WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Supergirl in theatres now.
Supergirl has returned to the big screen for the first time in over 40 years in a solo feature. Starring House of the Dragon’s Milly Alcock as Kara Zor-El, Supergirl succeeds at telling an epic origin story that directly addresses the traumatic loss of Krypton and its impact on the titular heroine. Naturally, the movie borrows pages from both Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (by Tom King and Bilquis Evely) and her classic 1959 origin as depicted in Action Comics #252. It also doesn’t present the Girl of Steel as a female Superman.
Whereas Kal-El was fortunate to have been adopted by loving farmers in Kansas, who taught him the values that inform his heroic endeavors, Kara actually experienced life on Krypton – both on the planet itself prior to its implosion and on the chunk of Argo City that briefly survived before ultimately cratering. Both versions have been true in the main DC canon.
The film succeeds at exploring Kara’s trauma and building a compelling heroic journey. Unfortunately, one pivotal decision in the climax undermines both its central message and Kara’s growth.
Kara’s Heroic Journey in Supergirl Was Off to a Good Start
DC Studios/Warner Bros. Discovery
For the most part, Supergirl does well to show how Kara differs from her cousin and, most importantly, how her experience as the sole survivor of Argo City shapes her worldview. Since this experience is still fresh in her memory, it’s not surprising that she’s struggling to process this complex trauma in healthier ways to the point of drawing concern from her cousin, her sole support system at this point. It’s also not surprising that she self-medicates using alcohol.
This premise creates a strong hook for launching Kara’s heroic journey. Much of the story focuses on Kara working outside of her comfort zone, learning to accept other people in her life, and, more importantly, discovering for herself what is important to her. What is out there in the universe that she feels is worth protecting? This is where Krypto and Ruthye Marye Knoll come into the story, serving as Kara’s emotional anchor and guiding her on the path to becoming the heroic Supergirl we know and love.
The movie gets most of this right and builds towards a satisfying action-packed climax that finally sees Kara put on the Supergirl suit for the first time and actually fight for something she believes in. She also fights to protect a person she has come to love and even people who need her help, like the Brigands’ sex trafficking victims. The one scene that ruins this heroic moment, however, is the scene that depicts Kara willingly killing Krem of the Yellow Hills by stabbing him twice with Ruthye’s sword.
Whilst this moment did bring me back to 2013’s Man of Steel, directed by Zack Snyder, it also gnawed at me a bit more than in that first movie. Part of that was me feeling that the movie misrepresented who Kara is at her core in the source material. Another part of that was me feeling that the movie itself undermined its own message and the growth of its own version of Kara by going this route.
Kara Zor-El Is Not the Kryptonian Antihero That Kills
Right out the gate, I feel that depicting Supergirl as the Kryptonian hero who is willing to cross the lines Superman won’t is a significant misreading of her character. I also don’t think this is the right way to make her stand out from her cousin, as it comes off as lazy storytelling.
Throughout her publication history, Kara is a heroine who struggles to find her footing on Earth at the beginning but has a moral compass that prioritizes saving lives rather than taking them – even when battling dangerous enemies like Brainiac or Metallo. What truly sets her apart from Superman is the experience of being a teenage refugee who experienced the destruction of her homeworld and being forced to adapt to a new world that is radically different from the one she knows.
This creates a different, traumatic, and isolating experience from Superman, who never experienced any of that at all. Whilst biologically Kryptonian, culturally, Superman is more “Earthling” than Kryptonian. Since the Supergirl movie already makes this distinction and leans hard into it for telling its story, it renders the need to make Kara an antihero who kills completely unnecessary. This was the same problem Man of Steel had back in 2013, especially since that movie’s version of Superman has the same story as Kara’s in this movie.
Like Supergirl, Man of Steel is all about building Kal-El into becoming both the Clark Kent and Superman we know and love. That movie does well to pit him against General Zod (another Kryptonian survivor) as an important part of helping Kal-El understand his own values as a person and how he wants to use his powers to benefit others. The movie misfires in its own goal by depicting Superman carelessly destroying skyscrapers in Metropolis during his fight with General Zod. He even goes the extra mile of destroying a Kryptonian ship full of embryos by declaring, “Krypton had its chance!”
