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After struggling to live a double life for six seasons, Supergirl’s final episode finally saw Kara choosing to live a life without secrets.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Supergirl Season 6, Episode 20, “Kara,” which aired Tuesday, Nov. 9 on The CW.
Supergirl has lived a double life ever since she found a home on Earth. When her pod crash-landed, aliens were unknown to the world, so she disguised herself as the nerdy Kara Danvers for her and others’ safety. But, it didn’t take long for the Kryptonian to realize Earth’s yellow sun imbues her with superpowers — leading her to become The Girl of Steel.
For six seasons of The CW show, we’ve seen Kara Danvers wrestle with having powers and how to use them to save humanity — especially at the cost of living a human life. Kara isn’t human, but tried really hard to be and even became a Pulitzer-winning journalist to boot. But in the Season 6 finale, Kara decides to put down her glasses and reveal her true identity to the world.
In previous seasons of Supergirl, Kara’s choice to hide her superhero identity almost always fractured — albeit momentarily — her friendships. As more time passed, friends who learned of her identity late — like Lena Luthor — felt so betrayed that they’d often act out in dangerous ways. While it was always painful for Kara to see her friends hurting, she found a way to win their trust back. Season 6, however, pushed Kara to her limits as she struggled to balance spending time with her growing family, saving the universe, and not getting fired for always disappearing to don her cape for another mission.
Season 6 shows Kara returning from the dreaded Phantom Zone, and that’s right when her troubles balancing two lives begin. First, she has to concoct a flimsy lie to her boss Andrea Rojas about why she was missing from work for months without notice. Additionally, donning her cape doesn’t give her enough time to process her own PTSD from the experience, which begins to wear on Kara and causes her to have trouble focusing on work, self-care, and her family. As work stress increases, she spends even more time debating with Rojas, as CatCo has turned into a sensationalist paper that doesn’t care to promote the hope that Supergirl wants to spread into the world. Kara eventually decides to quit journalism, thinking this will make everything easier.
What really pushes Kara to reconsider her double life is seeing Alex so beautifully embrace herself and her blossoming family. A pivotal moment for Kara was when Alex told her she wouldn’t raise Esme to hide who she is. She tells Kara that the world has changed — which is true, even if some people still reject aliens, they’re known about and integrated into society — and she doesn’t want Esme to feel like she should hide who she is. Kara laments that she never got to live that way and reflects on how painful it was to hide who she was growing up, but even in her voice you can tell that it’s still hard now — considering she just quit her dream career.
In “Kara,” Cat Grant is the one to finally call out Kara on living two lives. She not only offers her the role of Editor-in-Chief at CatCo but gives her a platform to reveal who she is to the world. Cat believes that people knowing she is Supergirl would give her even more opportunities to do good in the world of journalism. The move is not unlike Iron Man‘s ending press conference, where Tony Stark says, “I am Iron Man.” However, there’s one big difference. Kara’s move isn’t nearly as dramatic as Tony’s mic drop and is done solely to show the world that there’s no reason to be scared of embracing who you are. Kara gives hope to others, showing if she can be vulnerable, others can too.
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