Supergirl Trailer: Detailed Analysis

The trailer starts with voiceover that declares "My name is Kara Zor-El," which will be familiar to fans of the Greg Berlanti-produced Arrow ("My name is Oliver Queen...") and The Flash ("My name is Barry Allen..."). That she goes by Kara Zor-El in the trailer might turn some heads, since it's often said that the difference between Superman and Batman is that for Batman, the civilian identity of Bruce Wayne is the "costume," whereas Superman is more Clark Kent than Kal-El. That said, Kara Zor-El was born on Krypton and lived with her birth parents on that world. It makes her inherently different from her cousin, even if they share a color scheme and general philosophical outlook.

Cut to baby Kal-El, who has the infant equivalent of Superman's famous spit-curl. We get a look at the older version, too -- pretty much the version of Superman I expected to see in this show, which is to say an outline backed by the son, with his hand outstretched to his cousin/the viewer. We may know his story, Supergirl says, but we don't know hers.

There's also the fact that Supergirl is 12 years old as Krypton collapses, but she says that it took place 24 years ago. This likely implies some suspended animation along the way, since there's no way Melissa Benoist couldn't pass for 36.

The white robes that the young Supergirl is wearing as she leaves Krypton are reminiscent of what the Kryptonians wore in the Richard Donner films, more than in the comics. Those films had a big influence on Smallville but not so much on Man of Steel, which went more science-fiction-inspired. That said, she's also wearing a simple necklace not unlike the one Superman wore in Man of Steel with the Fortress "key" on it. It's impossible to see what's at the end of Kara's in any of these shots.

The cavernous takeoff area for her craft also feels reminiscent of Man of Steel's Krypton, although the craft looks more like something out of pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths comics than anything else. Ditto her parents' clothing, which look fairly pedestrian by the standards of what we see on Krypton in most versions of the mythology.

We also see that it's Supergirl's mom, not her dad, who tells her that she's going to be able to do extraordinary things on Earth. That's Laura Benanti, who has known Greg Berlanti at least since she did a stint on Eli Stone, which Berlanti produced with Arrow's Marc Guggenheim. That series also starred The Flash's Victor Garber.

Apparently Superman was expecting family to visit, because when she arrives -- still 12 -- Superman apparently tracked down the rocket and forced it open. You'll notice that the tips of his sleeves look like they may have the pointy bit over the tops of his hands like in The New 52. THe texture of his costume looks like what we've seen from Supergirl's so far, which is no surprise, but it means that it will be different from any Superman costume we've seen onscreen yet.

We see a brief montage of images that seem to suggest that Superman handed his cousin over to the Danvers family. How they were picked, other than being the actors who played Supergirl and Superman 20 or 30 years ago, is anybody's guess. Kara seems at first pretty unhappy about the arrangement. We see a number of creative camera angles to avoid anybody seeing his face, so presumably that casting notice that broke and revealed Superman as having a role in the pilot will have gotten the actor very little face time.

Cut to her National City adulthood and she's working as an assistant to Cat Grant in typical "harried assistant" fashion.The way she wears her hair, coupled with her glasses, posture and the like, sell her as being much harder to mistake for Supergirl than we've ever seen in a Clark Kent. They also manage to make the frazzled-rather-than-clumsy thing work, at least at first glance, to make her seem less incompetent than Clark often has in live action.

That said, she goes into full-on Felicity Smoak too-nerdy-to-be-real time when she interacts with James Olsen, who by now is a Pulitzer winner and has a relationship with Superman already. Setting up that romance seems likely to be a key thrust of the start of the show, which has some story potential in terms of secret identity stuff and the like. He's also got a watch which, while large enough to be noticeable, doesn't particularly look like something you would use to signal Superman.

Cat Grant, meanwhile, is very much playing the role of the boss from The Devil Wears Prada and seems insufferable. Honestly, so far there isn't much more to say about that. She's a bit of a "hardass female boss" achetype, but it's probably better than the sex kitten they had on Lois & Clark, anyway.

Chyler Leigh's Alex (Lex for short, we're sure) shows up to make Kara feel like an underachiever with her super smartness and her ability to save Kara's dating life. It's Lex who draws her into the superheroing world, as she's forced to save a jet (a key Superman moment in nearly every iteration of his mythology) and reveal herself to the world in order to save her sister. Ultimately, we later see that it's Alex who keeps her in the game when she's rejected by the government.

Incidentally, it's interesting that this might be the first time I can remember a superhero going right to the government at the start and saying, "Hey! I could be an asset!" Usually that has to be coerced later when the government decides it on their own timetable.

Another interesting element of her relationship with her sister is the idea that "you always wanted to look normal," and Kara objecting that she isn't. There's a bit of a coda to that later, when Alex tells her that the genie is out of the bottle and now she can't put it back, and Kara says she doesn't want to.

Is it possible that there's a fundamental misunderstanding of what Kara wants out of her life and her powers?

Also, the idea of hiding and being normal is certainly something we've seen play into Superman before. Even beyond the fact that Jonathan Kent aspired to a normal, quiet life for his son in Man of Steel, we have numerous Elseworlds stories like Kingdom Come or Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, where Superman retires to a quiet life for one reason or another.