Whilst Man of Steel’s final act goes against the grain of who Superman is as a hero, the disaster porn spectacle created another problem for him, and that was tackling the moral question of “Should Superman kill his enemies?” Though the movie at least presents Superman reluctantly killing General Zod and hating himself for it, he’s not shown feeling remorseful about the other casualties of Metropolis’ destruction. He also presumably killed more people when he rescued Lois Lane from a terrorist situation in Africa. Both incidents painted Superman in a bad light, to the point of almost justifying Batman’s rationale for wanting to kill him in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Supergirl repeats this same problem in a different way, with one scene foreshadowing Kara’s troubling moral standing on human casualties: the Brigands’ raid of the planet Bilquis. Whilst Kara was not at all responsible for the deaths of the couple who almost sold her and Ruthye as sex slaves, she was also not fazed by the merciless way Krem killed the wife and her daughter – something Ruthye called her out on. When Kara and Ruthye later catch up to Krem on a planet orbiting binary stars (one of which is green and toxic to Kara), the Girl of Steel comes to her senses when she saves the other sex slaves from death inside the Brigands’ ship.
When Kara sees Ruthye about to kill a helpless Krem, she rightfully tells Ruthye that “revenge won’t take [her] pain away” to prevent her from making a mistake. She then comforts Ruthye, who breaks down crying, and allows herself to mourn her family’s death for the first time. This whole scene is excellent. But when Kara goes to deal with Krem herself, she immediately invalidates what she said seconds earlier by stabbing him twice: once as payback for killing Ruthye’s family and twice for almost killing Krypto. This made me question what was the whole point of Kara stopping Ruthye from killing Krem out of anger.
Keeping Woman of Tomorrow’s Original Ending Would’ve Worked Better
DC Studios/Warner Bros. Discovery
It’s been over 24 hours since I saw the movie at the cinema, but I still can’t wrap my mind around Kara killing Krem the way that she did. Apart from going against the grain of who Kara is as a character, it also weakened the larger point of her heroic journey: realizing she is a hero on equal footing to Superman. Instead, the scene establishes Kara as deceptive and hypocritical. This is one of those instances where I felt the movie should have kept the original ending of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow to more strongly land on the point it was trying to make.
In the comic the movie is based on, Kara spent the entire story keeping Ruthye’s intent to murder Krem at bay until she experienced his senseless acts of violence for herself. This included the wholesale genocide of purple aliens that were segregated from the blue alien population of a planet. When both women finally caught up to Krem on a beach planet, Ruthye did get her moment to fight Krem before severing all the fingers on his right hand with her sword.
When Ruthye had the opportunity to kill Krem, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. This was what prompted Kara to decide to kill him in her stead, with Ruthye stopping her from doing the deed. In the flash-forward, it was revealed that Kara had exiled Krem to the Phantom Zone, where he spent the rest of his life repenting for his crimes and emerged remorseful. This same ending could have still worked for the movie, even with Kara’s and Ruthye’s roles reversed
After comforting Ruthye in the movie and giving her space to mourn her family’s death, Kara could easily have had an epiphany herself in this very scene. Whilst she could have still acknowledged wanting to kill Krem after experiencing his crimes firsthand, it still would have been far more impactful for Kara to choose not to follow through on that thought. This could also have led her to restrain Krem and take him back to her cousin on Earth, to be exiled to the Phantom Zone after spending one more day with Ruthye.
This change could have also still led to the conversation between Kara and Superman at the end of the film, where she decides to be a hero alongside him. Whilst this was an obvious setup for the upcoming Man of Tomorrow movie, at the same time, it would have ended this chapter of Kara’s journey on a much stronger note. Not killing Krem would have solidified the idea that Kara has grown into the hero we know and love, and better sets her up to take on her more iconic role as one of Earth’s heroes.
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