Supergirl (2026) Review: Milly Alcock is Electrifying — But the Film Doesn't Quite Match Her
In cinemas from June 26, 2026 | PG-13 / 12A | 1 hr 47 mins | Rotten Tomatoes: 57% | Metacritic: 50
Introduction
There is a version of Supergirl that is genuinely great. You can see it every time Milly Alcock is on screen — in the sardonic curl of her lip, the chaotic energy she brings to a character who is equal parts grief and recklessness, the specific and brilliant way she plays Kara Zor-El as someone who is only pretending not to care. That version of the film is something special. What is around her, unfortunately, does not always match the standard she sets.
The second film in James Gunn and Peter Safran's new DC Universe is a deliberately unconventional superhero picture — dark, punky, galactic, and built around a revenge story rather than an origin one. It is bold in concept. It is sometimes breathtaking in execution. And it is, ultimately, a film that falls short of its own ambition in enough places to prevent it from being the landmark it clearly wants to be.
Plot Summary
Unlike last summer's Superman, which kept its hero firmly on Earth among recognisable human relationships, Supergirl takes place almost entirely off-world. Kara Zor-El (Alcock) is not — as we first find her — a defender of the Earth. She is a fugitive from her own grief, drifting between planets whose red suns strip her of her Kryptonian powers and allow her to do something she cannot do on Earth: get properly drunk.
She has reasons. Unlike her cousin Clark, Kara did not arrive on Earth as a baby, carried away from Krypton before she could form memories of what she lost. She arrived as a young woman. She watched everyone she had ever known die. She carries that knowledge every day, and she has built a life of deliberate disconnection — travelling the galaxy with her dog Krypto, picking fights in junkyard bars, staying in motion to avoid standing still long enough to feel anything.
Her orbit is disrupted by Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley), a young mercenary who walks into one of Kara's bars with a proposition: help her kill the man who murdered her father, a space pirate named Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts), and she will offer her sword in payment. Kara declines. Then Krem steals her ship and poisons Krypto with a dart that will kill him in 72 hours if Kara cannot retrieve the antidote — which Krem alone possesses.
From that point, the film becomes a road movie across the galaxy: Kara and Ruthye, deeply mismatched, tracing Krem's movements and slowly, through the shared work of justice, becoming the closest thing either of them has to family.
David Corenswet appears briefly but meaningfully as Clark Kent — giving the film its most purely emotional sequence, a conversation between cousins that establishes how differently two people can survive the same catastrophe. Jason Momoa appears as Lobo, a notorious intergalactic bounty hunter, in a role that is entertaining but limited.
Themes and Storytelling
Supergirl is adapted from Tom King and Bilquis Evely's 2021–22 comic miniseries Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, and it inherits that source material's primary interest: grief, and the different ways people carry it. The central contrast of the film is between Kara and Ruthye — one who survived loss by leaving, and one who survived it by seeking justice — and through their reluctant partnership, the film asks whether revenge is the same thing as healing, and whether distance is the same thing as peace.
These are worthwhile questions. The problem is that the film raises them more often than it genuinely explores them. The screenplay by Ana Nogueira moves efficiently between set pieces and character moments, but the character moments never quite develop the emotional depth that the premise requires. You understand Kara's pain intellectually without feeling it viscerally — which is exactly the wrong outcome for a film fundamentally about feeling things you have been running from.
The punk aesthetic that the marketing leaned into heavily — Kara in a Blondie T-shirt, bar fights soundtracked by Wet Leg and Halsey, an intergalactic Mad Max visual grammar — is genuinely distinctive and often striking. But it occasionally risks becoming a substitute for character rather than an expression of it. Being cool is not the same as being complex.
Characters and Performances
Milly Alcock is simply excellent. She has the rare gift of making attitude feel like depth — of playing a character who is using irreverence as armour in a way that makes you understand, always, what is underneath the armour. Her Kara is funny, dangerous, and quietly heartbreaking, and the scene with David Corenswet — the two of them talking about what Krypton meant and what Earth means now — is the film's best ten minutes and a genuine preview of what this DCU can be when it is operating at full capacity.
Eve Ridley as Ruthye is a strong debut. She is given the film's most emotionally demanding work — Ruthye is the film's true protagonist in narrative terms, the one whose journey the story is actually following — and she holds her own against Alcock with a seriousness and a stillness that the film needs.
Matthias Schoenaerts as Krem is the film's most significant weakness. The character is written as a generic space villain — scarred face, scraggly ponytail, an accent from nowhere in particular — and given very little to do beyond being a destination the heroes are moving toward. A better villain would have made a much better film. Krem as written is a function rather than a person.
Jason Momoa as Lobo is entertaining in the way that Momoa is always entertaining — physically imposing, broadly amusing, carrying the same energy he has brought to every role since Aquaman. The film's most clear-eyed critics have noted that it does not ask anything new of him, and that is fair. He is a fun presence in a role that could have been something more.
