Supergirl’s Unusual Cameo in Superman Sets Up Different Kind of Superhero Movie Next Year

This article contains Superman spoilers.

For the most part, David Corenswet played Superman as we’ve known and loved him for going on 90 years. Sure, he had a few more emotional outbursts than we’re used to seeing but he’s still the kindhearted and slightly corny guy who debuted back in 1938.

The same cannot be said for the character who crashes into the Fortress of Solitude in Superman’s closing minutes. As Superman sits in the Fortress and waits to be healed by his robots, his cousin Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl (played by House of the Dragon‘s Milly Alcock), stumbles into the room more than a little hungover. She retrieves her dog, shouts “thanks, bitch!,” and flies away, leaving Superman shaking his head.

To those used to the sweet takes on Supergirl in the CW series or the 1984 movie, this Supergirl’s arrival must be something of a shock. Supergirl is surly? Supergirl is drunk???

Most of the time, the answer is “no.” Created by Otto Binder and designed by Al Plastino, Supergirl made her debut in 1959’s Action Comics #252 and since then has been largely a sweet and kind Kryptonian, much like her cousin. The great exception here is the series that will be the inspiration for the upcoming Supergirl film starring Alcock and which is directed by Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya, Cruella).

Written by Tom King and illustrated by Bilquis Evely, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow features a Maid of Might who is kind but she’s definitely not sweet. The series follows Supergirl as she’s recruited by a girl named Ruthye Marye Knoll to get revenge against Krem of the Yellow Hills, a scoundrel who killed her father. Along the way, Supergirl tangles with and then eventually joins forces alongside intergalactic bounty hunter Lobo, who will be played by Jason Momoa in the movie.

A scene in the series’ second issue captures King and Evely’s unique approach to Supergirl. The story is told from the perspective of the adult Ruthye Marye, who recounts her time with Supergirl and explains how people often misunderstand Superman’s cousin.

It begins with Supergirl and Ruthye Marye taking a meal at a cantina when an alien comes up, points his gun at Supergirl. He plans to kill her in retribution for Superman capturing his brothers. The adult Ruthye Marye tells readers that these sorts of things happened often. Some cowardly criminal would have a grudge against Superman and try to take it out on Supergirl because they “presumed her to be his soft underbelly.”

Over panels of Evely’s sharp line work and bright colors, depicting Supergirl easily knocking out her attacker, Ruthye Marye continues, “I spent enough time around Supergirl to know her better than most, maybe better than all, truth be told. So let me say with some manner of expertise that she was a woman of disparate qualities who bent her own sense of self to fit the situation. Which is to say in a simpler manner—It is true. She was many things to many people, but she was never soft.”

The confrontation takes place in a dive bar deep in outer space, securely making the story a sci-fi tale. And Evely’s art work really shines when depicting Supergirl with her horse Comet, holding a sword and chasing the dagger-wielding Krem, giving the comic an ’80s fantasy aesthetic. But as the florid narration above indicates, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is as much a Western as it is anything else. More specially, an older woman telling a story from her youth in which she got a disreputable person to help her hunt down the scoundrel who killed her father recalls True Grit, the Charles Portis novel made into movies starring John Wayne and Jeff Bridges.

And if Ruthye Marye is in the Mattie Ross role, then that makes Supergirl Rooster Cogburn. Except in True Grit, Rooster was an older man who fell into drunkenness late in life. But in Woman of Tomorrow, Supergirl’s partying and drinking is a result of her inability to step out of her cousin’s shadow. Throughout the series, she’s plagued by the sense that she’ll never live up to what the “S” on her chest represents, which makes the legend told by Ruthye Marye all the greater.

That sense of legend and legacy also makes Supergirl the perfect follow-up for Superman. Already it’s clear that Superman is resonating with viewers, in part because James Gunn allows the character to be so kind and square, and decidedly not punk rock. Supergirl is not like him, a point he himself makes when complaining to Gary about how she raises Krypto in the new film. In fact, Supergirl in Superman is costumed exactly like she at the start of Woman of Tomorrow. When Ruthye Marye finds Supergirl in a pub, Kara is wearing an oversized brown jacket and nursing a hangover, the result of her partying for her birthday on red sun planets.

As at the end of Superman, Supergirl shocks the reader at the start of Woman of Tomorrow. She’s not sweet, she’s not perfect. She’s reckless and irresponsible. But by the end of the story, she’s just as heroic as her cousin, going on an adventure that he could never take.

Supergirl crashes into theaters on June 26, 2026.