‘Supergirl’s 100th Episode Was Great, But Kara And Lena Should Have Kissed

When a TV show reaches 100 episodes, it’s always a time for celebration. You take a look through the history of the series, bring back some old faces (budget and schedules allowing), and set up the show for another 100. The CW’s long-running Supergirl was no different with the funny, sweet, and sometimes sad look through multiple alternate realities and branching timelines in this week’s “It’s A Super Life.” Only downside? They really should have let Kara Danvers (Melissa Benoist) and Lena Luthor (Katie McGrath) kiss.

Spoilers for Supergirl Season 5, Episode 13, “It’s A Super Life” past this point.

The emotional crux of the episode is the ongoing feud between Lena and Kara. Though there have been Crises to deal with, and multiple threats to National City — as well as the Earth — the most devastating through-line in Season 5 has been the duo’s crumbling friendship. It all pivots on Kara having not revealed her secret — she’s Supergirl — before Lena’s brother Lex (Jon Cryer) could tell his sister. Lena’s always had serious trust issues, and her closest friend keeping such an important part of their life away from her felt, and feels, like the ultimate betrayal.

Enter the now friendly fifth dimensional imp Mxyzptlk (now played by Thomas Lennon), who offers Kara a chance to fix history. There are no strings attached, it’s easy to reverse, and he promises he’s trying to make amends instead of tricking Kara. She can change anything in her life, and if it messes things up, they can just erase that timeline and try again.

It’s a neat little excuse to take a look back through five seasons (more realistically four, we don’t see a whole lot of the first season that aired on CBS) of the series, bring back characters like Mon-El (Chris Wood), and even have shout-outs to former cast-members like Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart please come back, we miss you). But the entire time, as Kara tries jumping into moment after moment to adjust her relationship with Lena, all of them ending in utter doom, I was on the edge of my seat hoping this would be the moment when Supergirl would finally make Supercorp canon.

Let’s take a little side trip to talk about non-canon ‘ships. Non-canon ‘ships, as the name implies, are relationships on TV shows that are not part of the series, and may never be. Some of them fall on the side of horribly, horribly wrong (looking at you, Supernatural‘s Wincest); and others seem so close to the realm of possibility that they eventually crawl over to becoming a major part of the series (for example, Queliot on The Magicians).

Regardless of what side of the spectrum they fall on, the power of a non-canon ‘ship is usually predicated on the real life chemistry of the actors. And it was clear from the moment McGrath and Benoist first shared the screen together in the Season 2 premiere, “The Adventures of Supergirl,” that the duo have enough chemistry to power the syllabus for a whole AP class.

Over the course of the next three seasons and change, the Lena/Kara friendship has become the core value that nearly every storyline has turned on. It makes sense, of course. Other than his romance with Lois, Superman’s most potent relationship over the past 80+ years has been with his biggest enemy, Lex Luthor. The Lena/Kara relationship is decidedly different, particularly because Lena is always striving to be good in a way Lex never really has. But versus Kara’s initially pivotal relationship with her sister Alex (Chyler Leigh), which has become steadier in recent years, Lena and Kara’s has been a powerful source of drama.

So you’ve got the real world chemistry, you’ve got the classic set-up for a sweet riff on an enemies to lovers trope that ‘shippers love so much (and has frequently become canon on TV shows, looking at you Buffy and Spike). But what really brings the ‘ship home for fans is that nearly every other romantic relationship either character has had over the past few years has fizzled, while Supercorp (a portmanteau of Supergirl and LexCorp) has only grown in strength.

Since the first season of the show, Kara has mostly eschewed romantic relationships in favor of superheroics. She initially was crushing on James Olsen (Mechad Brooks), but a jump from CBS to The CW turned that into a pure friendship. Dating Mon-El was seemingly doomed from the start, and though it paid real-life dividends (Wood and Benoist are now married), didn’t carry through on screen. As recently as last week’s episode, Kara was turning down the possibility of a romantic relationship simply because balancing her dual life was difficult enough.

On Lena’s end, she had her own romantic relationship with Olsen, but it seemed more like the bonding of two business partners than anything with real heat or chance to go the distance — and ultimately, Brooks left the show to pursue other careers and opportunities. Character-wise, for Lena, it’s always been about devoting herself to repairing the Luthor name first, and saving the world (albeit sometimes in a twisted way), versus maintaining anything romantic.

The lone exception for both characters? Their relationship with each other, which was fractured when Kara finally told Lena the truth too late… But given the way they’re both set up, it sure seems like the only one who could truly understand the weight they carry, is each other.

On a textual level, while Supergirl has never explicitly said there’s something romantic between the two, there certainly seems to be at worst an insanely deep friendship, and at best something more. Sending each other bouquets of flowers, keeping pictures of each other close by to longingly gaze at in their darkest moments, always coming to each other at a moment’s notice… If the writers of Supergirl don’t mean these plot notes to be anything more than deep friendship, there’s still more than enough fodder for even a casual Supercorp ‘shipper to read into the seeming clues (and the plethora of fanfic and fan-art on the internet would tend to agree).

