‘Supergirl’: Melissa Benoist Teases the Start of Filming for Season 4

It’s time for Melissa Benoist to suit up.

The Supergirl star took to Instagram on Monday with a photo of herself as the Girl of Steel from The CW‘s DC superhero show to announce that she was returning to set to start work on the show’s upcoming fourth season. You can check out the post below.

“Do I put on a cape now? Yessssiree @supergirlcw I’m heading for ya and I can’t wait to see all my friendsss,” Benoist captioned the photo.

While much of the rest of the show’s cast has reportedly already been filming for a few weeks — and we’ve seen some of that footage in the teaser trailer shared at San Diego Comic-Con last month, specifically with glimpses of Alex (Chyler Leigh) and Agent Liberty (Sam Witwer) — Benoist was wrapping up her run as Carole King in Broadway’s Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. Her run wrapped up on August 4th, but Benoist recently told Deadline that she’ll be bringing a bit of her time portraying Carole King with her to Supergirl, particularly in how she approaches the show and character.

“I think that playing Carole and learning so much about her will certainly affect how I approach Supergirl at this point,” Benoist explained. “Every role affects you. I do think that heading into Season 4 and walking into Supergirl‘s shoes and donning the cape will feel different in a great way, especially because Carole’s story is about, in essence, owning yourself and being true to who you are, that you are enough. That’s something I’m always searching for in Supergirl: ways to further her development as a woman and find more empowering stories to tell through that.”

“Also, it made Comic-Con a blast,” she added. “It was so great to see everyone. The cast, we all genuinely love each other. We’re really excited for the season.”

And there’s a lot to be excited about. Season four will see several new characters added to the Supergirl roster. Star Trek: The Next Generation alum Brent Spiner was recently added to the cast as Vice President Baker with his character described as stepping up “in a big way when his country needs him most” which might not bode well for Lynda Carter’s President Olivia Marsdin who is returning this season. The show has also added Mercy Graves (Rhona Mitra), Colonel Haley (April Parker Jones), and Manchester Black (David Ajala), which in addition to Witwer’s Agent Liberty sets up a significant villain roster. Fans already know that there will be a strong anti-alien sentiment to the season’s storyline, one that these villains may play into. Benoist teased that fans can expect stories that will be more topical in the upcoming season.

“The writer’s room is being really great this year,” Benoist said. “Last season, it was a lot of fire and brimstone and a lot of homages to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was great because I was such a big fan of that show. This season they really want to thematically tackle more topical stories that maybe mirror what’s going on with the state of the world and our country. There’s a lot of anti-alien sentiment at the beginning of Season 4 that Supergirl is going to have to grapple with. I think their main premise is that fear itself is a villain, and can hope conquer it? Supergirl stands for hope, so we’ll see. I think fear is her biggest opponent yet because it’s more of a wildfire-type emotion.”

The fourth season of Supergirl will debut on Sunday, October 14th, at 8/7c on The CW.