Warning: This article contains spoilers for Supergirl!
James Gunn’s Superman may have been heavily inspired by the DC Comics source material in some ways, but Gunn wasn’t afraid to introduce a significant change or two in his version of the Superman mythos. Most notably, the film dropped the surprise twist that Superman’s (David Corenswet) biological parents, Jor-El (Bradley Cooper) and Lara Lor-Van (Angela Sarafyan), were not as noble as they seemed. It turns out they were actually space fascists the whole time.
That’s one of the reasons we were so interested to watch Craig Gillespie’s Supergirl. The second theatrical release in Gunn’s DCU is a direct follow-up to Superman, and it actually shows us glimpses of life on Krypton before that world was annihilated. How does Supergirl build on the big twist from Superman? Are Kara Zor-El’s parents also space fascists?
Well, no, they aren’t. It seems that Jor-El and his wife may have been the odd ones out on old Krypton. Let’s take a closer look at how Supergirl walks back Superman’s biggest plot twist, and what this means for Kryptonians in the DCU, including what Gillespie himself has to say on the matter.
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How James Gunn’s Superman Changes Krypton
2025’s Superman introduces the Man of Steel’s Fortress of Solitude, where he keeps his most treasured souvenirs and relics of Krypton. Chief among those is a recording of his parents, Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van, as they bid farewell to their infant child just before their homeworld is destroyed. A portion of the message is garbled and corrupted, but Superman always assumed they were simply wishing him well and urging him to be the hero humanity needs.
That all comes crashing down when Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) and the Engineer (María Gabriela de Faría) break into the Fortress and download the message. Once decrypted, it becomes apparent that Jor-El and Lara were not urging their son to be a benevolent protector. They wanted him to rule over Earth and use it as a breeding ground to repopulate the Kryptonian race.
Ultimately, Kal-El is forced to accept that his parents weren’t the people he thought they were. Luckily for him, he still has his adoptive parents, Jonathan (Pruitt Taylor Vince) and Martha (Neva Howell). They, not Jor-El, were responsible for forging a powerful alien into the world’s greatest and most selfless hero.
In Gunn’s DCU, this advanced civilization isn’t a shining beacon of science and knowledge, but a fascist culture that believes it has a right and a duty to dominate lesser worlds. “
This twist suggests that Gunn has a very different view of Kryptonian society than many Superman storytellers. In Gunn’s DCU, this advanced civilization isn’t a shining beacon of science and knowledge, but a fascist culture that believes it has a right and a duty to dominate lesser worlds. They seem more like a less violent version of the Viltrumites from Invincible.
This isn’t a complete divergence from the comics, mind you. Writer/artist John Byrne took a less favorable view of Krypton when he reinvented the Superman mythos in the late ‘80s, portraying Krypton as a formerly hedonistic world that was transformed by a brutal war into a cold, unfeeling planet ruled by a strict caste system. Over time, Kryptonian culture has come to be depicted as its own worst enemy, unable to evolve or accept the existential threat facing it. If anything, Gunn seems to be leaning on Byrne’s work with his depiction of a more fascist Krypton.
How Supergirl Reconciles the Krypton TwistThat all being said, one of the big takeaways from 2026’s Supergirl is that not all Kryptonians were like Jor-El. The film introduces the parents of Milly Alcock’s Kara Zor-El, David Krumholtz’s Zor-El and Emily Beecham’s Alura In-Ze. The film includes flashbacks to Krypton’s destruction, where we see Zor-El save a portion of the city of Argo using advanced forcefield technology, essentially creating a life raft of Kryptonian survivors.Because of this, Kara is able to grow up with her family by her side, unlike her older cousin. It’s only after many years, when Zor-El discovers that he and his people are dying of radiation poisoning, that he chooses to send the teenage Kara to Earth to join Kal-El.Unlike Kal-El, Kara has an entire childhood of memories of life on Krypton (or a piece of it). She knew her birth parents and was shaped by them. And the film makes it clear that Zor-El was very unlike his brother. He didn’t raise Kara to be a tyrannical ruler bent on dominating Earth and establishing a harem for making Kryptonian babies. He and Alura imparted a strict moral code more in keeping with that of the Kent family. In short, the Kryptonians that lived in Argo seem much more in line with the classical version of Krypton from the comics. Their Krypton was more idyllic and utopian. Zor-El lived very much in opposition to the views of his brother; before sending her to Earth, Kara’s parents even warn her not to follow the path Jor-El laid out for Kal-El.Clearly, Kryptonian culture in the DCU is not a monolith. Some may have supported Jor-El’s views that Kryptonians are superior to lesser races and should dominate them, but others were like Zor-El, believing that Krypton could be a beacon of light and hope for the universe. This seems to have been the source of a major rift between the two brothers in the past. In a recent interview with IGN, Gillespie said, “It was fascinating to go on that journey, and obviously, we had to acknowledge that, and they do in the film, but that’s the falling out between the two brothers, and him trying to stay behind, keep the civilization, and really instill this goodness. I think that’s what makes [Kara’s] life so hard in the film, is the trauma of losing that, losing this nurturing family, and seeing it suffer and die is something that she has to work through, but it’s fascinating to see. It’s almost the reverse of what happened with Superman.”At the end of the day, the Supergirl movie argues that Krypton wasn’t necessarily an “evil” world in the DCU. Jor-El himself seems to have just been a bad apple. This, too, has some basis in the comics. As part of the DC Rebirth storyline in 2016, writer Geoff Johns revealed that Jor-El survived his planet’s destruction (with help from Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan, no less) and became a shadowy figure called Mr. Oz. Oz was disillusioned with humanity and attempted to compel his son to leave Earth behind. That didn’t work, obviously, and Oz/Jor-El was eventually returned back in time to die with his planet. So much for the noble, wise, optimistic Jor-El of yesteryear. Maybe Gunn said it best when he wrote Michael Rooker’s Yondu in 2017’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: “He may have been your father, boy, but he wasn’t your daddy.”For more on the new film, check out IGN’s Supergirl review and brush up on every DC movie and series in development.Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket byfollowing @jschedeen on BlueSky.
