5 New Things We Learned About 'Supergirl'

Ken Tucker
·Critic-at-Large, Yahoo Entertainment
Updated

The Supergirl panel held at CBS’s Television Critics Association presentation on Monday yielded a number of new details about the highly anticipated new series. Here are five of them — plus a new promo.

1. No crossovers planned with CW shows like The Flash and Arrow… yet. CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler said “We have not had conversations about [storyline] crossovers but we are doing crossover promotions” — i.e., ads for Supergirl airing on CBS’s sister network The CW and vice versa.

2. More comics characters are coming! Red Tornado, Gen. Sam Lane, and the Kryptonian villain Non (from the Superman II movie) are just some of the comics and movies characters who will arrive during the first nine episodes, say producers.

3. She may be super, but she’s still human. Producer Greg Berlanti, asked for the secret of how he’s been so successful in translating Arrow and The Flash to the small screen, said the key for him is “to remove the superpowers from it and see what the human stakes are in the drama,” adding that “the superpowers are there to demonstrate things about the hero’s character.”

4. She may be super, but she’s not invincible. Producer Geoff Johns reminded the critics that Supergirl is not indestructible: “There are a lot of things besides Kryptonite that can take her down.”

5. The original Superman movies had a huge influence on Supergirl. “The movies had a charm and believability and also an epic quality. [These qualities are] imprinted on our brains that that’s how you capture superheroes on a screen,” said Berlanti of the Richard Donner films. He added that he finds “a relatability” to star Melissa Benoist when she’s in her civilian Kara identity: “When she hesitates and phumphers like Clark Kent did, it’s the most evocative [of that kind of secret-identity character] since Christopher Reeve.”