Don’t adjust your television sets, you’re not seeing double. (Lulz, does anyone even have television sets they need to adjust anymore?) Fresh off of last week’s revelation that a Supergirl imposter was roaming free in National City, Kara corrals all of her troops—from the D.E.O. all the way to Winn, who has finally come around to speaking terms again. The first big conquest: figuring out who this lookalike is. J’onn feels that the girl he found in Maxwell Lord’s sketchy laboratory can’t be the mysterious new doppelgänger due to the low-level brain activity he had telepathically monitored in her. Alex rules out the double as being a clone, due to the insufficient gestational period from the time Supergirl “came out” to now.

Kara’s first confronts the (newly-christened by Cat Grant) “Bizarro” directly over a stationary gondola lift, where the two opt to test each other’s powers. Afterward, both Kara and Bizarro come away with newfound insights into their opposites. Kara sees that her would-be twin has some kind of humanity, some kind of consciousness living behind her eyes. Bizarro, meanwhile, sees that despite the indoctrination she has endured at the hands of Maxwell Lord, Supergirl actually helps people, and thus begins to question her own purpose. After all, to use Bizarro-Girl’s limited vernacular, “Supergirl not bad.”

When a paper trail of young female comatose patients is tracked back to a Maxwell Lord subsidiary, the D.E.O. (specifically J’onn) finally concede that the patient he encountered might actually be part of this scheme. For the first time, Kara has a crisis regarding the butterfly effect she has on those who aren’t in her immediate circle. She’s always been mindful that her job involves danger, and those close to her could suffer for it. But now she’s realizing Lord will conduct grotesque experiments on innocent people, all in an effort to take her down. While most of the victims she has saved previously would have found themselves in danger regardless of her existence, she feels directly responsible for the six or seven bodies lying in the wake of Maxwell’s experiments.

When Bizarro captures Kara in her civilian identity, it’s clear that Maxwell is making a statement. He knows who she is, and he’s not shy about playing that card. When a Kryptonite slug ends up deforming but strengthening Bizarro, the D.E.O. has to change its plan of attack by focusing not on Kara and Bizarro’s similarities, but on their diametric differences. Kara has heat vision and frost breath; Bizarro has the opposite. Reversing the molecular makeup of the Kryptonite bullets isn’t a foolproof plan, but it’s the best anyone has to take down Bizarro.

Meanwhile, Kara calls off her burgeoning romance with Adam, hoping to spare him from becoming a victim of some future plan. However, it ends up being James who Bizarro targets next. When Supergirl confronts Bizarro for the final time, it’s a lucky shot by sister Alex that finally subdues the unfortunate experiment. Since she was created using Kara’s own DNA, there’s a kinship that Supergirl feels with Bizarro, and she’s careful not to inflict any fatal harm on her doppelgänger. When Bizarro is safely back at D.E.O. headquarters and preparing for a deep sleep, Supergirl tells her new friend about when she had to sleep for a long time, she had woken up to a friend beside her. Kara promises to be that someone for Bizarro.

All in all, the episode was far more contained than expected, as I figured the super-clone storyline would carry on for a bit longer than it did. Though, even if it’s implied that Bizarro was the only successful byproduct of Code Phoenix, there’s reason to believe we haven’t heard the last of the program. Maxwell Lord being in D.E.O. custody will no doubt lead to a couple of his contingency plans to fulfill his alien-free manifesto coming to light. Which brings us to the cliffhanger ending: Who planted the leafy facehugger in Kara’s apartment? Lord has shown himself to be willing to dabble with alien DNA, but so far we haven’t seen him actually search out and use alien symbiotes to his advantage. It also doesn’t seem like a very Astra/Non thing to do either. So, whodunnit!? Sound off with your theories below!

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Notable Quotables:

“Maxwell Lord does have a God Complex, but he’s not an actual god.” – J’onn J’onzz

“Except for the fact that she talks like Cookie Monster, she’s is exactly like me.” – Kara

“Holding people indefinitely against their will? Can’t get much more American than that.” – Maxwell Lord

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Image: CBS