Supergirl 2026

I’ve made it to my 600th superhero and/or comic book movie review here on this site and I decided that it would be a recent movie so I watched Supergirl since it had just arrived streaming on HBO Max. I’d heard a lot of mixed reviews about the movie, but I had a pretty good feeling about it based on my gut and aside from just a couple nitpicks, I was right and I really enjoyed this movie. It was a lot of fun and a real departure from most of the other stories that I’ve been aware of about the character. But at the same time, I think that they kept the heart of what defines Supergirl as a character, especially with how she connects to DCU’s Superman. And as this is still a pretty recent movie, as with all of my reviews there may be spoilers ahead so read further with caution.

It’s most interesting how much has been changed with Supergirl’s origin in this movie compared to how she’s been portrayed in various other movies and TV appearances. She’s almost always portrayed as both younger and older than Clark, as in she arrives on Earth younger than Clark but she has knowledge from her time spent on Krypton, or Argo City, or some other pocket of Krypton civilization. In this version, a relatively small group of Kryptonians were able to create a force field around a large section of their city and escape shortly before the rest of the planet collapsed into destruction. And Kara was born 8 years after they had been floating around in space. But the force field exposed Kryptonite which leeched into the groundwater and slowly poisoned the entire population, Kara was the least affected as she had 8 fewer years of exposure and was sent to Earth in basically a copy of Clark’s origin with the only difference being that she was found by adult Clark rather than by the Kents.

Having the same origin only separated by over twenty years creates an interesting dynamic between the two characters, even though most of this is told through flashbacks over the course of the movie rather than being frontloaded. Clark was raised as a human and views Earth as his home, but Kara was raised as a Kryptonian and views Earth as a foreign land, plus she has the trauma associated with the memories of her own dying mini-planet. But where the destruction of Krypton was a more sudden catastrophe, Argo was a slow, drawn out demise. And Kara has memories of not just funerals, but memories of seeing her family and friends get terribly sick and weak all around her, which makes sense that when we first meet her, she has been spending her time trying to numb the pain by getting drunk on a planet where she is able to get drunk. And at this point in her life, it makes sense that seeing this helpless-yet-strong young girl Ruthye who has lost her entire family is what she needed to get her back on track and become the person she was meant to become.

The film overall is a mix of being fun and funny, as there are many moments especially in the first half of the film where Kara is the reluctant hero, almost like a modern Western. She is someone who is good at heart and can’t stand idly by when she sees injustice happening right in front of her, but she doesn’t want to go out of her way to battle injustice that doesn’t directly affect her. So, it makes sense that she is forced into this quest when Krypto gets poisoned by the same person that killed this young girl’s family while he steals Kara’s ship. We also get a nice progression to see that she is a capable fighter even on a planet with a red sun, but becomes a superhero during the next altercation with some space pirates just around the planet from a yellow sun.

There is also plenty of subtext about trauma, and much of that is less subtext and more text especially when the villains are literally human (technically alien, but you get the point) traffickers. There’s the seemingly friendly couple who become much more morally grey as they cut a deal with the Brigands to save their own daughter, but the husband doubles back and begins helping Kara, only for Kara to be powerless to stop the deaths of both the couple and their daughter. The moment where Kara flies into space to literally scream into the void is a powerful image. Meanwhile, she keeps coaching to Ruthye that getting revenge via the death of her enemy is not the way to cope with her trauma, but by the end of the movie while we get the satisfying moment where Ruthye finally makes the decision not to become a killer in the name of revenge, this villain has been painted as such pure evil that Supergirl is able to take on the burden of killing him to prevent the death and trauma that he would very likely commit to dozens of other women if he were allowed to live.

This also has the introduction of Jason Momoa as Lobo, a well known comic presence with a nearly non-existent presence in film and TV. He’s a fun enough character presented as a chaotic neutral character, similar to Harley Quinn without the crazy. He’s just interested in money and chaos but doesn’t kill people if he doesn’t have to. His presence in this movie is basically as mostly comic relief and an ally but only when it was convenient for him. He didn’t make too much of an impression but he was fun enough. Ruthye herself was an interesting character with a decent amount of battle skills, but the naivety and strength of a 13ish year old girl. Her battle skills allowed her to avoid falling into the annoying child trope though her blind persistence did come close. The soundtrack was also a generally fun trip, drawing some clear comparisons to Guardians of the Galaxy while not ever feeling like a direct copy of the trope. But overall, this was a fun and enjoyable movie with a lot of heart and an interesting character arc for Supergirl herself that felt like something all its own. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.