With all that set-up out of the way, the jaunt through “what could have been” was the perfect opportunity for Supergirl to have its cake, and eat it too (all apologies to Marie Antoinette, who is currently imprisoned on the Waverider over on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow). Over the course of the hour, Mxyzptlk took Kara through several possible alternate timelines, all of which ended in disaster. In one, Kara still told Lena too late, leading to even more dire circumstances for the Earth. In another it was too early — and though the Supergirl and Lena Luthor team-up initially led to even greater safety and prosperity, a last second twist left everyone Kara knows and loves dead. An even worse future where they never became friends at all found Lena as a kryptonite infused despot ruling over National City with an iron first. The conclusion Kara reaches, of course, is that she doesn’t need to change a thing. Instead, she will let Lena forgive her — or not — in her own time; but if she decides to become evil like her brother Lex, she no longer gets special dispensation, and will be stopped like any other villain.

It’s a step forward for Supergirl, but a massive step backwards for Lena, and you can see the rending heartbreak on McGrath’s face as Supergirl flies off to spend time with her remaining friends at the end of the episode. With that resolution — for now — you can understand why having Kara and Lena fall romantically in love in another reality might mess with the direction the writers wanted to take the plot… If Kara learns their bond is that powerful, why would she ever choose anything else?

There’s also the fact that in nearly every timeline, either Kara, Lena, or both end up dead. Revealing that the duo are canonically queer (even in an alternate reality) and then killing them would play directly into the Bury Your Gays trope, and arguably is as bad, if not worse of a look than never acknowledging Supercorp on screen.

But goddammit, I really wanted them to kiss, even just once. Having all of these alternate takes on reality is the perfect opportunity to try things out. And there’s a line they’d need to walk, of course; even if the Supergirl brass don’t believe Kara and Lena will ever be romantically linked, you don’t want to throw in their first kiss as a joke. That would feel like a slam to fans, too. Not making it too jokey, or tragic, or off the cuff are all walls to creating a SuperCorp moment that would feed that fanbase.

But figuring that line out would have been worth it. It’s not like The CW, or even specifically Supergirl is scared of LGBTQ+ relationships. Cast-member Nicole Maines is trans-, and in a beautiful on-again, off-again relationship with Brainiac (Jesse Rath). Not to mention Alex, who had a stunning, emotionally charged coming out story a few seasons back, followed by a duo of extremely lived in, fleshed out romantic relationships with women. Taking that extra step with Kara and Lena seems like less of a lift, given it’s not the first time the show would be dealing with this type of story; and they’ve already laid a solid groundwork and good will with the fans because of it.

Would having a reality where Kara tells Lena she’s secretly Supergirl, and the latter is so overwhelmed with emotion she kisses her, and then, surprised, they kiss again (please check out my fanfic on AO3, thanks) intrinsically change how the “real” Kara deals with the “real” Lena once the Mxyzptlk created dust settles? Certainly. And if anything it might turn the humming of the Supercorp ‘shippers into a constant roar for more. But if the Powers That Be are going to keep going on this route anyway (i.e., Kara and Lena have a deep friendship, but are romantically involved in straight relationships), at least throw folks a bone every once in a while.

And I have to imagine I’m not alone here. Watching the episode, with every reset I kept thinking, “okay, here’s the one, where it’s finally going to happen.” Even by the end of the episode, my impression after Mxyzptlk and Kara were trapped in Despot Lena’s reality was that the lesson Kara needed to learn was that she and Lena need each other. When Supergirl landed on Lena’s balcony in the final moments, ready to tell her the thesis of the episode, it felt like this was it, the moment where she runs to her and tells her that the reason they shouldn’t give up on each other is because they’re more than friends. The show is 100 episodes old, now was the chance to shake it up with a moment so different, it would power the series for years to come. A Super character fighting a Luthor? Done to death. A Super character dating a Luthor? Now that’s something fresh and new. Instead, the plot went in the opposite direction, with Supergirl leaving and Lena standing there alone, destroyed.

There are two other possible reasons Supergirl didn’t go this historic route in “It’s A Super Life.” One could venture that, because Supergirl is a show that deals in female friendship in a deep and fleshed out way, leaning romantic could be seen as devaluing or eradicating what’s happened before. In real life, many people do have deep, overwhelming, all encompassing friendships that never lean romantic, but are perhaps more inexorably tied to their history than any significant other ever will be. That’s certainly one reading of the Kara/Lena relationship.

The other is the business reason: Supergirl is part of the Superman family, which is tied to DC Comics and Entertainment, which is owned by Warner Bros., which is in turn owned by WarnerMedia, which is itself owned by AT&T. For worse (I’m not going to say “for better or worse,” because let’s be honest here), global companies are skittish about non-heterosexual content for their icons. There are exceptions: DC Comics had already taken the step to introduce a lesbian superhero with Batwoman, to critical and fan acclaim in the comics, well before Kate Kane ended up on The CW played by Ruby Rose. But Superman and the Superman family haven’t taken that step yet, and though I claim no inside knowledge here, it’s not unreasonable to think having Supergirl be bisexual, even in a one-off, alternate reality, would be the sort of thing that would rapidly work its way all the way to the top of the AT&T chain and be promptly shut down.

This is all to say there are a million different reasons and excuses for why Kara Zor-El and Lena Luthor didn’t kiss during the hundredth episode of Supergirl, making Supercorp as in-canon as Queliot on The Magicians. But to paraphrase a wise woman, they can give us a million reasons, but we only need one good one for Kara and Lena to kiss. And having a journey through alternate timelines on Supergirl would have been a great one. Ah well, guess we’ll have to wait for Episode 200.

Supergirl airs Sundays at 9/8c on The CW.

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