Australian actor Milly Alcock will soon be stepping into one of the oldest lineages in blockbuster cinema. The story of Krypton on screen reaches back almost half a century to Richard Donner’s Superman in 1978, the film that turned Christopher Reeve’s version of Kal-El into the defining modern superhero, and established the cultural imagination of “truth, justice, and the American Way” that Hollywood has spent decades either preserving or interrogating. Since then, the House of El has passed through successive generations, from Helen Slater’s Supergirl in 1984 and Tom Welling’s television-era Clark Kent in Smallville; to Henry Cavill’s brooding alien in Zack Snyder’s DC Extended Universe and now, David Corenswet’s earnest reinvention in James Gunn’s 2025 Superman — every actor who puts on the crest carries the accumulated expectations about what a Kryptonian hero ought to represent. Milly is acutely aware of that history, and her understanding of legacy appears rooted in a sense of stewardship. Asked about joining that tradition, she says, “I think that it’s such a privilege to be a part of a long legacy of such beloved actors and characters. In this reiteration, she is such a different version of Supergirl than we’ve seen in the past and that has made the privilege even more exciting.” The new DC Universe under DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran has been designed around reinvention, with Supergirl serving as the second feature in the franchise’s Chapter One: Gods and Monsters slate after the commercial success of Superman in 2025. The film, directed by Craig Gillespie and written by Ana Nogueira, adapts Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s acclaimed 2021-22 comic series Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, a spacefaring revenge narrative that follows Kal-El’s cousin Kara Zor-El, beyond the familiar setting of Earth-bound stories.