Milly Alcock's Supergirl promises a flawed, relatable hero

Milly Alcock’s Supergirl is being framed as a bruised, funny and emotionally legible answer to superhero fatigue, a heroine who looks less like a monument and more like a young woman carrying scars across the galaxy. At a London fan event at Leicester Square on June 18, the cast pitched DC’s new chapter around vulnerability, not invincibility.

The film draws on Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, the 2021 to 2022 DC Comics miniseries written by Tom King and illustrated by Bilquis Evely, which was nominated for the 2022 Eisner Award for Best Limited Series. DC describes that story as a mission across space that helps Supergirl find herself and face her future, a premise that fits the studio’s effort to make the character feel more human than mythic.

Craig Gillespie directs from a screenplay by Ana Nogueira, with Alcock in the dual role of Supergirl and Kara Zor-El. In London, the emphasis was on a hero defined by reluctance and humility rather than simple savior logic. That matters for DC Studios, which announced the film in January 2023 as part of its rebooted DC Universe and cast Alcock in January 2024. Filming followed in 2025 at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden and in London and Scotland.

The supporting cast pushes that same tonal shift. Eve Ridley plays Ruthye Marye Knoll, who joins Supergirl on an intergalactic hunt for the space pirate Krem of the Yellow Hills, played by Matthias Schoenaerts, while the mission also includes saving Supergirl’s dog, Krypto. Jason Momoa appears as the bounty hunter Lobo, a part he has said was a long-time dream role, and he hinted that the character could become more important if audiences respond well.

Gillespie has said he wanted the movie to preserve the grit and authenticity of the source material, while Alcock has described landing her first film lead as an emotional jolt that brought both highs and lows. The result is a Superman-adjacent project that is trying to do something narrower and arguably harder than spectacle alone: make power feel costly, humor feel earned and heroism feel vulnerable.

That strategy places Supergirl squarely inside DCU Chapter One: Gods and Monsters, where the studio is testing whether emotionally damaged protagonists can distinguish the next phase of its franchise. DC’s official film site lists a June 26 theatrical release, and the Leicester Square preview suggested the company knows exactly what is at stake, a bigger cosmic story that still has to win by feeling intimate.