Honestly, I would’ve loved to see this episode with Astra alive and on her way to redemption. Not that it wasn’t brilliant as is (it’s one of my favourites so far), but we know the only reason they chose to off her was because Laura was too busy to film. So it makes me wonder if Astra had still been around, how would she have reacted to see Kara – the one person who believed Astra could change for the better – go to the dark side? Would she embrace the pull to join her or would she be strong enough to resist the urge?
I suppose if there were so much of a chance of Astra switching sides, Alex would remind her what the real Kara would want; what her sweet, kind Little One would hope Astra would choose when seeing her go off the rails like this.
I also want to know how Kara would hurt Astra. We know that even without the ‘that’s why you killed my aunt’ line, the interaction between Kara and Alex was pretty loaded, pretty hurtful. Then again, would she hurt Astra? Or would she understand where Astra – or Non – came from and want to join their side of the battle?
I don’t know, I’m just really interested in what Astra’s role would’ve been; there are so many possibilities.
I’m absolutely here for Red!Kara talking to Astra because that would fuck me up in the best of ways. Because we’ve seen Kara’s rage at Alura for leaving her alone, for being the one to send her away. And we’ve seen Kara angry at Astra, but the thing with that? It’s never really been a personal kind of anger. It’s an anger for the things Astra has done to Earth, and what happened on Krypton, for the atrocities she’s committed in her pursuit of her goals but it’s anger on someone else’s behalf. It’s never really shown to be selfish anger. If Kara is that angry at a hologram of Alura for leaving her alone, how much angrier must she be at Astra, for leaving her alone.
Because unlike Alura, Astra was on Earth. Alura might have made the choice to send her off, but that was a split second decision not to crawl into the pod with Kara, made in the heat of a moment, no time to take it back. But Astra? Day after day, week after week, year after year, Kara had to deal with being the last, the only one who remembered Krypton. She had to shoulder all that loneliness and pain and agony and death all by herself. And we’ve seen with the Black Mercy, there really is very little Kara will not give up to have Alex in her life, but everything else? She’d give up, to have her old life back. And Astra was a part of that life.
And it wasn’t until she became Supergirl did Astra make contact with her. THe woman who taught her the names of all the stars, who once told her she couldn’t love a daughter as much as she loved Kara, and she made the decision over and over not to contact her, because at least from Kara’s perspective, all she would need to do to find out about Kara is to contact Kal-El. But she didn’t.
It’s easy for Kara to be angry on behalf of others, but for herself? That’s a very different story, one we got to see with the red k letting nothing go unsaid and god I wish we got to see Kara’s interacting with her Aunt and then we’d get to see why it took over a decade for them to have contact, or if Astra actually knew where Kara was, or even if Astra knew she was alive (also I want them to hug afterwards they never huggedand I’m so sad)
complete sidenote, but wow did melissa do a fantastic job with red!kara just the way she holds herself as evil!k and just completely transforming anything recognizable about what we’ve come to associate with kara, like we’ve seen plenty of comparisons of how melissa based her work!kara as an homage to calista, and clearly this is also an homage to laura.
oh man what a parallel with cat and adam with alura and kara right now–
“You tried. Sometimes all you can do is try.”
“I didn’t lose.
I quit.” “
Would you make a different decision if you could go back?” “I stopped asking myself that question years ago.
Not being there for Adam is my greatest regret.“
alura said that she thought she saw kara going into the phantom zone, but she never looked. she was surprised to hear about clark–she didn’t look for him either. but the thing is too–i think Alura might have thought that the community needed her more, was faced with do I look for Kara and Kal-El, or do I cut my losses and help build back the community that needs me, that I know is here to support me while going through this?
If it was the other way around, if there was even just a shred of hope that her mother was alive, Kara would never stop searching. And at that time, an Alura grieving for Krypton chose Argo over Kara–just like Cat chose CatCo over Adam. And seeing Kara, seeing her alive, it’s going to be Alura’s biggest regret. Kara grew up without her, Kara lived and suffered and found joy without Alura there
There was that conversation between Cat and Adam ”
I never got to put a picture that you’d drawn on the fridge.
I never got to tell you stories. And I never got to teach you how not to be afraid of the world.
And I never got to tell you how amazing I think you are.
I never got to be your mom.
But I am your biggest fan, Adam.
And I’m so, so sad that I didn’t get to see you grow up”
It’s funny that I keep seeing things that act as if Lena
would be the helpless one out of her and Kara and I absolutely adore Kara and
the girl is a damn genius with super powers and picks up things fast, but growing up she also had to
deal with extreme culture shock, PTSD, and along with powers sensory overload,
to name just a few of the things about
her childhood on Earth. She comes from a dying planet with insanely advanced
technology and science—not really survival skills, and more so just trying to
adapt and heal.
Lillian was teaching Lena chess at the age of 4. And say
what you want about the Luthors, and there’s plenty, we see Lena working
weekends, nights, hell Thanksgiving—she’s a CEO by 24, probably more than a few
degrees. That kind of work ethic and drive (regardless if it’s actually
healthy, it’s huge) didn’t come from
nowhere. Every single skill Lionel and Lillian could cram into Lex and Lena,
they probably did. Regardless of how Lillian might feel about Lena she’s going
to have expectations, and at the absolute least if she’s going to have to be
this girl’s mother she might as well make her useful, or someone for Lex to
compete against, and Lillian loves Lex.
There’s no point to giving him a rival if that person isn’t pushed
and given the same kind of preparation and training and education that he
receives. And Lillian is someone who can be on the run from everyone and not get caught—that’s going
to take more than just money, that’ll take skill. Not to mention running a
black ops program with no one the wiser isn’t exactly on the list of things
that a rich housewife can do.
