Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Supergirl.Supergirl almost had a completely different opening.
The newest DC Universe movie begins with Kara Zor-El/Supergirl (Milly Alcock) getting drunk on planets with red suns as she celebrates her 23rd birthday and continues to struggle with the events of her traumatic past. It is only after some time spent with her and Krypto that Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley) is introduced, as she witnesses her father being killed by Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts) and seeks out help to get revenge.
In an interview with Variety, Supergirl writer Ana Nogueira revealed that the original script opened with a scene focused on Ruthye. However, she and the rest of the movie's creative team realized that, unlike Batman or Spider-Man, the majority of movie audiences are not already familiar with Kara's story. The decision was then made to start the movie with her instead of Rutheye as a way "to onboard the audience." Check out Nogueira's explanation below:
In the original draft of the script, the movie opened with meeting Ruthye and getting to know her. But what we realized is that comic readers know Supergirl really, really, really well, so they are OK with meeting her through somebody else’s eyes. But for the movie-going public, Supergirl is not Batman; we haven’t seen her parents die a bunch of times [like Bruce Wayne’s], we don’t know it that well. I’ve seen Spider-Man get bitten by a radioactive spider a bunch of times, but we don’t have that with her. So, we realized we had to onboard the audience to [Kara] as the focus of the movie, not just through Ruthye.
In the comic that the movie is based on, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, Ruthye acts as the narrator. This is not the case in the film, but even without any voice-overs from the young character, Nogueira and her collaborators still strove to capture Ruthye's "sense of wonder" and "wanting more from" Kara.
But we wanted to maintain the sense of wonder of this little girl seeing this extraordinary woman and wanting more from [her]. There’s this element of [Kara] not totally living up to her potential, so we wanted to maintain that, but take the voice-over Ruthye out of it.
With the DCU's first movie being Superman, it came with built-in familiarity from most moviegoing audiences, and even skipped his origin story. The only prior Supergirl movie was the critically panned 1984 starring Helen Slater, and the six-season television series led by Melissa Benoist revolved around a completely different version of the character. This makes the initial focus on Kara in 2026's Supergirl, before introducing Ruthye, all the more important.
Not having Ruthye be the narrator is one of many changes from Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. As Nogueira emphasized, though, much of the movie is seen through her eyes and the way she views Kara, from admiration to knowing the Kryptonian is not living up to her full potential. In this way, Ruthye's perspective is not lost, even with the lack of voice-overs and the choice not to focus on her at the very beginning of the movie.
Supergirl's reviews have been mixed, leading to a 56% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes, but one of the most consistently praised elements is Alcock's portrayal of Kara. This indicates that opening the movie with her instead of Ruthye was likely the right decision. It doesn't ake long after that until Ruthye's first scene happens, and there still ends up being plenty of both characters and their relationship throughout the rest of the story.
Kara's next DCU appearance is already confirmed, with James Gunn having already revealed that she has a prominent role in the Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow. Supergirl sets this up by having her return to Earth at the end of the film, where she reunites with her cousin, Kal-El/Superman (David Corenswet), and with him and Krypto there, she starts to embrace it as her new home. The DCU movie will be released in theaters on July 9, 2027.
