Since James Gunn’s Superman became the biggest superhero movie at this summer’s box office, the world has been waiting to find out what the rest of the DCU sandpit will look like. Now, with the debut trailer for Supergirl, we have our first proper glimpse. On this evidence, the new Kara Zor-El lives in a brave new universe of gods and monsters that reflects her loneliness and fury right back at her.
Milly Alcock’s “woman of tomorrow” may not be like anyone we’ve seen on big or small screens before – which is impressive given how often Supergirl has been wheeled out over the decades. Helen Slater’s 1984 version is now widely regarded as a kind of sun-bleached Reagan-era artefact – a well-meaning but terminally camp experiment. Sasha Calle’s Supergirl in the recent The Flash looked soulful, angry and potentially gamechanging. And Melissa Benoist spent six seasons headlining a Supergirl series that was warmly received by its audience but rarely intruded into the consciousnesses of people who actually buy comic books.
The new film is heavily aligned with Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s 2021-22 miniseries Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. In the comic, Kara does not arrive on Earth as a baby – she is sent off after the infant Superman with the explicit job of looking after him once she arrives, but her mission fails catastrophically and she is left to watch Krypton die in front of her eyes. The trailer shows us a Supergirl who seems older than her 23 years: a hard-drinking, perpetually hungover figure who does not have the luxury of Superman’s hopeful outlook; who arrived on Earth traumatised and burdened by awful memories.
We know from the comic that the film will see her reluctantly enlisted by a young alien girl, Ruthye, who is seeking revenge for her murdered father. This is likely to drag Kara into a grim vendetta wherein godlike powers offer no clear moral advantage, and being the strongest person in the room turns out to be the least useful skill she has. There are also hints that the DCU’s vision of space beyond the borders of the solar system will look nothing like the one that Gunn invented with Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy films. Ruthye is a child who wants revenge, not rescue, and this is the perfect, desolate cosmos for a story that could boast heavy space western vibes.
If so, this will be a sea change from the way space was dealt with in the pre-Gunn DC era, when it was seen as more of a looming threat than an actual place. Alien gods arrived to punch Earth, not wander forgotten worlds. Supergirl instead suggests a cosmos full of moral dead zones and abandoned frontiers – the kind of place where hope doesn’t travel well.
