Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for Supergirl, Season 5, Episode 16, “Alex In Wonderland.”
Supergirl season 5, episode 16, “Alex in Wonderland” offered up several references to the Superman movies starring Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel. These nods to the classic films came during a virtual reality segment in which Alex Danvers stepped into the shoes of her super-powered sibling, Kara. “Alex In Wonderland” found the former DEO director in a serious funk. Alex was feeling lost and trying to find a new place for herself in the wake of her leaving the DEO after Lex Luthor took over the organization. She was thrown further off-balance by the death of her father, Jeremiah Danvers, who had gone into hiding after betraying the sinister anti-alien organization Project Cadmus.
Seeking an escape, Alex turned to Obsidian Platinum, a new virtual reality platform that claimed to be the most advanced system of its kind. Alex was broadly familiar with the system, having used it to track a kidnapper through a simulation of Las Vegas at the request of her girlfriend, Kelly Olsen, who was on the software’s development team. Faced with a number of options for her virtual life, Alex elected to become Supergirl and soon found herself flying around a virtual National City, fighting dragons and answering calls to action from a DEO where J’onn J’onzz was still the director.
It was shortly after reporting in at the DEO that Alex’s senses were assaulted by a high-pitched transmission. This signal was revealed to be the work of Hank Henshaw, the Cyborg-Superman, who proclaimed that there was “…only one thing alive that can hear this frequency… and that’s you,” before detailing that he had stolen a missile, kidnapped Kara and that would reveal Alex’s secret identity to the world if she failed to deliver him a nuclear warhead to go with the missile. Lex Luthor used the same trick to get Superman’s attention and made the same proclamation in Superman: The Movie.
Another nod to the classic Superman movies came later in the episode, as Alex’s memories of her real life began to become overridden by her desire to stay in the virtual world. After running into another Obsidian Platinum player who was playing as Supergirl in a virtual bar, Alex was left confused and asked her virtual J’onn and Brainiac-5 companions how there could be two Supergirls. Brainiac-5 suggested that it “might be the result (of) Kryptonite poisoning” in an apparent nod to the story of Superman III, where Superman was split into a good Clark Kent and an evil Superman after being exposed to a synthetic, tar-laced form of Kryptonite.
This isn’t the first time that Supergirl has referenced the classic Superman movies or Christopher Reeve himself, and the Arrowverse is known for paying homage to the DC shows and movies and that came before, but these specific references were great for fans of the Reeve films, in that they bolstered what was happening in this virtual reality world.
