In her first adventures, Supergirl was little more than Superboy in a miniskirt. Writers rarely gave her the self-confidence afforded Superman, and her adventures were more adolescent: she worried about dates with boys, spats with friends, and spent time with the futuristic teens in the Legion of Super-Heroes. Like most of DC’s characters in the Silver Age, she had few discernible character traits beyond “teen girl.”
That began to change with her first solo series in 1972, which gave her a more modern costume—a blue blouse and red shorts instead of the more obvious spin on Superman’s costume—and a grown-up identity. She was a modern woman, who tried to balance her job and love life with her responsibilities of being Supergirl, kind of like a Kryptonian Mary Tyler Moore.
Since then, Supergirl has been a shapeshifting blob of goo, a human teen with magical abilities, the daughter of Darkseid, and—most recently—a young woman dealing with mixed emotions as she returns to her hometown. All that doesn’t count out-of-continuity stories like Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, the inspiration for the movie, nor Power Girl, an alternate reality Kara who has long been integrated into the mainline DC Universe, with her own personality and complicated background.
Even on My Adventures With Superman, Kara has been on a journey. She played an antagonistic role in season two, where she had been tricked by the evil AI Brainiac into fighting against humanity. She found her way back to heroism thanks to her connection with Superman, Jimmy, and Lois. By the end of the season, she had exchanged the imposing black and red costume she was wearing for more a brighter blue and red outfit.
In the opening of the season three premiere “Into the New World,” Supergirl does away with Brainiac, saying goodbye one last time to the creature she called “Father” and establishing her own identity. What is that identity? Judging by this first episode, Kara has chosen to become a sweet, silly teen. She flirts with Jimmy, had fun participating in the Smallville fall festival, and jumps right into a mystery that even gives Clark pause.
This Supergirl has none of the wry cynicism of the character we see in the movie. But she isn’t as naive as the original Silver Age version, nor as grown up as the character that Melissa Benoist played for six seasons on TV. She’s her own version of Supergirl, and that’s Supergirl too.
