick to remind Lex that she is a god when she angrily confronts him over killing Margot.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Lex's plan over the entire season, condensed into his perspective for this episode, goes off pretty much without a hitch. He's on the verge of getting everything he wants and even manages to sabotage Lena's relationship with Kara again when it seems like they're reconciling.
- Beneath the Mask: Despite all her horrific actions this season and her refusal to believe Kara is the real personality, Lena was the only one to notice Kara sadly sneak out of the briefing. She then followed Kara to her office and despite the extremely uncomfortable atmosphere offered genuine sympathy to Kara. It shows that deep down Lena still cares about Kara and wants her to be friend. That is until Lex sabotaged any reunion.
- The Bus Came Back:
- Brenda Strong (Lillian Luthor) returns in this episode and Lena and Lex return after sitting out the last two episodes.
- Ms Martian also returns to help fight the Sun Eater.
- Call-Back: When Lex calls his mother to tell her about all his machinations, he tells her he did it "My Way," (complete with the background music).
- The Cameo:
- Clark Kent and his two Alternate Selves shown in Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019) (the Smallville one and the Superman Films one) make a minor appearance in Lex's memories, using footage from that event.
- Although unseen onscreen, Chris Wood (Mon-El) played one of the dead bodies under the sheets.
- The Chessmaster: Lex is in rare form, having spent all of his time since Crisis manipulating events in the hope that Leviathan and Supergirl will destroy each other while he is remembered as a hero.
- Cosmic Retcon: The episode explores one: how Lex rose to power after his reality altering antics in Crisis.
- A Day in the Limelight: For Lex. And to a minor extent for Eve, whose whole story since crisis is shown.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Lena seems genuine when she gives her condolences to Kara about Jeremiah's death, even calling her Kara for the first time since "Tremors". Something that Lex didn't see coming, so he tricks them into becoming enemies again soon after.
- Evil Is Petty: Lex set up Eve as payback for deceiving him last season, even though this version of her isn't the same person. His reason for admitting to all of this was equally petty; Eve had genuinely fallen in love with Lex, and he couldn't resist the opportunity to spill the beans and gloat over how badly he'd screwed her over.
- Eviler than Thou: After Lex reveals the extent of his grooming and manipulation of her, a disgusted Eve calls him out on his methodology being even crueler than Leviathan's.Eve: You are worse than Leviathan.
Lex: No. I'm better. - Fall Guy: Lex set up Margot as one for both himself and Leviathan.
- False Friend:
- Subverted. For the first time since season 4, Lena is being genuine when offering condolences to Kara and giving her a book on grief.
- Played straight with Lex and Eve; every kind thing he does for her has an ulterior motive, and it's all meant to get revenge for her betrayal of him, which, courtesy of the Cosmic Retcon of Crisis, never happened.
- Feed It a Bomb: Subverted. J'onn tries to fly a hydrogen bomb into the Sun Eater in an effort to shrink it, but the thing is so hot that he's ejected before he can plant the bomb. Supergirl instead tosses the bomb as close to the Sun Eater as possible and detonates it with a missile, achieving the same effect.
- Game Face: When Gamemnae loses her temper, her skin turns metallic.
- Hope Spot: While Kara and Lena's initial conversation is uncomfortable, it does offer hope that they could reconcile. Lex notices this and quickly sabotages any hope of a reconciliation.
- How We Got Here: The Cold Open starts with Lex just having killed Margot and being hailed a hero, the rest of the episode are mostly Flashback to him manipulating the events leading up to it.
- Hypocrite: Lena has some nerve calling Kara "two-faced" for using Myriad, given that before Crisis, she'd manipulated Kara to get access to the device herself and expressed rage for the heroes assuming that she'd stolen it for nefarious purposes. That said, Lena's anger is based on Kara's own apparent hypocrisy; using Myriad is apparently fine for Kara, but forbidden for Lena, since Kara doesn't bother explaining what she's doing with the device beyond using it to locate some missing people.
- Internal Reveal: This episode shows Lex being told about Leviathan. He also reveals that he knows to Gamemnae, but keeps on manipulating her.
- Kaiju: The Sun Eater the Morae Leviathan assassin frees on behest of Lex as a distraction grows gigantic the closer it gets to the sun.
- Kick the Dog: Lex takes incredible glee in rubbing it into Eve's face how much he used her and how she cannot back out now.
- Killed Off for Real: Margot dies in this episode, to the displeasure of Gamemnae and presumably some of the other Leviathan members.
- Leitmotif: My Way once again plays for Lex.
- Out of Focus:
- Due to Melissa Benoist directing the episode, not that much of her character is seen onscreen.
- Kelly gets her usual one scene.
- Alex, Andrea and William barely feature and Nia does not appear at all.
- Playing Both Sides: Lex plays everyone like a fiddle. His sister, Eve, Supergirl and Leviathan.
- Poor Communication Kills: Part of what undoes the healing in Lena and Kara's relationship is their refusal to tolerate seeming betrayals of trust; Lena entering the Fortress uninvited spoils any interest Kara has in listening to her, and Lena assumes that Kara's use of Myriad was designed to disrupt her own plans, neither woman managing to look past their anger, and losing what trust they'd managed to regain in each other as a result.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Lillian tries to talk Lex out of killing Supergirl because she is of more use as an ally. Lex simply can't do that, however, as he can't get over his issues with the Kryptonians.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Lillian is annoyed with Lex's overzealous behaviour.
- The Reveal:
- For one, Lex is revealed to be behind Jeremiah Danvers's death, having lied to Eve and made her think he was her late father's murderer. In-universe, he reveals this to her as part of his rejection of her affections.
- Lex's overarching plan is to develop a means to negate Leviathan's immortality and then kill them, hopefully having them knock off Supergirl along the way.
- Leviathan, meanwhile, wants to addict everyone to Obsidian VR and then use it to kill them all at once.
- Seen It All: Lillian doesn't really react all that much after being told by Lex about the death of the previous Multiverse.
- Shock and Awe: Gamemnae non-fatally zaps Lex for speaking to her as if they're equals.
- Trapped in Villainy: Post-Crisis, Eve was forced into becoming an assassin for Leviathan when they killed her father and threatened her mother's life. Lex pretends to rescue Eve in order to earn her trust, only to keep her under his thumb with the same threat, along with having manipulated her into killing Jeremiah, risking the wrath of Supergirl.
- The Unreveal: Eve's father's killer. Lex doesn't know, and never bothered to find out, and lied that Jeremiah was the murderer.
- Unwitting Pawn: Despite being rightfully suspicious of Lex, Brainy still ends up being manipulated into helping undo the healing in Lena and Kara's friendship.
- Villain Ball: Lex telling Eve all about how he manipulated her and blackmailing her instead of letting her continue to happily be his Perky Female Minion of her own free will. No way this won't come back to bite him in the ass.
- Villain with Good Publicity: In addition to the sterling reputation he obtained post-Crisis (which Lillian convinced him not to waste on plans to destroy Superman and Supergirl), Lex gets the credit for saving people from Obsidian Platinum's failsafe bug, a crisis he himself orchestrated.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Lex convinces Brainiac to talk Kara into using Myriad to track the Obsidian users still trapped in VR, knowing Lena would notice and confront Kara over her apparent hypocrisy.
