"Kara, I know you're upset with him for what he did. I would be too. But that doesn't mean you have to fight this alone."

—James Olsen to Kara Danvers.

"Solitude" is the fifteenth episode of the first season of Supergirl, and the fifteenth episode overall. It aired on February 29, 2016.

Synopsis

Kara travels to Superman's Fortress of Solitude in hopes of learning how to defeat Indigo, a dangerous being who can transport via the Internet and who has a connection to Kara's past. Also, James’s relationship with Lucy reaches a crossroads.[src]

Cast

Starring

• Melissa Benoist as Kara Danvers/Supergirl
• Mehcad Brooks as James Olsen
• Chyler Leigh as Dr. Alex Danvers
• Jeremy Jordan as Winn Schott
• David Harewood as Director "Hank Henshaw"
• Calista Flockhart as Cat Grant

Special guest star

• Jenna Dewan Tatum as Lucy Lane

Guest starring

• Chris Vance as General Non
• Laura Vandervoort as Indigo
• Italia Ricci as Siobhan Smythe
• Malina Weissman as young Kara Zor-El

Co-starring

• Briana Venskus as Agent Vasquez
• Jay Jackson as News Anchor
• Kelly Chavers as Girlfriend
• Michael Hanson as Guy #2
• Nick Jaine as Guy #1
• Carly Nykanen as Woman
• Patrick O'Connell as General Mathers
• Ruben Vernier as Boyfriend

Plot

In a flashback, the young Kara Zor-El is in hypersleep while her pod drifts in the Phantom Zone. Suddenly, she wakes up and notices a computer console in her dashboard that lights up with a logo with three dots in a triangular shape. Her pod and Fort Rozz's engines activate, traveling to Earth.

In the present day, Alex brings Kara breakfast to entice her to come back to the D.E.O., but Kara declines because she's still coping with Hank "killing" Astra. Kara heads off to CatCo, where she and Winn once again endure a condescending Siobhan, before being interrupted by Cat asking everyone to attend a conference call. Siobhan shows Cat a package that she should see personally, but Cat wants it open for all to see. James takes the package and opens it to find a thumb drive from Diamond Discretions, an affairs website, and a letter imploring Cat to release the names. Lucy points out many of the people are public figures but Cat refuses to do an anonymous person's bidding. She tells Siobhan to have the drive "microwaved".

At the D.E.O., Alex and Hank spar and debate over whether Kara should know the truth, and Hank briefly reverts into his Martian form before changing back in an intense moment. He insisted that D.E.O. will continue to function without Kara and revealing the truth will only cause more pain, despite that he didn't want to lose her either.

Back at CatCo, James reminds Kara about how he needs to tell Lucy her secret, but Kara says her life is already too complicated and dangerous, before Lucy walks in, conveniently mistaking that their conversation is about the thumb drive and stating that there's nothing she hates more than liars. Just then, the monitors and other electronic devices start to go haywire. A blonde woman appears on all of the screens. She tells Cat that she ignored what was on the drive, and warns her that she will bring chaos to National City. Cat orders Winn to fix the systems. The hacker starts disrupting the traffic signals. Kara, as Supergirl, arrives to prevent a potentially catastrophic accident just in time.

The city begins to panic. Cat tells Siobhan to call her investment broker, but she stammers for a moment before Kara takes the assignment. Cat tells James to get every reporter on this latest cyber attack, but as James prepares to cover the story, Lucy is not pleased because Supergirl is involved.

At Kara's apartment, Kara and James watch Winn try to crack the code to no avail when the hacker appears on the screen. Suddenly, she teleports through the computer into the room as a blue woman with a three-dot symbol on her head. As she attacks, Kara is suddenly joined by Hank and Alex, causing the woman to retreat back into the computer. They try to persuade Kara to come back to the D.E.O. because they have the information on the computer. However, Kara is not ready to return.

The cyberwoman teleports through another computer, scares a couple off and meets with Non, who is still grieving over Astra's death. Now calling herself Indigo, she tells Non that Astra's notion of living alongside the humans can't work, and vows to change that so she and the Kryptonians can be only ones left on Earth.

Back at CatCo, Winn helps Siobhan with the copy machine, but she is upset over finding that her father was listed as a member of Diamond Discretions thanks to Indigo and leaves him to make the copies.

Alex later stops by to ask Winn to help with disabling the malware, which upsets Kara. The frustration prompts James to take Kara to Superman's Fortress of Solitude.

After Kara opens the door with a million-ton key, they find a number of artifacts, including Kal-El's pod. James expresses surprise that Kal-El never brought her to the fortress, and Kara explains she always refused because she thought the base would remind her too much of home.

When she touched a terminal, Kelex appears and when questioned, tells Kara that she is looking for a Coluan. Indigo was a descendant of Brainiac and a prisoner at Fort Roz for attempted genocide and is considered the deadliest of the escaped prisoners. James thinks Hank should know, but Kara was adamantly against it, saying she isn't in this fight alone.

When James returns, Lucy is upset that he forgot a dinner date and storms off to tell her father about Indigo hacking the military systems. Kara then intervenes and tries to calm down Lucy about James. Kara tells Lucy about James' father, but Lucy notes that James never told her the story about his first camera and the conversation ends on an uncomfortable note.