Kara is from a technologically advanced planet—maybe a few
days is fine but she’s probably so horrified
not to be around any tech she only likes camping for the difference in her
senses and all the pretty nature and landscape. Imagine if you went back to a
time before indoor plumbing—and sure a week of it is fine but months and months???? No. It’s probably worse
for Kara. She was p well supplied with tech, if the spy beacon that Astra had
that had a signal that could be received anywhere
was simply a child’s plaything—or if it wasn’t, and it was something she had
because of Astra’s military connections, then who knows what else she had
access to? She’s probably good with mechanics, to a certain extent because of
her father the scientist—who created a damn rocket
and taught her plenty about mechanical engineering—but they would have had
different elements on Krypton. It’s hard to know how to build something
when all the materials are different—Lena
would be just as screwed if she was given Kryptonian materials from the get go.
But my point is, Lena is probably actual fucking MacGyver,
or even better yet, the Supergirl version of Elliot Spencer. The Luthors definitely
seem like the kind of people who have their kids be in Boy/Girl Scouts, because
you never know when you might need those skills—they’re Luthors, they have people
gunning for them from the cradle. You never know when you might need some of
those skills, especially if you need to go off grid, or have to dump everything
in a moment’s notice. Like I’m not making a definitive statement, except yes,
yes I am if you gave Lena a knife and some decently warm clothes and set her
off into a forest she’d probably be fine for however long she’d be there for.
Lillian and probably Lionel seem like they would definitely hire a swim coach
to make sure their strokes are textbook perfect, but first they’d absolutely and quite literally throw them in the deep end to teach them
how to swim—the coach is about achieving perfection, and this is survival. And
Luthors don’t depend on anyone else for that—the sooner they learn that the better.
A powerless Kara, on
the other hand, would be absolutely fucked. She may have gone camping w
alex but lbr kara definitely used heat vision to start a fire and has no idea
what kind of clothes to pack or what to do about bug bites and maybe knows how
to pitch a tent and some useful things that don’t rely on her powers but 5 minutes
after losing her powers she cuts her hand on glass and breaks her arm—it’s not
a matter of intellect, but it’s kind of like how astronauts look up when they
drop a pencil—you get used to a certain baseline. Kara could definitely learn,
but Lena already knows what she’s doing. Lena was taught she couldn’t trust on
anyone but herself to survive and Kara was taught stronger together. This isn’t to say this is a failure of Kara’s
that this isn’t her mentality—Kara has plenty of knowledge about science and
alien cultures and technology and language and religion and understanding of
people that Lena probably struggles with, especially in comparison. Kara was
doing calculus at least since she was 4. Honestly out of the two of them she’s
most likely better at science and
math—but it’s probably painful for her bc it reminds her of Krypton, and it’s
not like humans are going to be very accepting of a 15 year old trying to
correct them on widely accepted theories. That would bring attention.
Kara was told to hide—Lena was told she wasn’t allowed to,
that she had to be extraordinary because
that’s what Luthors are.
We see in her very first episode she’s a marksman, able to shoot
the man that had Alex hostage without even hesitation. We also see her Gerry
rig that device at her charity under the table with a tiny bit of help from Winn, but not that much—that’s not exactly a
lab setting.
The Luthors have so many back up plans and hidey holes that
their family motto almost seems to be “be prepared.” Like Lena does not like
Roulette and has 0 plans on ever going to her fight club but she knew exactly where
the address was from the top of her head, without consulting a planner. And
the fight clubs most likely rotate
where they’re at—sure Roulette has connections but the DEO took Leslie Willis—if
they don’t know about her she’s not going to bring her to their attention. And
still Lena knew where it was, because it’s
important to be prepared.
Or better yet—the Luthor motto might be all knowledge is worth having.
Lena probably picks up new skills in her “free time”—or really
whatever time she has that she’s not working at her company, not able to simply
lay around and do nothing. “You never know when you might need to know how to wrangle
a crocodile kara” “You never know when an assassin might try to kill me while I’m
on ice Kara” “You never know when you might need to know this very obscure and
esoteric language Kara” “It’s a very distinctive sound and one day I might need
to be able to distinguish between the sounds different guns make when cocked
Kara” “Who knows if you’re ever in the mountains with only a paper clip and a
hair tie Kara” “Kara it’s always useful to know how to be able to get out of a
straight jacket without any help”
Kara is very confused about her strange nerdy friend but
Lena feels such vINDICATION the first time something she’s been practicing
requires her expertise you said it was
weird to know how to competitively duck herd AND YET HERE WE ARE WITH A DEADLY ALIEN
SPECIES THAT RESEMBLES IN SEVERAL WAYS DUCKS
tl;dr Lena would be absolutely fine wherever she’s dropped
up to and including the woods or a farm with only the clothes on her back and a
used tissue and after a week or so Kara would be clutching her phone wondering
where the wifi is
My parents put me on that pod in Krypton … I don’t think I realized what was actually happening. I didn’t know that I was saying goodbye to them forever.
kara zor-el lived on krypton for 13 years as a normal girl who got scrapes and bruises and colds like a normal person. her being upset that lena kept kyrptonite a secret isnt a god complex. she knows how it is to be vulnerable, no one knows how excruciatingly terrible kryptonite is to her. she doesnt have a god complex, she’s scared of the substance that kills her in the most painful way imaginable
this is what I mean when I say the show isn’t portraying Kara’s side as well as they should and could. They are making it seem like Lena is in the right (at the moment). Kara knows well what it’s like to be powerless (1×07 is also a good episode) but they don’t bring that up because it doesn’t serve the narrative they want to tell right now :
Or the writers just didn’t of it? It’s not like they don’t overlook details all the time.
Question of Smoke 