Supergirl bosses unpack that decisive Kara-Lena scene in the 100th episode
Warning: This article contains spoilers from the 100th episode of Supergirl, which aired Sunday night.
Lena Luthor will have to take a hard look at herself after Supergirl‘s 100th episode.
To celebrate this milestone, the CW superhero drama brought back Mister Mxyzptlk (now played by Thomas Lennon), who offered to send Kara back in time so she could tell Lena she’s Supergirl sooner and hopefully fix their broken friendship. Unfortunately, playing with time only created more problems, like the (very quickly reversed) deaths of Kara, Lena, Mon-El, and everybody Kara loves. That being said, fans got to see familiar faces like Odette Annable’s Sam/Reign, Chad Lowe’s Thomas Coville, Sam Witwer’s Ben Lockwood, and Christopher Wood’s Mon-El.
In the end, revisiting the past and experiencing several different (and terrible) outcomes helped Kara realize she needs make peace with her mistakes and accept the consequences. Furthermore, she also decided that she’s done taking responsibility for Lena’s bad actions and she tells Lena that in a very decisive scene.
“From now on, you’re accountable for your own actions. If you decide to forgive me, I will be there for you,” said Kara. “But if you continue to work with Lex, if you go through with whatever the two of you are planning, I will do everything in my power to stop you. Just like I would any other villain.”
EW hopped on the phone with Supergirl showrunners Jessica Queller and Robert Rovner to discuss what’s next for Kara and Lena’s relationship, this new incarnation of Mxyzptlk, and more.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I was surprised by how Kara-Lena centric the 100th episode ended up being and the final scene between the two of them. Can you talk about crafting that decisive moment where Kara says she accepts her mistakes and is done taking responsibility for Lena’s actions?
JESSICA QUELLER: There [was] a lot of discussion in the room over months about the rift in the friendship, and who was in the right and who is in the wrong, because there are a lot of shades of gray. But we’ve spent many, many episodes of Kara sort of saying, “Mea culpa, I should have done things differently,” and we really wanted to release Kara from that place of guilt and burden, and just having her with a clean conscience say, “Look, I apologize for lying to you and hurting you, but I’ve made the apology and now you need to do what you will with it. And from now on, your actions are your actions, and my actions are my actions. I’m going to stop beating myself up over it.”
ROBERT ROVNER: And it really propels the last third of the season because from that interaction, Lena [begins] to contemplate what she’s doing and second guess it a little bit. And it also allows, I think, for them to come full circle by the end of the season —
QUELLER: And for Lena to take responsibility for her reactions — like it really is a two-way street. No one is fully in the blame and no one is fully the opposite, fully innocent.
In other words, it sounds like the dynamic is reversed as we move toward the end of the season?
QUELLER: Female friendship (and I’m sure male friendship as well) is very complicated and nuanced, and we are really passionate about exploring the depths of it. And this gave us a good turning point in that season-long exploration.
Having Mxy in the mix also helped make this episode very, very playful. Was a lot of that humor in the script or did you all find moments on set?
ROVNER: It was baked into the script, but we were blessed with Thomas Lennon coming in to take over the characterization of Mxyzptlk. Mxy is always such a fun character, but when he was coming back in this incarnation, partly because we were making him not as malevolent as he was last time, we inherently wanted to have something that was fun and that kind of was a fun trip down memory lane, especially since we were dealing with such heavier happenings. That it made it a lot of fun.
QUELLER: I think that the answer is the fun was written into the script, but Tom Lennon just elevated it and made it buoyant.
Did you recast the role because you wanted this version to be less malevolent?
ROVNER: Yeah, 100%. We wanted to make this one be a little different, we wanted to have fun, and we wanted him to have grown from kind of the the character that came in and wanted to force Kara into marriage. We felt like that character, especially as the show has progressed, needed to do his own mea culpa.
Were there any familiar face you wanted to bring back for the episode, but couldn’t due to scheduling?
QUELLER AND ROVNER: Calista [Flockhart].
QUELLER: Yeah, Cat Grant was unfortunately not available for that particular episode. We would’ve definitely featured her if the scheduling had worked out.
ROVNER: And also, Mehcad was unavailable. He was shooting a feature so he couldn’t come back, although he’s in the episode.
Right now, the season is juggling many different things: Leviathan, Kara-Lena’s relationship, and the technology theme. What can you say about where the season is heading?
ROVNER: I think everything is heating up. We see Leviathan plans moving forward in a much bigger way. We see how Lex is involved in that as well, and it kind of builds to a very big climax in our last two episodes.
Is there anything else you wanted to add about the 100th episode?
ROVNER: Oh, the other thing that’s wonderful about it is that we did a live score for this episode, which was very exciting for us. We did it for the crossover, but we also did this with a live orchestra and we thought it [added] to the specialness of the episode as well. And it’s a beautiful score that Blake Neely wrote for it.
Supergirl flies in with a new episode Sunday, March 3 at 9 p.m. on The CW.
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