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The Supergirl promos have not deceived you: Yes, Argo City still exists, and yes, Kara’s mom is still alive!

As revealed in a sneak peek at next week’s episode, Kara (Melissa Benoist) and Mon-El (Chris Wood) will travel into deep space to find a rock that could theoretically be used to separate Sam (Odette Annable) from Reign. However, they’ll be shocked to discover that the rock is the resting place for Argo City, which survived the destruction of Krypton. How will Kara feel about her mother, Alura (Erica Durance), still being alive? EW turned to Benoist to get the scoop. (Read our interview with Durance here.)

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Argo City still exists! Kara’s mom is still alive! When did you find out the show was going to do this, and what was your reaction?

MELISSA BENOIST: I actually found out pretty early on. I would say within the first three episodes of this season, they knew they wanted to get to here, because they knew they wanted Erica Durance to be involved. It’s just such a mainstay for Kara’s history that she’s so informed by her past on Krypton in Argo City, and she’s struggled with her identity so often. This season, I found out very early on that they wanted to explore this to kind of show that Kara needed to make decision whether she was an Earthling or whether she was Kryptonian.

How will she deal with her mom suddenly appearing in her life?

Yeah, and it’s been quite some time. Just from approaching the scenes we’ve been doing, I haven’t even really fathomed that, because it’s such a huge change. We’ve had moments like this before in the show, where she saw Astra and she never thought she’d see Astra again, and she saw her uncle Non. There have been people from her past that have resurfaced that she didn’t expect, but her mother, who she bases so much of her ideals and her pride on, and kind of lives in the memory of her mother, and she gets to talk to her, but it’s never fulfilled with the hologram. Now she’s here in the flesh before her — it’s pretty gargantuan, to say the least, in terms of changing her life.

Image zoom Katie Yu/The CW

Is it tough for Kara and Alura to figure each other out at first?

I think it’s more just that there’s a sadness and a melancholy than there is any toughness to deal with it. Navigating through that, the way we portray this, because it’s been 12 or 15 years since they’ve seen each other, they both, for all intents and purposes, thought the other dead, so it’s a melancholy that has to inject everything, because they’ve missed so much time, and because they didn’t know that the other was alive, and they could’ve probably seen each other sooner. But other than that, I think all the changes she sees in her mom are really positive and she’s very proud of and impressed by, because [there were] things that we’ve explored in season 1 where Kara was disillusioned by her parents and disillusioned by the decision they made, or not very proud of some of the decisions they made, so I think that’s gonna change.

How do you think this might affect her relationship with Alex, especially because she’s the family that’s been here all along for Kara?

Right. Well, it’s on both sides of the coin because her mother feels mixed emotions about having sent her away when they realized they didn’t have to, and assumed her to be dead, but then has realized that she’s lived with this other family, basically was raised by other people and a sister. And Alex, on the other hand, that’s something that I think we’ll continue to explore because obviously now Kara knows she can go back and decide to be with her mother more, which requires traveling light years away from Earth. But you know what I love the most? How accepting Alex and Kara are. Kara obviously has been very supportive of Alex in the last two years to kind of take care of herself and be who she wants to be, and I think she would support Kara doing that for herself as well.

Can you talk about how Kara will struggle between using the rock to save Earth from Reign or leaving the rock to protect the Kryptonians?

Yeah, I mean, at the end of last season, Kara made the decision to sacrifice everything she cared about, the love of her life, for the sake of Earth, so I know she’s capable of making that decision. This is obviously so different because it’s everything she’s ever wanted for herself in terms of being with her family and feeling a part of her community and not feeling like such an outsider and having a normal life, as much of a normal life as a Kryptonian can have. But I think you’ll see things have changed on Argo City, and also she’s changed. We’re kind of exploring that in this episode we’re doing at the moment, where she might not fit in anymore amongst the Kryptonians because Argo City has learned so much. The people that have stayed on Argo City, on this asteroid that’s floating in space, and then Kara being raised on Earth, two roads diverged and they’re very different. So I think reconciling it for her is much more difficult than she anticipates.

Is there talk of relocating the Kryptonians to Earth?

Not yet, but that’s a really good idea. That would be so cool.

Supergirl airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on the CW.