First reactions for Supergirl dropped and the verdict on Milly Alcock is close to unanimous. She is the role. Not "she did a good job" or "she was solid in a tough part." She is the role. The kind of consensus you almost never see this early, before the general audience has weighed in, before the box office tells the studio whether it worked.
Alcock brings ferocity and real vulnerability, which is exactly the combination a character like Kara Zor-El demands. This is someone who watched her entire planet die. Not metaphorically, not in a dream sequence. She remembers it. She carries it. And apparently Alcock plays that weight without ever letting Kara become a victim. She is grieving and she is angry and she is powerful, all in the same frame. That is not easy to pull off. Most actors would lean into one of those qualities and let the others go. The early word says Alcock holds all of them at once.
This is the second film in James Gunn's new DC Universe, and the stakes could not be higher. The first chapter introduced the tone. Supergirl has to prove that tone can carry a franchise. If the first reactions hold, and they do not always hold, but if they do, the DCU just found its foundation. Not in a Superman sequel or a Batman reboot, but in a Kryptonian woman most casual moviegoers could not name two years ago. That would be a meaningful statement about what kind of stories this new universe wants to tell.
I am cautiously optimistic, which means I am trying not to get ahead of myself. Early reactions at premieres run hot. The audience is primed to love it. They dressed up, they waited in line, they are sitting in a room full of people who wanted to be there. That environment inflates everything. But even accounting for that inflation, the specificity of the praise stands out. People are not just saying the movie is fun. They are talking about Alcock's performance in the way you talk about performances that stick with you, the kind you think about on the drive home.
Supergirl opens June 26. The early word says this is the one DC fans have been waiting for. I will believe it when I see it myself, but I will be in that theater on opening day, and that is more than I can say for the last few DC releases.
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