Visuals and Effects
This is where Supergirl impresses most consistently. The production design is extraordinary — the junkyard planets, the alien bar circuits, the grimy, industrial backdrops against which Kara's powers make her look even more impossibly powerful — are all rendered with a specificity and a detail that gives the film's world genuine texture. The costume work is similarly excellent: Kara's look is immediately iconic, and the creature design throughout the film's more populated alien spaces is one of the best things about the whole enterprise.
The action sequences are where the film most noticeably stumbles. The camera moves too fast during the fight sequences, stripping them of spatial clarity and impact. The film's final battle is the exception — and it is genuinely impressive, the scene where everything the film has been building finally lands with real force. But getting there involves too many action sequences that feel inert despite their scale.
Humor and Action
The film's sense of humour is one of its most appealing qualities when it works. The opening scene — Krypto peeing on a newspaper headline about Superman — is an immediately effective tone-setter, and Kara's sardonic commentary throughout the film's early sections has the sharp, self-aware quality that Gunn brought to the Guardians of the Galaxy pictures. When the comedy connects, it gives the film a genuine personality.
When it does not connect, which is often enough to notice, the film stalls. The jokes that land in the Alcock-Ridley pairing are not matched by the broader world's comedic texture.
Strengths and Critiques
Strengths: Milly Alcock's extraordinary performance. Eve Ridley's assured debut. The production design and costuming. The Kara/Clark conversation. The punk aesthetic when it is expressing character rather than substituting for it. The final battle sequence. Krypto.
Critiques: Krem as a generic, underwritten villain. Action sequences that are too kinetically chaotic to build genuine tension. A screenplay that raises emotional questions it does not fully answer. Jason Momoa doing what Jason Momoa always does. A runtime that occasionally drags between the film's highest points.
Legacy and Impact
Supergirl arrives with a 57% on Rotten Tomatoes and box office projections that have dropped significantly from initial expectations — early estimates are below $40 million for its opening weekend, which would make it a smaller opening than even The Flash (2023). These numbers, and the critical split, are a disappointment for DC Studios, which was hoping to use Supergirl to build on the goodwill generated by last summer's Superman.
What the film unambiguously establishes is that Milly Alcock is a star. Whatever the film's shortcomings, her performance generates the kind of magnetic, "I would follow her anywhere" quality that is the first requirement for a superhero franchise. She is confirmed to return in Man of Tomorrow (2027), and that news is genuinely exciting in a way that the film itself sometimes is not.
Conclusion
Supergirl is not the film it wants to be. It is too inconsistent in its execution, too reliant on its star to cover for a screenplay that never quite finds its emotional register, and too happy to settle for spectacular when it had the ingredients for genuinely great. But Milly Alcock is, unambiguously, one of the best things to happen to superhero cinema in years — a performer who brings something real and unpredictable to a genre that badly needs both. And the film around her, at its best, has a distinctive visual and tonal identity that separates it from the superhero crowd.
See it for her. Stay curious about where the DCU goes next.
Supergirl is now in UK cinemas. In ODEON and IMAX from June 26, 2026. 🦸♀️
FAQs
1. Is Supergirl (2026) good? It is a mixed bag. Milly Alcock's performance is excellent and widely praised, but the film's screenplay and action sequences have drawn significant criticism. It currently holds 57% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 50/100 on Metacritic.
2. Who plays Supergirl in the 2026 film? Milly Alcock, best known for her role as young Rhaenyra Targaryen in House of the Dragon, plays Kara Zor-El / Supergirl.
3. Is Supergirl (2026) connected to Superman (2025)? Yes. It is the second film in the new DC Universe (DCU) established by James Gunn and Peter Safran. David Corenswet reprises his role as Clark Kent/Superman in a key scene, and the film takes place in the same continuity.
4. What is Supergirl (2026) about? Kara Zor-El, drifting through the galaxy as a reluctant antihero, is drawn into a mission of justice and revenge when a young girl named Ruthye recruits her to help avenge her father's murder at the hands of a space pirate named Krem.
5. Who plays Lobo in Supergirl (2026)? Jason Momoa plays Lobo, the notorious intergalactic bounty hunter. His role is a supporting one, though his presence was a significant part of the film's marketing.
6. Is Supergirl (2026) based on a comic book? Yes. It is adapted from the 2021–22 comic miniseries Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely.
7. What rating is Supergirl (2026)? The film is rated PG-13 in the US. UK rating from the BBFC was pending at the time of publication, but it is expected to receive a 12A certificate.
8. How long is Supergirl (2026)? 1 hour and 47 minutes.
9. Will Milly Alcock return as Supergirl? Yes. Peter Safran confirmed in May 2026 that Milly Alcock's Supergirl will have a major role in the future of the DCU, including a confirmed appearance in Man of Tomorrow (2027).
10. Where can I watch Supergirl (2026)? Supergirl is a theatrical-only release from Warner Bros. Pictures. It opens in UK cinemas and IMAX from June 26, 2026. A streaming release date has not yet been announced.
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