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Full spoilers follow for <\/strong>Supergirl<\/strong><\/u>.<\/strong><\/p>\nPretty much since the dawn of superheroes, one of the longest standing debates has been whether or not they should kill. Back in the day, vigilantes (even Batman!) carried guns, and coming from the \u201cmasked man\u201d tradition, there wasn\u2019t a lot of waffling about whether murdering a killer clown for the greater good was an issue. After all, it was a natural extension of the Westerns that had preceded them, with their good, their bad, and their ugly. But over time, that debate \u2014 both with readers and eventually viewers, as well as with the characters in the books, TV shows, and movies \u2014 has become a central facet of superhero lore. Should a superhero kill? If they kill, will they be going too far, thus losing their essential heroic nature?<\/p>\n\n\nMore From the DCU:<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<\/section>\nSupergirl, now in theaters, dives head-first back into the debate with a plot that focuses on the title character (Milly Alcock) pairing up with a young girl named Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley) who wants to kill Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts) \u2014 a brigand, human trafficker, and piercing aficionado who murdered Ruthye\u2019s entire family. Supergirl, meanwhile, wants to track down Krem because he has the antidote to a poison he used on Krypto the Superdog, and they now have 72 hours before the pup painfully dies. <\/p>\n
Over the course of the one hour and 48-minute runtime, Ruthye swears she\u2019s going to kill Krem while Supergirl repeatedly urges her away from that path, explaining that killing won\u2019t make the pain go away; it will, in fact, ruin your life. There\u2019s also a lot of discussion about the difference between being nice and being good, as well as perfect and kind\u2026 but all that gets thrown away when Supergirl murders Krem at the end of the movie<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nKrem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
To be 100% clear, this is less about the act of killing and whether that\u2019s right or wrong than if killing a villain is supported by the movie that led to this act of extrajudicial execution. Supergirl\u2019s whole character arc in the film is learning to let her actions match her words. She\u2019s telling Ruthye that you have to stand for something, and that letting go of your pain \u2014 in the Maid of Might\u2019s case, it\u2019s the death of her own parents by kryptonite poisoning and loss of her childhood home, Argo City \u2014 isn\u2019t an option; it\u2019s how you learn to live with loss that matters.<\/p>\n
When we re-meet Supergirl at the top of the movie, she\u2019s partying under a red sun in order to dampen enough of her powers to stay absolutely wasted all the time, and struggling with finding a place she can call home. She doesn\u2019t want to wear the \u201cS\u201d suit like her cousin Kal-El (David Corenswet), and she knows she can\u2019t earnestly believe in people the way he does, because she wasn\u2019t raised by good people in Kansas who are still alive. When she arrives on Earth, it\u2019s too noisy, too strange, and doesn\u2019t feel like home. Her journey isn\u2019t about loving all this, but about accepting her destiny as someone who can inspire others to be better, even as she still has work to do on herself. She\u2019s not perfect, but she can be kind<\/em>, and she may not be nice, but she can be good<\/em>.<\/p>\nAt least until she stabs Krem\u2026 twice.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nAfter throwing Krem far away from a fight and saving Ruthye from an attack by the villain\u2019s Brigands, it\u2019s clear that Ruthye has put her revenge aside and taken Supergirl\u2019s words to heart. Meanwhile, Supergirl flies off to confront Krem, where he does a classic \u201cyou\u2019ll never stop me, I\u2019ll keep coming no matter what\u201d speech. So Kara looks at him, stabs him as she says, \u201cThis is for my dog,\u201d and then stabs him again straight through the throat, killing him, as she says, \u201cAnd this is for the little girl whose life you ruined.\u201d Not insignificantly, while this happens, Lobo (Jason Momoa) \u2014 who has been encouraging Ruthye to kill Krem in direct opposition to Supergirl\u2019s influence \u2014 hungrily says \u201cYes!\u201d in the distance as he watches on his space-bike. Basically, Lobo\u2019s philosophy that \u201crevenge=good\u201d has won out in the end, not Supergirl\u2019s philosophy that revenge doesn\u2019t take the pain away.<\/p>\n
Perhaps even more mind-boggling is the second line here, because so much of the movie is pushing back on the view of both Supergirl and Ruthye as \u201cmere\u201d little girls, as well as how they are not<\/em> ruined: Their respective trauma is part of who they are and always will be. It\u2019s not about being ruined<\/em>; it\u2019s about learning to live with the hurt and how it impacts your decisions that makes you who you are.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s not about being\u00a0ruined; it\u2019s about learning to live with the hurt and how it impacts your decisions that makes you who you are.
\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\nThis ending is also diametrically opposed to how it plays out in the source material for this film, the comic book Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely. The graphic novel is told at least in part through narration by Ruthye, which we discover towards the end of the eight-issue series is a book written by Ruthye which she calls \u201cfictitious fiddle-faddle\u201d when Supergirl visits her about three centuries after the main events of the comic. This future-set scene takes place directly after Supergirl, whittled to a nub by their adventure tracking down Krem, explains to Ruthye that she was trying to teach her how to make the right choices over their adventures, but it didn\u2019t work, so now she has to kill Krem. Ruthye shouts that she was listening, she did hear, and she did learn; they instead put Krem in the Phantom Zone, where he indeed learned his lesson over 300 years of imprisonment. Released at last, Krem begs for the older Ruthye\u2019s forgiveness. Then she conks him on the head, seemingly killing him.<\/p>\n
That in itself is a heavily debated moment of the book, but contrast Supergirl backing off killing in favor of reform at the end of that comic, and Ruthye (at least initially) choosing redemption over revenge. Funnily enough, we\u2019re also told via that \u201cfictitious fiddle-faddle\u201d narration that Ruthye had Supergirl stab Krem to death with her sword, which we, the reader, know didn\u2019t happen. So perhaps one could look at the movie as an adaptation of the book Ruthye wrote later, except that in the movie, there\u2019s no narration, no future-set scene \u2014 just Supergirl impaling Krem and watching him bleed out in the dirt.<\/p>\n
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