10 DC Characters We Want To See on Supergirl

Heading into its third season, things are very much up in the air for Supergirl.

Her boyfriend is lost in space, the new villain seems to be bringing a little taste of home with her, and things are looking a little sinister with the arrival of Morgan Edge.

Meanwhile, Lena Luthor’s relationship with Kara is precariously balanced: what will happen when she discovers that her BFF has been lying to her and secretly fighting with her unbalanced mom as Supergirl?

At the same time, James’s role has been a little wobbly since he became Guardian; what does he do when not superheroing? He doesn’t seem to be at CatCo anymore.

Neither, for that matter, does Snapper Carr, who felt like he was supposed to have more to do last season than he ultimately did.

So with all of this ready to make life harder for Kara (in both her identities), who are some of the friends and foes we’re hoping we could see swing by National City this season?

Read on…!

Gangbuster

The downside: Once he’s in action, Gangbuster is basically just a knock-off of Guardian in many ways. In fact, he was created during the ’80s because the Superman creative teams wanted to use Guardian and couldn’t get the clearance at the time.

The upside: He’s a great character, who has a long and interesting history with Cat Grant. As long as Cat is going to be a big player, he (and some other obvious candidates like our next candidate) should be at least on CBS’s radar.

His civilian identity could be a great addition on an upbeat show like Supergirl, too (before he was Gangbuster he used to counsel at-risk youth) so even without the costume he’s an asset.

Overall, we would rate this character as somewhat unlikely — his costumed half seems like a better fit on Arrow, frankly — but definitely plausible, since Cat appears to be a major player on Supergirl for the foreseeable future.

Intergang

With Morgan Edge coming to Supergirl this season, one has to wonder: will his role in Intergang carry over to other media?

He made a lot of sense in the comics, serving as kind of a grounded evil that Clark Kent could face as a journalist…but the fact that he wasn’t really brought down and sent to jail (in the post-Crisis continuity, anyway) by Clark but by Cat Grant once again opens up the idea that she has a perfect business rival who could plausibly affect both the Supergirl plot (through Intergang) and the Kara plot (through a competing media company looking to do some damage to Cat).

Edge was briefly a love interest for Grant, before it was revealed that she was only using him to expose his evil deeds. He was also a villain who gathered a team of baddies and took on Superman after he got out of jail.

He’s a solid candidate to be a huge pain in the butt, but given the fact that Cat and Lois were both key parts of bringing down Intergang in the comics (and on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman), it almost seems like a gimme to make Intergang a big part of the story here.

Matrix

As children of the ’90s Superman titles and a huge fan of Peter David’s run on Supergirl, the truth is, we love Matrix.

Now that The Flash is finally done using other speedsters, it might be plausible for Supergirl to go the doppelganger route…and there’s a lot of interesting story to be told with Matrix, and if she were to come to Earth and met Supergirl before she met Superman? That could be a whole other wrinkle.

And it wouldn’t just be “crazy alien who thinks it’s Supergirl,” either.

There were stories early on in which Matrix’s shapeshifting and telepathic abilities posed a problem for Superman, when she briefly believed she was Lana Lang, or Clark Kent…or when she was sent as an advance scout for an alien invasion after being brainwashed in Panic in the Sky.

Ron Troupe

At a time when race relations are tense in the United States, adding a new face of color in the newsroom is a pretty obvious move in a show that’s as “tuned in” to social issues as Supergirl.

Adding Ron Troupe, though, would be a particularly interesting move for the series, since when he first came around, his sister was an activist who nearly ruined his chances of working at the Daily Planet by protesting and hassling Perry White.

Ultimately, Troupe became a part of the Planet family, taking over Clark Kent’s job briefly when Superman died at the hands of Doomsday, and eventually married Lucy Lane…something that could be used to put him at odds with James on Supergirl.

 

Cameron Chase

Yeah…what happened there?

Back in 2015, Emma Caulfield joined the cast of Supergirl as Cameron Chase, described as “a stern, no holds barred FBI agent” whose “weapons of choice are manipulation and manpower. With little sympathy, and plenty of suspicions, she pursues her targets with ruthless determination.”

