Supergirl boss on mission to save Alex's life

When Alex gets kidnapped during Monday’s episode of Supergirl, there’s a race against the clock to save her life — but not everyone will agree on how to get the mission done.

When the kidnapper threatens to kill Alex (Chyler Leigh) unless Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) releases a notorious criminal from prison, Kara and Maggie (Floriana Lima) must work together to save the woman they love. “What’s interesting is it’s really an episode about jurisdiction,�� executive producer Andrew Kreisberg tells EW. “It’s really a Maggie-Kara episode. It starts with them at loggerheads about, where does the police’s jurisdiction end and where does Supergirl’s begin? They’re on opposite sides of that. Maggie is obviously more for the police and Supergirl is more for Supergirl.”

“Who gets to make the decisions to save Alex: The sister or the girlfriend?” Kreisberg continues. “It’s great because neither of them are right and neither of them are wrong, and they both love her and both want her back. It’s just a question of who’s willing to do what to bring that about?”

However, Kara’s traditional approach to taking down bad guys may not work in this case. “It’s a really interesting episode for us,” Kreisberg says. “We wanted to do something a little different, we wanted to do more of a character piece and put Kara in an emotional and moral dilemma rather than putting her up against something physical. She even says in the episode: She can’t punch her way out of this.”

Of course, Alex won’t go silently into the night, either. “When we decided to do an episode about Alex getting kidnapped, we knew that Alex Danvers is nobody’s victim,” Kreisberg says. “Even though she’s trapped, Alex does two very impressive things to try and escape and help ensure her survival, so that’s really cool.”

“It’s one of my favorite episodes we’ve ever done,” Kreisberg continues. “It’s certainly not the flashiest episode in terms of visual effects and in terms of stunts, but just as a character piece, I think it’s so interesting.”

Supergirl airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.