'Supergirl' Season 4 Episode 5 Recap, Spoilers: Kara Has a Bold New Plan

An anti-alien group has risen in National City in Supergirl Season 4, and Kara and James are taking different ideas on how to fight back. In Episode 5, “Parasite Lost,” Kara tries using her day job as a journalist while James is hoping to change people’s minds with his Guardian identity.

Spoilers for Supergirl Season 4 Episode 5 below.

After seeing the way discrimination spread in their country, alien healer, Amadei Derros gave Kara his first interview in over 20 years, offering a way out of the anti-Alien political climate.

“If we want to fight prejudice, people need to know about who we are as aliens and what we do,” he said. “To lead as an example for others, I must be seen.”

However, Kara learned the importance of fact-checking. She’d profiled him as a “great man,” hoping that would bring people together. Then she learned he’d broken the heart of a human woman — and that woman was responsible for an attack on Amadei that left him dying after she’d taken his amulet. The woman also gave the amulet to the anti-alien group, the Children of Liberty.

Agent Liberty gave that amulet to Jensen. He’d infected the former The Department of Extranormal Operations (DEO) agent with the Parasite that allowed him to absorb alien powers. The amulet would not only keep Jensen alive but also allow him to retain those abilities. Acting under Agent Liberty’s orders, Jensen aimed to take out everyone who attended a vigil for Amadei. Colonel Haley ordered Alex to take him out, but to do so would kill everyone in the area, so Alex found a way to talk him down and hand over the amulet instead.

In the end, Kara was inspired to write a series of profiles, “Aliens in National City,” highlighting a different alien every week — and “not just the noted ones,” she told Nia. “They don’t have to be saints. Aliens are just as flawed as everyone else. I think telling their stories or all sides of them can still help heal the divide in the city.”

James was also looking to change people’s minds about aliens, albeit in a different way. Initially, he wanted to make a statement disavowing any connection to anti-alien people praising Guardian. After conversations with Ben Lockwood (a.k.a. Agent Liberty, not that he knows that) and another columnist at a media summit, he had a new plan.

Guardian was a “symbol of human hope,” Ben told James. People who hated aliens were scared and needed their fears acknowledged, he explained. If people shut down those fears, like James was doing, they’d only be driven deeper into darkness.

“Maybe you can’t change people’s minds by slamming doors in their faces,” James told Lena. He wanted to get to the “bottom of the story” and the anti-alien movement, including the identity of its leader. Since those people were interested in Guardian, he thought he could get them to listen to him. So, in the final moments of the episode, he reached out to Ben.

“Because James is a reporter and he wants to figure out what the story is and figure out who these people are … That’s gonna lead him into some dangerous territory,” Mehcad Brooks told Decider. “Not just putting himself in physical danger, but also putting himself at odds with his loved ones in some ways.”

We already saw that Lena was worried about James going down this path.

The anti-alien sentiment was even present at the DEO — at least in terms of how J’onn J’onzz ran things. Despite working well with Colonel Haley throughout the episode, Alex learned the other woman was the one to recommend J’onn’s removal as Director of the DEO after finding out he was an alien. She disliked him employing aliens instead of catching them. Then, when Alex stood up for him, both as her family and the best director the organization had seen, Haley reminded Alex she was her superior and said they’d set things right.

Supergirl airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on the CW.