REVIEW
Supergirl (2026)

Supergirl is a 2026 American superhero film based on the DC Comics superheroine Kara Zor-El / Supergirl. Directed by Craig Gillespie and written by Ana Nogueira, it is the second film in the DC Universe (DCU). Milly Alcock stars in the title role, alongside Matthias Schoenaerts, Eve Ridley, David Krumholtz, Emily Beecham, David Corenswet, and Jason Momoa. In the film, Kara embarks on a journey across the galaxy to hunt down an adversary who has harmed her pet dog Krypto. The film is produced by Peter Safran and James Gunn of DC Studios. 

Cast

• Milly Alcock as Kara Zor-El / Supergirl

• Matthias Schoenaerts as Krem of the Yellow Hills

• Eve Ridley as Ruthye Marye Knoll

• David Krumholtz as Zor-El

• Emily Beecham as Alura In-Ze

• David Corenswet as Kal-El / Clark Kent / Superman

• Jason Momoa as Lobo
  Momoa previously portrayed Arthur Curry / Aquaman in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) from 2016 to 2023.

Additional roles include Ferdinand Kingsley as Elias Knoll, Ruthye's father who was killed by Krem; Diarmaid Murtagh as Drom Baxton, the Brigands' second-in-command; and Clara Rosager, Heather Agyepong, and Alice Hewkin as the Sklarian Raiders. Seth Rogen makes a voice cameo as a small alien Kara encounters on a space bus. Supergirl's super-powered dog Krypto also returns from the DCU film Superman (2025).

Plot

During the destruction of the planet Krypton, scientist Zor-El and his wife Alura evacuate along with many Kryptonians to Argo City, where Zor-El activates a force field system that separates a chunk containing the city from Krypton, preventing it from being destroyed when the planet's core explodes. Eight years later, Alura gives birth to her and Zor-El's daughter, Kara. Eventually, it is discovered that the separation of Argo City exposed a mineral known as "Kryptonite", which is slowly killing the citizens via radiation. After Alura succumbs to Kryptonite poisoning, Zor-El decides to send Kara and her dog Krypto on a ship headed to Earth. Upon landing, they are greeted by Kara's cousin Kal-El, who is living a double life as Clark Kent and Superman. Kara later tries to adjust to her new life on Earth, while also adopting the moniker "Supergirl".

In the present, Kara travels with Krypto to several planets and parties in celebration of her 23rd birthday. Superman often calls her, concerned that she is constantly off-world and unable to settle on Earth. During one of her stops, Kara encounters Ruthye Marye Knoll, the last survivor of her family who were murdered by Krem of the Yellow Hills, leader of a ruthless bandit group known as the Brigands. Ruthye requests Kara's assistance in her quest for vengeance, but is denied. Krem hijacks Kara's ship alongside several Brigands, and shoots Krypto with a poisonous dart when he tries to stop them. Upon learning that Krypto has only three days left to live, Kara decides to pursue Krem to retrieve an antidote that he keeps on person, while also reluctantly taking on Ruthye as her companion.

After a brief skirmish with the Sklarian Raiders, a group of space pirates, Kara interrogates them and learns of Krem's location on the planet Bilquis. There, Kara and Ruthye learn from a local couple, Bomar and Mareck, that the Brigands have been kidnapping young women to force them to be their brides. Mareck attempts to drug Kara to trade her and Ruthye to the Brigands in exchange for their daughter Sarna, but Kara resists and fights the Brigands, and is assisted by the bounty hunter Lobo, who is targeting the Brigands' lieutenant Drom Baxton. Amidst the battle, Kara stops Ruthye from killing Krem, allowing him to escape after killing Bomar and his family. A guilt-ridden Kara decides to pursue Krem alone, and is escorted by several local aliens to the Brigands' location on another planet, Barenton. However, Kara is weakened by the planet's green sun, and is tended to by Ruthye, who secretly followed her.

Ruthye is later kidnapped by the Brigands and taken to their ship, where Lobo is also imprisoned. Ruthye manages to escape her cell and free Lobo, but is caught by Krem as she makes it topside. She is then saved by Kara, who has managed to recover after the planet rotates to a yellow sun and has donned her Supergirl suit. With Lobo's assistance, Supergirl defeats the Brigands and frees the captive women on board. She pleads with Ruthye not to kill Krem, convincing her that it would not ease her pain. As Ruthye walks away, Supergirl picks up her sword and uses it to kill Krem herself. She recovers the antidote and returns to Krypto, saving him in time. Later, as Supergirl bids farewell to Ruthye, she invites her to join her in celebrating the rest of her birthday week.

