Although he’s not given story credit (at least not in the opening credits), this week’s episode of ‘Supergirl’, titled ‘For the Girl Who Has Everything’, is actually based on a 1985 comic written by the prolific Alan Moore, which was originally a ‘Superman’ story called ‘For the Man Who Has Everything’. Given its origins, this entry had the potential to be a great hour of TV. It doesn’t quite make it there, but it is one of the better ‘Supergirl’ episodes we’ve seen to date.

As the story gets underway, Kara is awakened by a medical robot. It doesn’t take her long to realize that she appears to be back on Krypton. Her mother Alura tells her that she’s just recovered from Argo Fever (“But I still get Argo Fever… in my mind I still see her”… sorry!) and she must have dreamt everything that happened back on Earth. I hoped the writers might play with the audience for a while as to whether Kara is really hallucinating or not, but even before the opening credits roll, we get a scene back in National City where Cat (back to her bitchy self since her son left town) wonders why Kara hasn’t shown up for work.

Jimmy and Winn join Alex and go to Kara’s apartment, where they find her unconscious with a large (and honestly pretty cheesy looking, even by network TV standards) plant parasite stuck to her chest. They rush her back to the DEO, but soon learn that any attempt to remove the plant will kill Kara.

Meanwhile, back in her hallucination, Kara meets with family and friends, including her father and even a young Kal-El. To make matters worse, she’s beginning to forget everything that happened to her on Earth, even the name of the planet.

Alex believes that Maxwell Lord might be behind this all, but he swears he has nothing to do with it. However, he does have an idea to put a person under and enter Kara’s vision, in order to communicate with her. Naturally Alex demands that she be the one to go, and even has a talk with Jimmy to make sure that Hank/J’onn doesn’t stop the procedure if things take a turn for the worse.

As it turns out, Non is responsible for the plant. It’s called a “Black Mercy” and will show the host it’s attached to her greatest desire. This is all a distraction for some kind of sinister plan that is only referred to as “The Myriad” in this episode. He also uses a solar storm to cause havoc with the DEO’s satellites… or at least I think he does. This super plan of his is super-confusing to follow. I’m sure we’ll learn more about it in upcoming episodes.

Anyway, while all this is going on, Hank/J’onn has to use his Martian Manhunter shapeshifting skills to pose as Kara back at CatCo. I’m sure this looked great when the writers put it into the script and thought it would come off as entertaining, but frankly these scenes fall kind of flat and just prove to be a distraction from the main storyline.

Arriving inside Kara’s hallucination, Alex tries to tell her who she is and what’s going on, but Kara has forgotten all about her past. Alex is arrested and sentenced to the Phantom Zone, but one final plea with her sister finally gets her to start remembering. Both Alex and Kara awaken in the DEO lab, and the plant parasite slithers off Kara’s body. Awake and angry, Kara wants payback.

The final scenes of this week’s episode have Supergirl duking it out with Non while Alex and Hank (now in Martian Manhunter form) take on Astra. Alex tries to talk Astra into joining their team, but she refuses. When Astra threatens Hank/J’onn with a knife, Alex impales her with a kryptonite sword. Alex contacts Kara and tells her to get there immediately. When Kara sees her dying aunt and asks what happened, Hank steps forward and tells Kara that he stabbed her. Astra dies in Kara’s arms. The Kryptonians are coming, so they have to leave her body there – which Non recovers. Later, when Alex asks Hank why he took the blame, he tells Alex that she’s Kara’s hero and Kara still needs someone to look up to.

It feels odd to me that the writers chose off to kill Astra, but the fact that Non recovered her body suggests that she’ll be resurrected in some way. (Plus, we know the actress isn’t leaving the show since she still plays Kara’s mother in both flashbacks and as a hologram.) I have no idea what this Myriad project is about. Either the writers didn’t do a very good job of relaying it, I wasn’t paying enough attention, or it’s going to be revealed in future episodes. It has something to do with satellites and Maxwell Lord’s technology, but other than that, I’m at a loss.

I liked this episode, but it feels like a missed opportunity by the writing team to have a full episode set back on Krypton with Kara dealing with memories of her life there. We get some of that here, but the show-runners tried to cram so much other stuff into this episode that the idea of Kara having to lose her family a second time (something she mentions to Non during their fight) never has the emotional impact it should. Still, all in all, it’s a good entry for this series.