This piece contains spoilers for Superman (2025) and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (2021)Ever since the "Gods and Monsters" slate was announced by James Gunn and his co-CEO at DC Studios, Peter Safran, one thing has been clear: Kryptonians are at the center of the new DCU. With Superman finally hitting screens, we've gotten to meet David Corenswet's delightfully pure Clark Kent who will clearly be the beating heart of the new franchise. Just like him, the film is colorful, kind, and filled with compassion. It's a perfect Superman and establishes a wide and expansive new DCU with centuries of characters, adventures, and villains to dig into. But as the film comes to an end we get an unexpected guest, one who will be key to the future of the franchise. See, it turns out that Clark is not the only one who survived the death of the planet he once called home. And as we learn in the final moments of the movie, Clark has another relative and we get to meet her in unforgettable style before she headlines the upcoming Supergirl film. Introducing Milly Alcocks SupergirlIn an actually shocking, not leaked, and very fun introduction we get our first on screen glimpse of the DCU's Supergirl. As Clark returns to the Fortress of Solitude to heal, Kara Zor-El crash lands into Kal-El's hideout looking for her pet dog Krypto. That's right, this is the foster situation that Superman alluded to earlier in the film. He's been babysitting the iconic Super Pet for his cousin who has been out partying on other planets where she can actually get wasted more on that later. But her introduction may have thrown off fans of the sweet-hearted baby-faced Kryptonian from the comics or the popular CW Arrowverse, seeing as this Kara is... a little different. As you may have guessed from the fact she loves drinking and she crash landed, this isn't the innocent, sweet, and often well behaved Kara that most of us know. Instead she swears, stumbles, and even calls Clark a bitch while sarcastically thanking him for dogsitting. As Superman Robot 4 A.K.A. Gary (Alan Tudyk) and Superman discuss her clearly unhealthy lifestyle as well as her rough and tumble relationship with Krypto, she exits stage left with her faithful pup and heads out on another adventure, which while not a post-credits scene does give us a glimpse at whats to come for the immediate future of the DCU. How Superman Sets Up Supergirl"Im sick of the superhero title, colon, other-name thing," Gunn recently shared in an interview. That explains why both Superman originally titled Superman: Legacy and Supergirl originally titled Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow ended up with their shortened names. That's important to note here as the version of Kara that we get in Superman is decidedly from Woman of Tomorrow, the 2021 eight-issue limited series by Bilquis Everly and Tom King, which director Craig Gillespie and writer Ana Nogueira are adapting for their upcoming 2026 Supergirl movie. Seeing as Supergirl is only in Superman for around two minutes, you might be questioning just how it's setting up her film other than introducing the curse-loving version of Kara. But it's all in the details, especially when it comes to her hard-drinking approach to heroics. During a press event that IGN attended, Gunn described this Kara as "much more hardcore and not the Supergirl we're used to" and that's underselling it. In the comic which inspired this version of our Kryptonian heroine, we see Kara as a hard-drinking 21 year old who has been touring planets with red suns in order to be able to get wasted. Why does she love to drink? Well, in this version she was raised on an exploded piece of her planet and forced to watch her loved ones die as she hurtled towards Earth. The story follows Kara as she drinks her way across the galaxy with Krypto in order to celebrate her 21st birthday. She gets into fist fights, brawls, and finds herself in more than a couple of life-threatening ruckuses, but it's when she meets a young woman named Ruthye Marye Knoll that her quest changes. Ruthye's father was killed by a brutal thief named Krem of the Yellow Hills, and she enlists Kara to help her kill him. Inspired by the classic Western film True Grit, with a wild fantasy sci-fi twist, this is a genre story unlike any other as Ruthye and Kara team up on a quest for revenge which feels like a far cry from the sweet, heartfelt, and decidedly family-friendly Superman. By simply name dropping the comic that will inspire her upcoming film, Gunn and Co. arent shying away from just how different Clark and Kara are. Weve already seen her curse and stumble about the fortress before clumsily flying away with Kyrpto to presumably wreak more havoc. By establishing the super cousins status quo early, fans already have a glimpse of whats to come when they next meet the Girl of Steel on her dangerous quest to help Ruthye get revenge for her father. Why Supergirl's New Attitude Works in