‘Supergirl’ turns in one of its best episodes to date this week, as the series wraps up a two-part arc involving Jeremiah Danvers, Cadmus, and an effort to deport Earth’s aliens into deep space. The episode isn’t perfect, but I found myself really pleased with what transpired.

Things get underway with a family driving down the road in an SUV, enjoying their time together by singing along to a tune on the radio. A police officer pulls them over and claims the vehicle has a busted taillight, but when the father gets out to check, the cop cuffs him. The rest of the family is quickly taken into custody as well. It turns out they’re aliens. They’re thrown in the back of a van and taken to a warehouse (seen at the conclusion of the last episode), where all the aliens are locked up inside a large spaceship.

At CatCo, Kara wants to run a story about Cadmus’ efforts to get rid of aliens, but Snapper insists that she get named sources to speak on the record. She asks Snapper if an exclusive interview with Supergirl will help, and he agrees. However, when Snapper later interviews her, the Girl of Steel refuses to name any of her contacts in the government, and Snapper once again refuses to run the story.

Jimmy’s back! Well, at least for a brief scene. He’s in the alien bar meeting Winn’s new girlfriend, Lyra. The introduction doesn’t last long before Cadmus agents storm the place and capture Lyra and a few other aliens. Alex (who was playing pool with Maggie in the bar) tries to save Lyra, but she gets grabbed by one of the Cadmus people and held at gunpoint. Thankfully, Guardian shows up to save Alex. However, the van with Lyra and the other aliens speeds away.

Back at the DEO, Alex beats the snot out of the Cadmus agent they arrested, trying to get answers from him about Cadmus’ location. J’onn has to come into the cell to stop the fight before Alex kills the guy.

Later that night, Alex gets a visit from her father, Jeremiah (Dean Cain), insisting that he’s working for the good guys and needs Alex to steal a magnetic field disruptor device from the DEO. He says he can use it to free the aliens from their cells. Alex agrees to help, only to then learn that “Jeremiah” is actually J’onn in disguise. He wanted to test Alex’s loyalties, and she failed. He promptly suspends her from active duty.

Kara is upset that she can’t publish her story at CatCo, so she writes it anyway and contemplates posting it to a private blog. When she tells Mon-El about her dilemma, he talks her into posting the story if she thinks it’s the right thing to do.

Ignoring her suspension, Alex teams up with Maggie and stops the fake police officer seen at the beginning of the episode from nabbing another alien. They pull GPS information off his van to learn where the Cadmus base is. Alex insists on going alone. She isn’t in the large warehouse for long when she runs into her father, who insists he’s only working with Cadmus because Lillian threatened to kill her and Kara. He also says that the original plan was to kill all the aliens, but he convinced Lillian that deporting them into space was a more acceptable solution.

Lillian is upset that Kara’s blog post has tipped off other aliens to Cadmus’ plan. She says there’s no time to gather up more aliens; they’ll just send the ones they have off into space now. Alex then reveals that she planted some bombs in the building. She sets them off, leading to both confusion and a fight sequence. While Jeremiah deals with the other Cadmus guards, Alex boards the spaceship to see if she can stop it. Unfortunately, the ship launches with her on board before she can figure anything out.

With help from Lena Luthor, Supergirl learns the Cadmus location. She intercepts the spaceship as it’s leaving orbit and uses all her strength to stop it from jumping to light speed – saving both the aliens and her sister in the process. Meanwhile, back in the Cadmus warehouse, Jeremiah is knocked unconscious when Cyborg Superman zaps him with a beam from his mechanical eye. What happens to Jeremiah after that isn’t revealed. This is the last we see of him.

J’onn apologizes to Alex and reinstates her to duty. Kara returns to work at CatCo and finds all her belongings packed up on her desk. Snapper berates her for breaking the rules of both journalism and the company, and tells her she’s fired. Back at her apartment, Mon-El arrives with some potstickers (what is it with this girl and potstickers?!) as she laments the loss of her employment, but wonders if being Supergirl and having Mon-El in her life is enough. (It won’t be if you want to pay the rent on that cushy apartment, Kara!)

The episode wraps up with another large spaceship entering Earth’s orbit. Two aliens – played by Teri Hatcher and Kevin Sorbo – announce that they’ve finally arrived at their location. Fans of the series know that this has something to do with Mon-El, but we’ll have to wait until next week to find out more.

Episode Verdict

As stated at the outset, this is a really enjoyable episode with some nice acting from the cast. I confess to being surprised that J’onn disguised himself as Jeremiah. (I probably should have seen that coming.) The climax of the episode has a really nice moment between Supergirl and Alex through the spaceship’s viewport as the Girl of Steel tries to save her sister. However, I’m a little surprised that this story arc only lasted two episodes. It seems like the kind of topic that the show-runners might want to build a much longer story around.

My biggest complaint this week is about Jeremiah Danvers and how easily he decided to work with Cadmus just because Lillian threatened to kill his two daughters – both of whom he knows are very capable women, and one of whom is among the most powerful people on Earth. This seems like a writing contrivance to me and not true to what we’ve known about this character up until this point. (After all, Jeremiah was the guy who reached out to help Martian Manhunter when everyone else wanted to kill him.)

Another sign of poor writing is how Kara loses her job this week. The script has her acting like she has no knowledge of the rules of journalism or the fact that she can’t use CatCo resources for her own online endeavors. I would also guess that Kara wouldn’t be fired without Jimmy’s knowledge and approval, so there also seems to be a moment missing from this episode.

Despite those problems, I really enjoyed this one, even though the series seems to have missed an opportunity to have former ‘Lois & Clark’ stars Cain and Hatcher share a scene together.