Supergirl season 2, episode 3, “Welcome to Earth,” explored the idea of alien citizenship in an episode with clear real world parallels.
“Welcome to Earth” was a jam-packed episode whose thematic core explored prejudice. In this episode, the president of the United States (played by former Wonder Woman Lynda Carter) visits National City to sign an act granting aliens rights. In the process, she meets a star-struck Supergirl and has an intellectual debate with J’onn over the pros and cons of the act.
Kara is, unsurprisingly, in favor of alien rights. And her bias makes it hard when she interviews Lena Luthor about her thoughts on the new bill being signed. Lena shows Kara a prototype for a device that, with skin contact, detect a human versus alien. Lena believes that humans have the right to know if their neighbors are aliens.
This seems like a terrible idea; after all, if aliens are identified in this way, how long until they are marked a la the yellow stars the Nazis forced Jews to wear or the red A in The Scarlet Letter? In this way, it seems like Lena is putting a smiling face on bigotry. She might see her brother as evil, but there is definitely something sneakily dark about this device.
She is worried about dangerous aliens, but as we saw in the alien bar (more on that in a moment), most aliens are trying to live their lives; there are bad aliens like there are bad people and good aliens just like there are good people. Kara visiting Lena and saying she understands where Lena is coming from with her alien detection device at the end of the episode definitely made me uncomfortable with all this in mind.
So, Willy’s Place the alien dive bar, aka my favorite new place this season. Alex meets NCPD detective Maggie Sawyer, and Maggie brings Alex to a dive bar where aliens come to have a beer and openly be themselves. Maggie tells Alex that as a non-white, non-straight woman from Nebraska, she feels kinship with the aliens because they are all outsiders who have faced various types of hostility.
At this bar, Alex faces her own prejudices about aliens. Having spent so long hunting aliens, her view on them is skewed; she sees Kara and Clark as exceptions rather than the rule when it comes to “good” aliens. But seeing such a diverse group of non-humans being so, well, normal makes her realize she’s been biased.
And it takes a big person to be self-reflective enough to recognize something like that about herself. That’s something I continue to respect about Alex: she’s flawed (like anyone) but she’s always willing to do the work to be a better person and have stronger relationships.
Speaking of Alex, looking at the way she watched Maggie leave the DEO to go on a date with another lady, methinks Alex will be the one coming out. There was definite chemistry there, and I don’t think it was meant to be purely platonic.
As for prejudice, it doesn’t just come from the humans. Kara shows her own prejudice against Mon-El, the Daxamite in the pod. He’s captured and put in a holding cell at the DEO, and he and Kara have a verbal sparring match over the way their respective peoples viewed each other. Spoiler alert: it’s not pleasant. Kara is so biased against someone from Daxam that she doesn’t even tell him that his homeland has become a wasteland. This comes after it turns out Mon-El was not trying to kill POTUS like Kara thought.
Kara realizes she hasn’t been fair and she mends fences with Mon-El. She tells him the truth about his planet and will clearly be there to help him acclimate to this new world. Like Alex, Kara is a flawed character but she is willing to accept her mistakes and work to fix them. It’s not easy, but Kara is willing to do the work. And, like with her sister, I respect that about her. It’s another reason she makes a good hero.
As for the villain of the week, she was an alien targeting POTUS in protest of alien rights. She’s been to multiple worlds where those who are different are shunned and locked away. If aliens come out of hiding on Earth, the same will happen to them.
This is a concern J’onn shares; despite his identity being public knowledge now, he continues to use Hank Henshaw’s form. Obviously this is for budgetary purposes, but in the narrative itself it’s because he doesn’t trust the best in people based on experience both as an alien and as a black man.
By the end of the episode, however, POTUS convinces J’onn to try living in the world a bit, so he, with an open mind, heads to the dive bar and uses his Martian form. This startles the bartender, who he confronts and discovers is… M’gann M’orzz, aka Miss Martian. That’s right, J’onn is not the sole living Martian.
One last twist is that as POTUS walks away for the last time, her face shifts in an alien-like way. So is POTUS an alien living in disguise or has an alien taken her form?
The last bit of prejudice we see occurs at CatCo when Snapper Carr is prejudiced against James being in charge in Cat’s stead. Why? I’d have to assume because he’s so young and has been at CatCo for such a short time. Snapper takes over James’ editorial meeting. James has to prove himself a worthy boss, and he does so by rewriting Snapper’s own article and threatening to let him quit. This earns Snapper’s grudging respect.
So, prejudice spans species. But so can personal growth.
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic!
Write a comment below or submit an article to Hypable.