‘Supergirl’ Proves Kara Has Her Own Identity Outside of Being Superman’s Cousin

From the moment we stepped into Warner Bros. Studios in Leavesden, we got a sense of what director Craig Gillespie and his team have actually built. It became clear that Supergirl has a specific, distinct identity, and that identity belongs entirely to Kara. Producer Chantal Nong told us, “You just see how different she is from Superman.” The film takes place after James Gunn’s Superman, keeping the DCU continuity intact, and there are connections, but Nong insists that the two films feel like completely different creative experiences. Different characters, different tones, different filmmaking approaches.

That difference starts with the story being told. Tom King’s source material was deliberately constructed to strip away the parts of Kara’s mythology that exist in Superman’s shadow. Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow gives us Kara alone in deep space, drunk on a planet with a red sun on her 21st birthday. The film version adjusts Kara’s age slightly to 24, an adjustment that Gillespie apparently took seriously enough to build the entire architecture of the film around. Perhaps the most interesting fact that was shared with us is that the super suit arrives at the end of the film. Not the beginning, not the middle. The end. That creative decision, which Nong and Gillespie agreed on together, reframes what the suit means in a way that most superhero movies never bother to do. This is a coming into herself story,” Nong explained during our set visit. “She’s already been a hero. But is she doing it as her whole, full self? We would argue she isn’t.” The journey of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is the process by which Kara Zor-El becomes Supergirl in a way that’s actually hers. The suit, when it finally appears, is symbolic. It’s not armor she puts on to fight. It’s a declaration of who she has decided to be.

Costume designer Michael Mooney spoke about the connection between this suit and the one in Superman. There is a connection, and it was intentional, coordinated, a shared visual language for the DCU, but they elevated it for Supergirl specifically. “This is our film,” Mooney said plainly. “We just elevated it a little bit more.” The suit has more movement in the skirt, the belt, and the cloak. It’s built to read as powerful on someone slight. It’s built for Milly Alcock, who we’ve been told has been in training every single day of this production. Everyone we spoke to continued to rave about how perfect Alcock is for the role, and their faces lit up each time it’s discussed. It was clear that it was genuine, not just something everyone was saying to be nice.

Part of what makes Kara’s identity so compelling in this story is the complexity the film seems willing to embrace. In King’s graphic novel, Kara’s ultimate decision about Krem’s fate (banishing him to the Phantom Zone rather than letting Ruthye take her revenge) isn’t clean or glorious. It’s a hard call made by someone who has thought very carefully about what justice means and what it costs. Producer Nong talked about this in terms of gray hats and white hats, the framework she and James Gunn use to think about character alignment. Supergirl starts the film slightly in the gray area. She’s still figuring herself out. Lobo, who functions as a dark-gray force in the film, pushes against that. Ruthye, who is moving from grief toward hope, pulls in another direction. Kara exists between all of it, and the film is about finding out where she actually lands.

That’s a different kind of superhero story than what we’re used to. It’s less about saving the city and more about figuring out whether you can save yourself. It’s about what heroism looks like when you’re exhausted, when you’re operating without your full powers on a planet under a red sun, when the person who needs you is a thirteen-year-old girl who witnessed her father’s murder and decided to chase down a killer across the galaxy. I am all for it, because at the end of the day, we need different superhero stories to be told. The rinse and repeat is getting old.

We’re told all the details we were shown on set were intentionally to build the identity of a person, not a symbol.  The Blondie T-shirt, the messy space RV inspired by Riggs from Lethal Weapon, the fried eyeballs at a pub on a dying planet, and the pink inflatable spacesuit from a galactic rest stop that looks like a neon 7-Eleven, all of it. Each feature helps us get to know who Kara Zor-El really is outside of the suit.

That’s the work the film is doing. And if it pulls it off, Supergirl won’t just be a strong DCU entry, it’ll be the Kara movie that fans of the character have been waiting a very long time for.

Supergirl opens in theaters June 26, 2026.

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