Some time later, Supergirl reunites with Superman on Earth, where she expresses a desire to stay for the long term, reaffirming that the planet is now her home.

The Verdict: 

I didn't see this film the opening weekend for a multitude of reasons, including but not limited to so much going on that weekend that I didn't have any means to fit that into my agenda. I opted for the following holiday weekend, but by that point, I had already heard and read about all of the negativity surrounding this film. To be honest, I already had low expectations after the first few trailers, so I didn't go into this thinking it was going to be a 1-to-1 adaptation of the beloved and highly acclaimed Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow story. Seeing Lobo in the trailers was the first red flag that told me that they weren't following the book to the tee, so I didn't get my hopes up, much like a lot of the MCU's adaptations that were based off of beloved stories in name only. 

All of that being said, I want to start this review by saying that I liked Milly Alcock's performance as Supergirl/Kara Zor-El. She's not going to replace Melissa Benoist as my favorite actress to portray the character in live-action but I feel like this is another actress who has been snake bit in terms of being handed a script that does little to make people care about her character, especially for her first "proper" debut in this new continuity. She got more to work with here than Sasha Calle did in The Flash, but that's being generous in terms of everything that is going wrong with this film. 

The first mistake this film makes is not giving any coherent idea when or where this film takes place in relation to last year's Superman film. Sure, we get that Kara is on her birthday bender, but is this before or after that movie when she comes back for Krypto? Some sort of opening scene on Earth where she's helping Clark with a minor crisis would have set the tone and establish her right off the bat if they took that opening scene to hook viewers into caring about her character. They could have borrowed from the opening of Legion of Super-Heroes animated movie where Kara is shown having trouble adjusting to life on Earth with its more primitive culture in comparison to the life she remembers back on Argo City before Krypton blew up. You could have shown how Kara is more reckless with the usage of her powers and isn't optimistic as her cousin since she actually lived to see the final hours of Krypton before it was destroyed. This would set the tone for why she's always trying to drown herself away from her trauma instead of dealing with it head on. 

Instead, this film opens with Ruthyre Marye Knoll's family being visited on a whim by Krem of the Yellow Hills, the leader of a group of bandits known as the Brigands. Ruthyre's parents willingly give Krem their weapons that they forged, but Krem kills them on a whim after being startled by Ruthyre's brother making a noise in the backrooms, leaving Ruthyre as the sole survivor. It comes off as very random and silly when it was a ruthless attack in the source material. Here, it just felt like they caught him on a bad day and a little too trigger happy, especially being someone who was one of those cliched shady types who probably was already being stalked/hunted for whatever bounty would be on his head anyway. From the way that Ruthyre's parents were talking as if they knew he was coming, so they had already made preparations to fight back. They managed to cripple his spacecraft so that he is unable to leave the planet, but that seems silly for someone with his skillset that he would be stranded anywhere without being able to steal or acquire the resources he needed. What they were doing here seemed fruitless in the long run and only served for the plot to work in this case. I felt sorry for Ruthyre's actress in this film too as this script gave her absolutely nothing to do for majority of this film's runtime. She gets that one scene during the last act where she suddenly can choke a guy out like Black Widow, but by that point, I was rolling my eyes since Kara was treating this kid like she was made of glass. 

My biggest issue with the plot is that there's far too many instances where they are conveniently traveling to places that either depower or weaken Kara for the sake of the story to challenge her. There was more red suns and kryptonite in this movie than in Superman's last year and that's insane, especially for a film with Lex Luthor in it actively trying to kill him. The film has a predictable pattern where it just feels like constant bar hopping with Kara getting into fights with guys who look like extras from one of James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy films and doesn't really feel unique at all. Krem himself looks like a generic GOTG villain and fails to land any real impression. The film tries to paint him to be unhinged as if he's The Joker or Victor Zsasz in a sense, but never lands if you ask me. 

Then don't get me started on how bland and boring the color palette for this film that doesn't even make the environments they are moving through seem interesting in any way. For as much shit people gave the Snyderverse for their dull, lifeless colors, this movie did that in spades until the final act. If I were to speculate, they settled on that dull look for the first two-thirds of the film to portray that hope has been lost in Kara Zor-El in terms of how much she had been drowning herself in her trauma. Then when she finally got her powers back and shortly thereafter, her Supergirl costume from her ship, then and only then was her faith restored in not just herself, but in her ability to ensure that no other young women would have be enslaved and tortured by the Brigands. I saw the change to the brighter color palette signified hope of a brighter tomorrow. Cheesy, yes, but it works for a film like this. 