Kara admits she misses the partnership she had with Alex and Winn. Lucy theorizes that the attack on the cheating site was actually aimed at a single person—a general who is in charge of a secret nuclear site. They quickly realize that Indigo wants to take over the site and use it to launch nuclear missiles at National City.

At the D.E.O., Winn attempts to track Indigo. Alex wishes Kara was there to help. The two teams simultaneously close in onto Indigo's true plan to destroy the city.

At the military site, Indigo has found her way into the base through the general's phone, and takes out everyone. Kara arrives to fight Indigo, but is forced to abandon the fight when Indigo activates a missile. She attempts to push it off course, but it simply adjusts its path and continued to fly towards National City.

Kara tells James there is no time to evacuate. James warns using her heat vision to destroy the missile may cause it to detonate, prompting her to consult Hank, who guides and helps Kara disarm the missile with a kill code, shutting it off and allowing to plummet harmlessly into the ocean.

Indigo attempts to launch more missiles before Kara returns to stop her. Winn is about to infect Indigo with a virus that will disable her. Realizing what is happening, Indigo teleports her arm through a phone screen and begins choking him. The virus is effective, and as Indigo lays helpless in front of Kara, she reveals that she was the one who connected both Kara's pod and Fort Rozz which bought them to Earth, then disintegrates.

At CatCo, Winn comforts Siobhan and tells her about his family, and how he has felt betrayed just like her. Siobhan then kisses him but warns Winn not to say anything. Meanwhile, Kara gives James her blessing to tell Lucy the truth, only to have Lucy tell James that she is breaking up with him; Lucy believes that Kara loves James too, even if she can't admit it yet.

Kara returns to the D.E.O. and is ready to work with Hank again, admitting the conflict with Indigo could've been solved sooner otherwise. Alex suddenly comes clean to Kara and confesses to killing Astra in order to protect J'onn, but let him take the blame because she didn't want to lose her sister. Although initially shocked, Kara forgives her. While Kara and a crying Alex embrace, Kara reaches out to hold Hank's hand in a silent apology, which he accepts.

Finally, Non, places a mysterious spinning sphere on a console where a new version of Indigo begins to materialize, but in pieces. Non declares that he wants her to do things his way now.

Gallery

Videos

Trivia

• Indigo, also known as Brainiac 8, was originally a hero in the comics. She was a long-standing member of the Outsiders until her true programming revealed that she was an evil Brainiac from the future.
• Cat refers to Siobhan as "Tweedledee", a reference to Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
• Cat likes getting her mail pre-opened because there might be "anthrax" inside, a hilariously outdated fear referencing the 2001 Anthrax scare.
• The Diamond Discretions hacking is a reference to the Ashley Madison data breach.
• Indigo mentions "Coluan cyber-constructs", referencing Brainiac's homeworld Colu in the comics.
• Supergirl saves a car containing a family from colliding with a truck. The truck's license name is PLASTINO and the logo of the truck is Plastino Chemicals. This is a direct reference to Al Plastino, the artist who designed Supergirl with writer Otto Binder in 1959.
• The Fortress of Solitude and its key being made out of Dwarf star material is a classic part of Superman mythology.
• The Fortress of Solitude contains a cameo of a Legion Flight Ring belonging to the Legion of Super-Heroes.
  • The ring was previously teased in the Flash episode "Welcome to Earth-2", being one of the images, along with Kara, that Barry saw as he traveled to Earth-2.
  • The ring is also the same design that the superheroes wore in the cartoon series, Legion of Super Heroes.
• Fort Pemberton is a possible reference to the character Star-Spangled Kid in the comics, whose last name is Pemberton.
• The app Candy Crush is mentioned.
• Kara mentions that chasing the missile was like playing Quidditch in Harry Potter.
• Non used a device known as the Omegahedron to reconstitute Indigo. This device was first featured in the Supergirl movie starring Helen Slater.
• When they are at the Fortress of Solitude, Kara says to James, "I'm not alone. I'm with you." This could be a reference to the exact same line Daniel LaRusso says to Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid. It could also be a reference to how they begin to date near the end of Season 1 and the beginning of Season 2.

Goofs

• At the beginning when Alex brings Kara doughnuts, Kara gets a big square piece of paper towel and puts two doughnuts on it. When the camera changes angles as she sits down at the table, Kara is holding a smaller rectangular piece of paper and only one doughnut. Then when she gets up again, the paper is big again and Kara has two doughnuts.
• When General Mathers spoke to the missile silo guard, the guard informed him that they were at DEFCON 5 (no danger of enemy attack). In that case, the nuclear missile in the silo would not be fueled and Indigo would not have been able to launch it.
• If the key to Superman's Fortress of Solitude weighs 1 million tons, the ice that the key is sitting on would almost certainly collapse under the weight of an object with that kind of size/mass ratio.

References

Supergirl season 1
"Pilot" • "Stronger Together" • "Fight or Flight" • "Livewire" • "How Does She Do It?" • "Red Faced" • "Human For a Day" • "Hostile Takeover" • "Blood Bonds" • "Childish Things" • "Strange Visitor From Another Planet" • "Bizarro" • "For the Girl Who Has Everything" • "Truth, Justice and the American Way" • "Solitude" • "Falling" • "Manhunter" • "Worlds Finest" • "Myriad" • "Better Angels"