the DCUDuring Superman we meet Rachel Brosnahan's fiercely driven Lois Lane and Nicholas Holt's obsessive Lex Luthor alongside the heroic titular Kryptonian. But the film isn't just concerned with the core cast as Gunn pulls from deep comic book canon to bring characters like the Engineer (Maria Gabriela de Faria) , Eve Teschmacher (Sara Sampio), and everyone's favorite Lex Luthor minion... Sydney Happersen (Stephen T. Blackehart). This is a world deeply concerned with the under utilized or unexpected takes on characters, and it's what makes this Kara feel so right. Instead of taking from the most well-known version of The Girl of Steel, we instead get the hard-drinking, depressed, and hilarious version from Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. It opens up potential that could deal with some of the most interesting and under explored aspects of Supergirl and her history in comics. It's not just innovative, though. It actually makes a lot of sense. In the comics Kara was always supposed to be the elder Kryptonian survivor, sent to look after baby Kal-El as he heads to Earth in order to survive the destruction of his home planet. No matter what version of her story you read, you learn that Kara was essentially frozen in time as she took years to reach Earth, leading her to look younger than her cousin and arrive on Earth after he's already an established hero. That's not an easy thing to live with, and while Kara has often taken a more hopeful approach inspired by her famous relative, it's nice to think that we might see her get to explore and express the reality of that, which is far more horrifying and sad than you might think. More From the Fortress of SolitudeSuperman Ending and Post-Credits Scene ExplainedSuperman ReviewSuperman and Why the Battle for Truth, Justice and A Better Tomorrow Is NeverendingRanking the Superman ActorsThe Utterly Bizarre History of Superman's PowersSuperman Movies Ranked Worst to Best and Where to Watch ThemThis isn't even just something that is explored in Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow either. Throughout Kara's history she's been dealing with this trauma and the nightmare of being killed and resurrected during the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, something you can learn more about in Mark Waid's recent New History of the DC Universe and we've never gotten to really see it on screen in a way that centers Kara and still allows her to be the hero of her own story. The upcoming Supergirl film has a chance to rectify that, giving us as the audience a rich and layered take on the hero and granting Kara a new lease on life when it comes to exploring her future after the horrors shes endured. .If you're looking for more Supergirl to read as you wait for the new movie, the current Supergirl series by award-winning cartoonist Sophie Campbell and colorist Tamara Bonvillian is a far cheerier affair, but it does reintroduce Kara in a really interesting and thoughtful way that also brings her back to around 21 years old. Given that this is around the same age as she is in the DCU and Gunns expressed interest in keeping a huge swath of the new DC Universe connected, it'll be interesting to see how else the mainline DC books dovetail with the DCU and the co-chairs wider exploration of Kara as a hero and survivor of the Kryptonian destruction. For now though, we'll just look forward to another yet another punk rock addition to Gunn's ever growing new roster of DC heroesThis Supergirl Will Finally Allow Kara to Grow UpIf Supergirl spent the majority of the Silver and Bronze Age as an empowered and self-assured young woman, representing the type of reader DC hoped to attract, she spent most of the modern era as a good girl in a mini-skirt. Readers have rarely gotten to explore the inner depths of Supergirl and even the most passionate Kara fans wouldn't say that her big screen career has been fruitful let alone layered. Here we get to see a Supergirl that is already defying our expectations, a young woman who is on her own journey after her life was upended on an unfulfilled quest to save her young charge. If the previous Supergirl iterations represented the type of audience that DC was trying to attract in the past, this Kara should tell us about what Gunn and DC are trying to attract to the DCU. There's an understanding here that women of all ages need complicated and thoughtful representation and that sometimes looks like a woman with a hangover calling a man (of Steel) a bitch. If The Suicide Squad's Ratcatcher II was Gunn's loveletter to tired millennials then Kara can be Gen Zs proverbial eff you to the expected contraints and respectability that women are forced into. Rosie Knight is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything from anime to comic books to kaiju to kids movies to horror flicks. She has over half a decade of experience in entertainment journalism with bylines at Nerdist, Den of Geek, Polygon, and more.