If there was a drinking game for how many times someone said "Brigands" in this film's dialogue, you would be dead from alcohol poisoning within the first ten to thirty minutes of this film's total runtime. 

I feel like I should mention that the numerous "needle drop" moments with music

I can understand why the plot demanded depowering and weakening Kara constantly throughout this film since this would have made for a (much more) boring film if she wasn't being challenged in any way possible. An alternative take could have seen her laying waste to anything they ran into until the last planet where the Brigands lured her into a trap, revealing that they laid out the breadcrumbs on purpose. This would have given Krem an additional layer of competency and intelligence that he desperately needed in this script instead of how he just randomly put together a makeshift kryptonite crossbow in the film's climax. I was under the impression that Superman and other Kryptonians weren't well-known across this universe (yet), so having that extensive knowledge on her weaknesses seemed like a reach at that point. 

I thought it was rather deceptive to put Krypto in the marketing for this film when he's barely in it at all. Krem poisons him early on and he isn't seen for majority of this film's runtime, unlike in last year's Superman where he was essentially Kal-El's impromptu sidekick. This is the third film in a row with Gunn's involvement to use pets to manipulate audience's emotions by pulling at their heartstrings with this lovable pet being in peril.

I didn't think this film needed Jason Mamoa's Lobo at all. It just felt like he was here just because of Gunn's preference to load these superhero films with an ensemble cast, whether they belong there or not. It feels like he's allergic to any superhero film where the titular hero is on his/her own. To his credit, his typecast "dude-bro" vibe works more for this character than Aquaman, so there's that. 

To this film's credit, it has a few good messages about processing grief and trauma, but Kara definitely isn't the one who should be teaching anyone about how to properly deal with it. For the record, I didn't have any problem with this film changing the ending of this story from the source material. I thought it was even more poetic that Lobo was there as a witness to Kara's actions as she took Ruthyre's vengeance into her own hands after talking her out of it. Kara thought that she was alone in that moment but didn't know Lobo was watching from the distance. I don't doubt for a moment that this wouldn't be brought up again, especially given Lobo was a witness to Kara committing murder, something that probably isn't going to sit well with Clark down the road, causing them to butt heads in terms of morals. With that single act, Kara defined herself as a stark contrast from her cousin. Kara carries the trauma of seeing her entire planet die with her every single day. Back then, she was powerless to stop it from happening. Now, she has the power to make sure no other young woman has to carry that heavy weight on their hearts. This powerful message isn't enough to redeem this film. This is a film that had great intentions with this message but poor execution. 

The best comparison I can make is comparing this film to True Grit. This film's journey tries to imitate that film's narrative and tone in terms of delivering this message about vengeance and trauma, only for it to fall flat for the most part. This film wants audiences to relate and identify with both Ruthyre and Kara's trauma, but the narrative does a massive disservice in terms of portraying that in a proper, cohesive manner. We just had another fall from grace to heroic comeback story with Mortal Kombat II a few months ago from Warner Bros., so don't tell me that they don't have people who could have conveyed that here. X-Men: Days of Future Past did that with Professor Xavier losing faith until he was reminded that he never lost hope by his future self. These stories can work; they just need better scripts to bring it to life. 

I feel like I need to mention how this film continues to muddy the waters on Gunn's plot twist from the 2025 Superman film where Kal-El's parents sent him to Earth to conquer it. Kara's parents tell her to go to Earth and "be good", but explicitly state that that doesn't mean she has to be a pushover. 

(Laughing) Does that mean that she doesn't have to submit to being part of Kal-El's harem? God, did that 2025 Superman film run that notion into the ground...

If Kara's parents sent her to Earth to join her cousin, did that mean that they wanted her to rule/conquer this planet too? Did she know about his "true" mission that was hidden from him until Lex Luthor decoded that scrambled message? This film would have been a great time to fill in the blanks in terms of how they want to go forward with that revelation. 

Kara not having the heart to tell Kal-El about what his parents "really" wanted them to do could have had another layer to why she is drowning herself in alcohol. How could she tear down this peaceful mission of hope that her gentle cousin has devoted his entire life to for one of domination and dictatorship as this world's conqueror as how his parents envisioned? Not playing up into that comes across as a massive misstep and narrative oversight as it would have added to Kara's trauma and things weighing on her mind while on this film's journey. Her journey with Ruthyre could have shown her that there's genuinely good people and planets worth saving and protecting, thus allowing Kara to take up a similar mission - but by her own terms.