The official midseason premiere of Supergirl picks up after the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Kara is disgusted with Lex and her being known worldwide as collaborators and she wants to come clean with Lena upfront this time so that their friendship can be open and honest but, she doesn’t know that Lena escaped the Crisis with her memory untouched. While Lex tries to bring Lena into the fold she and her unwiped mind let him in on the fact that no one seems to remember the Leviathan is still out there. Brainiac 5 meets another Brainiac 5 in what appears to be an side effect of the Crisis and in attempting to bring the alterna Brainiac to Alex at the DEO, he finds himself in a room full of Brainiac 5’s including a female one who is head of the DEO.

Kara’s attempt to come clean to Lena is met with exactly the opposition you’d expect but, ever the Paragon of Hope, Supergirl still believes that she can get their friendship back and they can work together to save the world. Back at the DEO someone is wiping out the Brainiacs with a biosynthetic virus and the Brainiacs have all converged on Earth-Prime and Brainiac Prime lets them all know that all the multiverses are dead. Lex summons Supergirl and Alex to his office to make his version of a peace pact and give each other an update on where all of Earth Prime’s threats stand.

Meanwhile, at Al’s Bar the Brainiac’s learn that all of Al’s Bar was a wormhole site and when the universes merged all of the people in Al’s Bar’s across the multiverse were transported to Earth-Prime. We also find out that Lex’s mom is back too and since Lena is on the loose looking for a partner so she goes to mommy dearest who tells her to chose Lex over Kara because she will never trust Lex, so he can never hurt her. Alex is having a big problem, understandably, about working for Lex and goes to J’onn J’onzz for help who tells her to follow her heart and do what she thinks is right even if it’s “wrong”. The female Braniac 5 is up to something and at first glance appears to be working for the Leviathan, or at least very interested in what is going on with them. She finds Brainiac 5  to find out what’s going on with him and learns about his personality inhibitors and attempts to change him. Lady Brainiac (Kor-El) attempts to get him to reconnect to the big brain while one of the other Brainiac’s is visited by Nia who catches him holding on to a bottle that contains the 7 billion souls that he has contained to save them and wants to open his universe in Prime. Nia alerts Brainiac Prime, and Supergirl about what is going on and they come to her aid but Earth Bottling Brainiac is already on the move, and he’s the one who is killing the Brainiac’s who try and stop him.

The bottling Brainy wants to open his world but, doing so would destroy both worlds and while the Brainy collective, Supergirl and Alex think that they have more time because the only saber using Argonium 44 that he can use to open it has been destroyed. Andrea Roja’s mentor is trying to convince her to extend her Obsidian tech idea to basically, turn everyone into the people sent off-world in Wall-E. Brainiac Prime is reliving some painful childhood memories that explain how he came to possess his three-dot inhibitors and how he is unable to take them off because he fears that he may have evil within him. While having their heart to heart with Supergirl they realize that the witches who released reign in “our” world but, who are benign in ours after the Big Al’s Wormhole Merge Bar Party are capable of opening the bottle and that’s Bottle Brainiacs only play.

Nia, Supergirl and Brainiac Prime show up at the bar in time to catch the Bottle Brainy and his new collection of helpful witches about to open the bottle. During what can only be described as the a campily beautiful bar fight to N’Sync’s “It’s Gonna Be Me,” Brainiac Prime finds himself unable to win against Bottle Brainy with Nia’s encouragement and love he decides to take off the inhibitors, allowing him to connect with Bottle Brainy and together they stop him from opening the bottle. One of the witches comes to her senses and decides that it is better for them all to wait for a solution to everyone’s new world problems and trust Brainiac Prime and his friends. Prime then encases the witches and Bottle Brainy in his universe bottle in an act of mercy and compassion until they can safely release them home.

The remaining two Brainiacs decide to go back into the Big Brain since they aren’t needed on this planet. Lady Kor-El stays behind a bit to warn Brainiac Prime that he needs to abandon his friends and Nia and work with Lex Luthor if he is to save the last remaining world. She knows this because fighting Lex is what took her world down the road to ruin and Brainiac prime is now stuck with secret information that will undoubtedly have effects that ripple throughout the remainder of this season. Lex and Lena agree to join forces after they state their terms while Lex is bound with truth manacles which are bound to make things awkward for Supergirl and the rest of the DOE team. Brainiac breaks up with Nia and all of our hearts break because while we know why he’s doing it, it doesn’t make it sting less, especially when we’re sure that there has to be another way. While the rest of the team prepares to stand against Lex, Brainiac Prime offers Lex his services and they head off to collect The Toymaker (our boy Wynn is back) who came through the wormhole and was arrested ( a nice callback to the toy monkey they found in the lost & found box at Al’s).

Overall, Episode 10 was the only logical way to show the ripples of the merge and the overreaching effects that the events of Crisis caused. While our heroes remain mostly OK, even Lex got to keep the people that he “loved”, other planets and people were not so lucky and while they may not know what they are missing there is still a hole. As a stand-alone episode in what I’m sure will be a multi-layered storyline with a lot of intricate moving pieces, this was a nice part of the puzzle. I am a huge fan of this new, all-inclusive, dark direction that Supergirl (and the DC shows on the CW) have taken and if this is what a post-Crisis Prime looks like, I’m here for it.

Overall: 8.7