The CW has released a first look at Supergirl‘s season 3 big bad Reign — and it sure is not what many fans had expected.
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Not long ago, a sizzle reel teaser for the season depicted an alien-looking character with crackling, gray skin — not unlike Reign’s comic book appearance — and set us to speculating that we may have already had our first look at the villain.
Instead, the version of Reign officially unveiled today plays to The CW‘s strengths a bit more, with the lovely Odette Annable masked and wearing a black leather/spandex costume that looks a bit like Reign’s comics garb ultimately still looking very human.
It makes some sense, given that what little we know about Reign so far is that she is definitively a Kryptonian, and that she has managed to live without realizing as much for years leading up to a surprising event in the season premiere.
Still, one must now wonder who that gray-skinned, dark-eyed alien was — and whether Reign might continue to evolve throughout the season.
You can see her crest above, and the full look below.
The Comics
Supergirl is a show that features a number of Superman villains, and has since the beginning of its run.
This season features Reign, one that’s objectively and undoubtedly a Supergirl villain — something that the show has often found in short supply as fans have been treated to shared Superman/Supergirl villains, or even just Superman villains reinvented for the TV show.
Introduced in 2012, Reign is a Worldkiller and her origin a mystery even to her. All she knows about herself is her name, that she is a Worldkiller, and that Krypton and Earth hold the answers for her questions about her origin.
In the comics, she attempted to find her answers on Krypton, only to arrive and find it already destroyed. She tracked down the remains of Argo City, and ultimately made her way to Earth to face off with Supergirl.
Reign would be a solid character to include because she has very little story to fall back on, so writers could build a life around what’s there and have flexibility without too badly breaking what comics fans expect.
The fact that she’s a Worldkiller in the comics also could tie her to the original Black Zero and give some credence to the “death cult” look of the people sending the pod off.
Thanks to Angel Jordan for jarring our memories!
The Show
Showrunner Jessica Queller has described Reign as a “bio-engineered weapon.”
“Everyone [in the cast] will have a relationship with her, and that will drive much of the season in terms of how far they’re willing to go to stop her when she becomes Reign,” executive producer Andrew Kreisberg recently said. “Some will believe she needs to be saved; others will think she needs to be stopped.”
As fans have already seen, Samantha Arias believes herself to be a regular, human woman when the season begins — a single mom living in National City with a demanding job as the new head of L-Corp (while Lena Luthor focuses her attention on CatCo).
Her powers have already started to manifest a little, leading fans to believe that she will soon be looking to her adoptive mother, played by Eight is Enough‘s Betty Buckley, for answers.
“One thing we’ve never done on Arrow or The Flash is watch the villain become the villain,” Kreisberg said. “Sam is just Sam… [She] will realize there is something different about her… It’s a fun dark-mirror version of the journey Christopher Reeve took in the original Superman as Clark.”
Before you go…
Supergirl airs on Monday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
The series currently enjoys a 3.63 (out of 5)-star average rating from ComicBook.com readers, making it the 19th most popular series in our TV database.
Reviews, using a metric of our own, Rotten Tomatoes’, Metacritic’s, and our readers, give the show an 80.16% positive rating.
You can rate it yourself below, and tune in tonight.
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