In this episode of Supergirl, it’s Lena’s first day at CatCo. She flummoxes James by showing up unannounced, inviting everyone to use Cat Grant’s private elevator, and breezily saying that she’ll be a free-range CEO with no office, all the better to roam around and ask questions. In fact, she’s arranged for a fill-in at L-Corp so she can be full time at CatCo for now. Then almost immediately, Kara bails when Lena tries to assign her what I can only assume is a non-politically motivated story on Morgan Edge.
At the DEO, J’onn breaks up a brewing Sanvers fight over wedding band versus DJ by declaring that a DJ keeps you jiggy on the dance floor. J’onn has spoken, y’all. Respect his authority.
The team summoned Kara because a woman has robbed two banks so far using no weapons or overt shows of force. When a third alarm sounds, Supergirl flies in and finds an unconcerned blond woman, “Oh, you think you’re the cat and I’m the bird? You’ve got it backward.” She explains her motivation — more money, more happy — and then hits Supergirl leaving her against a wall. Afterward, J’onn scans Kara’s mind and finds residual psionic interference only used by metahumans.
J’onn tries to create a psychic shield from afar for Supergirl, but the woman overpowers him and crows that she’ll win this fight of mind over matter. “Fear is a powerful tool,” she says, hitting Kara with her memories of escaping in a solitary pod as Krypton burned behind her.
The DEO has identified the woman as Gayle Marsh from Skokie, Illinois, a formerly law-abiding citizen who suddenly started robbing Midwestern banks. Authorities named her Psi, and J’onn declares her the most powerful psychic he’s ever encountered. Kara doesn’t want to worry J’onn and Alex, so she pulls Winn aside to tell him how awful it was to relive her time stuck trapped and alone in the pod. She urges him to use this information to tweak the psychic dampeners he’s working on, then races back to CatCo.
When Winn checks her over, though, he diagnoses this as a regular human panic attack. She leaves, and when Alex asks what’s going on, Winn’s obvious lies don’t hold up to her stone-cold interrogation face.
Alex finds her sister reciting a Kryptonian mantra as a mind-strengthening meditation and chides Kara for not telling her. “You fight the most dangerous and evil people on the planet, so I’m kind of always gonna worry,” she says. Kara tells her that reliving the scariest moment of her life was torture. And worse, it’s affecting her job as Supergirl. Her Kara persona’s broken thanks to no Mon-El and a shifting work/friend relationship with Lena, and now Psi is stealing her ability to feel strong and make a difference as a hero. “If I don’t have Supergirl, what do I have?”
“You’ve got me,” Alex says, pulling her in for a sister hug, which is perfect.