Supergirl's 100th episode is going to be magical, if Mr. Mxyzptlk has anything to say about it. In last week's episode, the imp returned, and he plans to offer Kara a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the ability to go back in time and confess her secret identity to Lena Luthor before Lex can tell her. However, whenever Mxy is involved, things don't go exactly according to plan.
Speaking to CBR, Supergirl showrunners Robert Rovner and Jessica Queller offered glimpse into tonight's milestone episode. They revealed Mxyzptlk was always part of the plan and why Thomas Lennon stepped in to replace Peter Gadiot, who played the character in Season 2. They also discussed Lena's critical role, how the episode factors into Season 5's overall themes, how they chose moments to revisit and more.
CBR: The conceit of the episode is built around Mr. Mxyzptlk, so I'd love to hear about when in the process you decided to bring him back and how Thomas Lennon got involved.
Robert Rovner: Well, we've always wanted to bring the character back. We decided to bring the character back for this episode when we were really discussing the season way back, last March. We knew the 100th was coming up, and we knew that we wanted an avenue to go back in time and explore...
Jessica Queller: The flashbacks and see previous characters and stuff.
Rovner: And so we decided then that we were going to use Mxy, and then having Tom Lennon come in was...
Queller: Just glorious. I mean, we knew that we wanted to redeem Mxyzptlk from the previous incarnation, and we felt that we wanted him to come and apologize for his bad behavior to Kara and make amends. So that was part of recasting and having him appear in a more benign and contrite and charming form. Not that the previous actor wasn't charming, but the character was a little bit malevolent. Then we just got so blessed with the casting of Tom Lennon, who is magic himself.
What made Lena the perfect emotional center for the show's 100th episode?
Rovner: The whole season has been examining the fallout of that friendship, and so that has propelled Lena's character and what she is doing in her pursuit of Non Nocere and saving the world and making humanity better, and it's also been propelling Kara's guilt and her fault in that friendship. So, because it's been something that Kara is wrestling with and feeling like there was no way to change things, as we've changed other things on the show, both with "Crisis" and, you know, like Winn was able to do -- provide an opportunity to reexamine that to see if things could have been different -- and she ends up learning a valuable lesson.
Queller: We also loved the conceit of It's a Wonderful Life, the magic and the poignancy of that framework, and since this has been a real central friendship struggle in our season, it just made organic sense.
100 episodes is a lot of material! How did you set about choosing which moments to revisit?
Rovner: Once we had the conceit, the writers went back and reexamined all of their entire friendship together and looked at pivotal moments of where it would have made sense to try and do things differently, and that's how we chose the moments, each propelling a different outcome.
Airing Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on The CW, Supergirl stars Melissa Benoist as Kara Danvers, David Harewood as Martian Manhunter and Chyler Leigh as Alex Danvers.