As played by Milly Alcock, the Supergirl trailer shows Kara Zor-El looking burdened and traumatised. Does this mean that the DC universe is getting darker?
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ince 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.