In the comics, J’Onn J’Onzz — as The Bronze Wraith — was a member of a ’70s superhero team called The Justice Experience, in which Chase’s father Acro-Bat was a member before his death. At the time, we wondered whether this might play a role, but ultimately Caulfield’s character was a damp squib. We can’t remember her even being called Chase on-camera, but in any event, her single episode wasn’t nearly what fans had hoped for.

Chase, who was introduced in Detective Comics in the ’90s and went on to star in her own critically-acclaimed series before showing up in Batwoman for a while, was a DEO agent with an aversion to super-types — hero or not — and that could certainly be an interesting archetype to play with on a show that mostly accepts superheroes without much question.

 

Contessa Erica del Portenza

The wife of Lex Luthor (briefly) and the daughter of his (eventually-retconned) daughter, Erica could be an interesting addition to the already-complex life of the Luthor family.

In the comics, Lex had her assassinated…but he did it by remote, and never saw the body. For TV, they could explain the Contessa never having been mentioned by the fact that she was presumed dead after Lex went to jail…only now, not so much?

Anything that gives Katie McGrath more screen time is okay by us, and while it is probably unlikely that SuperCorp is going to become canon, it might be interesting to see if someone who once appealed to Lex could be a good foil, and a will-they-or-won’t-they story, for Lena.

 

Chloe Sullivan

While Chloe has never been a major player in the comics (they did try for a bit, but it didn’t take), her role on Smallville made her one of the most instantly-recognizable members of Superman’s supporting cast.

The fact that nobody has been able to figure out what to do with her since, while every superhero show has seemed to add some variation on Chloe’s formula — Felicity, Winn, etc. — feels like a missed opportunity!

Heck, in this case we could catch up with her years later, now running Lana’s charity or something, and it could even be Alison Mack if she is up for it.

 

Dubbilex

Dubbilex the “DNAlien” is one of mad scientist Dabney Donovan’s finest creations, and probably the most recognizable creation to come out of Cadmus.

He worked in security for Cadmus, using his telepathy to gain information, but ultimately he and Guardian started to trust Superman and other outsiders more than the Cadmus management.

In the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths era, Dubbilex moved to Hawaii with Superboy and became his aide and friend.

The idea of taking a being like Dubbilex, possibly one used as a slave or an experiment for Cadmus, and turning him to the side of the angels, seems almost obvious given how Cadmus has been handled on the show.

Bibbo

“Bibbo” Bibbowski is often played for laughs, but there is some real heart to the character, and adding him into Supergirl could bring a breath of fresh air into one of the show’s stalest spaces.

The alien dive bar on Supergirl is a great idea, a great-looking set…but ultimately it never felt like much was actually happening there. It was a place for people to meet up, to briefly fight, and the like, but the space felt like it could have been used for so much more.

In the comics, Bibbo is first a regular, and later the owner, of the Ace o’ Clubs, a dive bar in Metropolis. His defining characteristic is probably his deep, abiding love for “Sooperman,” whom he calls “his fav’rit.” He believes in the Man of Steel even when nobody else does, and in a show that sometimes plays with fear and paranoia around aliens, having somebody who stands by Supergirl without having to be her best friend/boyfriend/sister could be a good way to represent a segment of the audience and the National City public.

 

Lois Lane

This is kind of the brass ring for Supergirl, if you ask us.

Lois is a strong, smart, independent character, an investigative journalist who has won awards, and badass enough that she would smoke her husband in a fight if he wasn’t, y’know…Superman.

And yes, the pair aren’t married yet on Supergirl, but it’s pretty clear they have a long-term relationship, and that Lois knows who Clark is. That could put her in a unique position to speak to Kara’s needs as Kara’s relationship with Mon-El develops through season 3.

(Oh, come now, let’s not pretend that isn’t happening. He’s not really gone, obviously.)

The only downside to bringing on Lois would be remaining true to how great she is, without diminishing Cat Grant as Kara’s main idol/icon.