How Supergirl's Movie Ending Misunderstands The Entire Point Of Kara's Story

Published Sep 11, 2026, 9:00 AM EDT

Simon Gallagher has worked in movie and TV journalism for more than 17 years. He has written more than 6000 articles and reviews, and edited thousands more. He is an expert in the entertainment industry, particularly in the golden age of screen superheroes. Simon is also a Rotten Tomatoes approved critic.
 

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Superhero movie fans - and particularly DC movie fans, it seems - love a fiery discussion. And when Supergirl became the second movie in the fledgling DCU, they got a hell of an opportunity for discourse. Craig Gillespie’s movie was almost the perfect catalyst for it too: critically divisive, but more positively received by fans, it lost money, had an instantly memeable moment that spread like wildfire before release, and a controversial ending. Ammunition wasn’t a problem, in other words.

Quite apart from the quality of the movie - which, again, was actually far higher than its Rotten critics score - the controversy around Supergirl’s ending, and a major change to the original comic threatened to be the defining discussion point very quickly. And all because one of DC’s most heinous villains - a sex trafficking, murderous wretch who wanted a child bride (played a little too well by Matthias Schoenaerts) - was killed off. If you got a familiar feeling to Man of Steel's Zod death “debate” of more than a decade ago, there’s good reason.

Most problematically for most who criticized Supergirl’s ending is how it fundamentally reshapes the heroic legacy of DC’s most famous Kryptonian cousin, and sets her up for a complex future. We knew she was different from Clark, and that her past had made her the way she was, but there are major questions to be asked about that fatal decision to kill Krem, and I’m not sure the answers actually follow the logic of the rest of the film. Worse, I believe the shocking ending tragically misinterprets the comic’s core theme and undermines the symbol she chooses to wear by the end.

Why Kara Kills Krem At The End Of Supergirl

Krem's defeat is presented as justice not only for his murder of Ruthye's family, but also for poisoning Krypto. As time almost runs out to retrieve the antidote, a revitalized Supergirl teams up with Lobo and takes down Krem's Brigands, in a sequence infamously accompanied by an ethereal cover of All American Rejects' "The Middle." Whether you liked that choice or not, it's a statement.

Defeated, Krem is at the mercy of Ruthye and Kara, and the former goes to kill him, only for Supergirl to beg her not to, promising it won't ease her pain. We're led to believe this is Kara's growth and her eventual victory over her own trauma. And then, as Ruthye walks away, convinced not to spill blood for the sake of her own soul, Kara sticks a sword through Krem's neck and kills him, ignoring her own message.

There is some logic here, however, because the first time Kara stopped Ruthye from killing Krem led directly to more death, and a further escalation of Krem's villainy. He's presented as completely irredeemable and a threat who requires a permanent solution to break the cycle. There's probably an element of revenge to Kara's choice, too, given what happens to Krypto, but she kills him because there's no other choice, and she takes the burden rather than Ruthye. Writer Ana Nogueira confirmed why she did it:

"We wanted to craft a villain who would deserve this, but we also wanted Kara to care about preserving Ruthye’s innocence, and to feel like she could take on [killing him], that she could be the one to bring justice to this man, and do it without burdening this child. It’s different for Supergirl, and I think it will feel different for audiences.”

And beyond the narrative reasons, we actually know why it was decided that Kara would kill Krem at the end of Supergirl, because the writer also revealed it. Incredibly, it was because she simply didn’t understand what actually happened in the comic.

How Supergirl Killing Krem Changes The Comic

In the Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow comic, Krem's fate is very different. He's captured unspectacularly and then finally defeated after a brutal battle that sees Kara take on his entire armada of brigands. Returning to him, Supergirl does intend to kill him, but Ruthye stops her, just as she’s about to strike the fatal blow, telling her that revenge would not fix anything: "I too had the sword above him. But I could not bring myself to his wretchedness."