Back to, more or less, the order of the trailer, we get a look at a nerdy guy who has a crush on Kara and will likely end up being her ultimate love interest since it looks later in the trailer like Jimmy is a bit too much of a guiding force to be a good choice for romance. He's got a crush on her before she reveals herself, is secure enough in his relationship to her that he feels free making the "Oh, that's so great" joke when he thinks she is rejecting him because she's a lesbian, and then is apparently the first non-family person she tells about her powers. This casts him in kind of a Lana Lang role, or at least Lana Lang as I knew her when I was reading the comics in the '90s.

It's first noticeable when the "from the world of DC Comics" comes to the screen, but more or less everywhere it's worth mentinoining that the show's font is remarkably similar to the ones used in Man of Steel and Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice's logos.

Giving her a name, a costume and all of her powers right away is a huge step away from the typical Arrow/Smallville strategy of starting at ground zero. While it's sometimes fine to do the "s/he needs to EARN the role" story, it's been done a lot lately and the lighter tone of this one probably wouldn't lend itself to a ton of angsting about the demands of her role, etc. We see a little of that, sometimes in the context of comparing herself to Superman, but that's actually something that's been in most iterations of the character. On a similar note, we get the "Oh, come on!" when she's guiding the plane too near a bridge; it's a bit of characterization that differentiates her from her supremely confident cousin.

That bridge, by the way? That's the Otto Binder Bridge, named for Supergirl's co-creator. That gives them a bye on the fact that the show didn't use Kreisberg and Berlantil's customary Ferris Air on the jet.

Following her coming out as Supergirl, Kara is excited; it's a bit like the glee we see when Superman flies for the first time in Man of Steel or so much of the first half of The Flash's first season.

Leaving aside the fact that there is in fact a Superwoman out there in the DC Universe, the question of referring to female superheroes as "girl" is one that has been a subject of debate for years now. Both by addressing the notion head on (but with tongue in cheek) and by having it be another woman who comes up with the name, it may minimize any potential discontent about the show's name.

That first, rejected Supergirl costume that Kara walks out in is a bit of a mish-mash of some of the bad ideas of Supergirl costumes of the past. The midriff-bearing one is actually a popular variation, having been used for a long stretch in the late '90s and early 2000s, and the red headband is an element that has recurred through a number of different Supergirl costumes.

We get a lot of little bits of business around the costume, which some fans have already taken to mean she's a little more preoccupied with fashion than other superheroes -- but it really feels more like an extension of Cisco Ramon, who gleefully puts stuff together and has become a fan favorite. In the same way that her civilian identity feels a bit like a lot of Felicity Smoak, this guy feels like a lot of Cisco.

We also get a nod to Man of Steel's famous/infamous "It's not an S" line, with Kara saying that it's her family's coat of arms, rather than the symbol for hope. In the comics, it's actually both, although the "hope" part has been added in a fairly recent retooling of the backstory (Superman: Birthright) and the coat-of-arms thing started around the same time Supergirl was created.

At the DEO, there are a number of "aliens" on the viewscreens, although the only one who looks particularly identifiable to me is Despero (or maybe Parasite, but I'm going with Despero). The others may be more iconic after the visual effects are final, or may just be intentionally generic aliens, rather than burning off or committing to specific DC characters in the pilot.

That said, some of them have a definite air of familiarity. A quick look at comments on YouTube, Reddit, etc., haven't come up with who some of these guys might be, aside from a recurring assumption that The Persuader is the guy with the axe later, but feel free to chime in in the comments below.

Similarly, that gyroscopic design for a craft looks really familiar but I can't quite place it.

When we do see our potential Persuader, he's in a jumpsuit. Could he have escaped from a DEO facility? That would certainly give him some motivation to be angry. The character himself has had so many looks over the years that it's hard to judge this one, although the only "unmasked" Persuader I can find appears to be one of the earliest versions of the characters when his axe didn't look like that. In any event, the axe itself looks great, and like the version seen during the Geoff Johns run on Teen Titans.

Funny enough, casting had referred to him as Lumberjack, the name of an obscure villain from the '80s with a Paul Bunyan motif. If this is an update of him, that'd be odd, but if it's Persuader, I think immediately the conversation will drift toward whether Supergirl might have ties to the Legion of Super-Heroes at some point in the series.

"I don't trust aliens," Hank Henshaw tells Supergirl. It's not clear why, but don't be surprised if he has a tragedy in his past -- possibly one that cost him his wife, given that his comics origin as the Cyborg Superman is basically the same as the Fantastic Four's, except everyone died quickly instead of being heroes for years.

The embracing of the "bird/plane/Superman" thing along with Kara ripping open her shirt to reveal her costume both suggest that this is going to embrace some of the old tropes of superhero storytelling even more than The Flash, where he uses super speed to run and GET his costume when he needs it.

One other thing: Where does Superman's cape come from if he's got his baby blanket just sitting around ready to be loaned to a potential cousin years down the road?