Decades later, Ruthye and Kara reunite to release the rehabilitated Krem at the end of his sentence; he apologizes and Ruthye hits him over the head with her cane before leaving. It’s a cathartic moment, but it’s one Noguiera misread, believing Ruthye actually killed him, as she confirmed in an interview with Variety:

“I find it’s quite a dark ending of the comic. He essentially has changed, and she kills him anyway, because she still just has this anger, and you understand there’s this element of deserve, right?”

Only, she didn’t kill him. As Tom King, the writer of the comic firmly stated on the Comic Book Couples Counseling Podcast, Krem undeniably survives:

"This is not supposed to be ambiguous. He’s supposed to be alive at the end. That’s why he grabs his head. Ruthye does not forgive him, still f***ing hates him, bops him on the head, and walks away."

Obviously, in the movie, we don’t to see the epilogue flash forward into the future, because Krem isn’t sentenced to imprisonment. His death means Ruthye isn’t able to deliver her morality lesson to Kara, and nobody achieves any kind of growth, though Kara stopping Ruthye from killing Krem does save her from eternal torment, apparently.

The Problem With Kara Killing Krem In Supergirl

The idea that Kara kills Krem to save Ruthye from destroying herself is a noble creative decision, but it is still deeply flawed. First, logically, it doesn’t actually fit with Kara’s arc. She is defined by, and broken by, her trauma in as fundamental a way as her cousin is by hope, because of the difference in their origin stories. She’s angry, apathetic, and self-medicates with alcohol as a means to escape her pain, rather than to fight any ghosts of what she herself did, and this is quite crucial.

She is distinctly different to Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine in Deadpool & Wolverine, who is punishing himself for his past sins, but has a very similar vibe to Kara. Both reject heroism, but their motivations are very different. Kara has no conviction, because she’s essentially a nihilist who cannot connect with anyone other than Krypto. Who doesn’t want to connect with anyone, more pertinently. As Superman says, he worries she will never find her people if she closes herself off, but that’s exactly what she’s already achieved.

The whole point of her connection with Ruthye is that she finds a way back to connecting with people and to using her powers to help others, like Clark. That’s precisely why they had a scene where she chose to put on the costume he’d given her as a mark of her symbolic transformation out of the self-destructive spiral. She realizes, thanks to her empathy for Ruthye, that some things are worth fighting for, and she consciously chooses to align herself with the same symbol Clark wears.

In that context, her pushing Ruthye away from the dark path that will lead from Krem’s death fits with her adopting the Supergirl symbol. It fits the idea of a sort of moral ascension that comes with becoming a superhero, and putting her anger behind her. For her to then kill Krem herself is like a regression from that, and the suiting up sequence is the part that becomes illogical, because she’d already spent the rest of the story holding back from killing Krem. In the final version, it’s almost as if her putting on the suit gives her the necessary permission to kill him, which sits wildly at odds with what the costume is supposed to mean.

Clark tells Kara that they wear colorful costumes so everyone knows they’re the good guys, and her first act while wearing it is to kill. There is, obviously a commentary in here that sometimes good guys have to make difficult decisions, but it’s all very garbled, and all that’s resulted is a repeat of Man of Steel’s endlessly debated Zod death scene. And even then, Henry Cavill’s Clark clearly agonized over making that desperate choice. In Supergirl, we’re left with the weird revelation that Supergirl is probably going to be fine killing people now that she’s a hero. While wearing the costume of pleasantness and hope that her cousin has spent a fair amount of time doing positive PR in.

Supergirl is available to stream on HBO Max now.

Supergirl

6/10

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  Supergirl

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  Eve Ridley

  Ruthye

Survivor Kara Zor El is still haunted by Krypton's collapse, drifting across the galaxy with Krypto at her side. When a young warrior named Ruthye begs for help avenging a family tragedy, Kara gets pulled into a ruthless hunt for Krem of the Yellow Hills.