I just watched the 2026 Supergirl movie starring Milly Alcock in theaters with my husband, and I definitely have a lot of thoughts.
I saw a few hot takes about this movie on social media before going in to see the movie for myself, so I kind of already knew there were some aspects of this movie that viewers had complaints about, but I still decided I wanted to see the movie for myself to gain my own perspective on it.
From the lazy inclusion of the sex trafficking subject matter, to the social media arguments that Supergirl’s costume should’ve been sexier or that Sydney Sweeney should’ve been cast instead of Milly, and my thoughts on the controversial choice of that needle drop cover song that everyone is furious about.
For starters, I’m gonna have to drop a comparison here between Supergirl and Euphoria because it feels like some seriously massive and crucial worldwide problems like human trafficking and sex trafficking keep getting tossed into media without any real regard for the serious nature of these topics. The human trafficking conversation was laid out in the Supergirl movie and abandoned in the sense that it wasn’t tackled head-on or handled with more seriousness. They danced on the topic with Kara, focused more on her dog than anything else. And her dog was absolutely important. Seeing her dog slowly dying of poison, broke my heart because I am a dog lover through and through. But the fact of the matter is that getting the antidote for her dog was more of a motivation for care to take down the villain of the movie than the fact that he was a literal sex trafficker of young girls. That should have been way more of a priority because this topic is just so serious. And in the third season of Euphoria, it felt like I saw the same exact thing happen with so many hints that Alamo was running a human trafficking, sex trafficking, possibly organ harvesting situation with the dancers in his strip club. Yet the topic was laid out in front of us as viewers and then abandoned without actually being addressed. And I feel like a topic of that nature needs to be handled with a lot more care if it’s going to be included in media. It almost feels like the elites want us to feel a little bit better, knowing that this topic is being brought up and they’re willing to shine a light on it, but beyond that, they’re not really taking any stabs at it. In season 3 of Euphoria, we saw Rue’s girlfriend, Angel, literally go missing after getting checked into a rehab facility that wasn’t really a rehab facility, and we saw her ID in Wayne’s safe after we broke into it in episode 7. We saw Rue having a serious conversation with Kitty in the bathroom at the strip club, asking her if anyone was forcing her to work at that strip club against her will. The topic of sex trafficking in human trafficking was lobbied up for us as viewers, but it wasn’t actually tackled head-on. And I feel like that happened in Supergirl. I know the girls who had been kidnapped ended up getting released before the end of the movie, and that was great… But it just constantly feels like movies and TV shows are dancing around this heavy-hitting topic. It’s a topic that causes so much heartbreak and sadness, so if it’s going to be incorporated in movies and TV shows, I just wish it would be done in a more thought-out way.
Before watching Supergirl myself, I saw many hot takes about the needle drop moment, aka the final battle scene that used a cover of the song “Middle” by Jimmy Eat World. A lot of people felt like the song was completely misplaced, and it was a terrible choice for something as pivotal as the climax of the movie. Apparently, there were like 40 or 50 other songs being considered for that scene in the movie, before that cover of Middle was chosen, so I’m really curious to know what other songs could’ve possibly fit there instead. But when I did a little research to find out the true meaning of those song lyrics, it kind of helped me understand a little bit more about why that particular song was chosen.
The lyrics say, “Hey, don’t write yourself off yet. It’s only in your head you feel left out. Or looked down on. Just try your best. Try everything you can. And don’t you worry what they tell themselves. When you’re away. It just takes some time. Little girl, you’re in the middle of the ride. Everything, everything’ll be just fine. Everything, everything’ll be alright, alright.”
And yes, the lyrics are incredibly corny and cheesy at face value. I get that. But these lyrics also serve as advice for young women, straight up. Advice not to give up on yourself when you feel like a failure. Advice to stay the course, regardless of what other people might think of you. Advice to be patient because you never know when things may change for the better. And advice reminding you that it isn’t the end until it’s the end. When you’re still in the middle of something challenging, you have to release the mindset that you’re going to be stuck there in the middle of the challenge forever, because being in the middle of something means you’re still in transition.
In other words, it’s a song about growth. It’s a song about evolving. It’s a song about growing up. It’s a song about elevating and becoming a better version of yourself. By the end of the movie, we seemingly witnessed Kara absorb that advice herself by turning her back on an empty and meaningless party girl lifestyle so she could spend more time on earth with Clark. She was definitely drinking away her feelings and clawing her way through depression by making herself too numb to feel the pain of her losses. Being on a planet with a red sun that took away her powers and allowed her to experience drunkenness was enticing to her because she was in so much pain.
But she quite literally took the advice out of the lyrics in that song, based on the decision she made for herself at the end of the movie to move on from the party girl lifestyle and seek a fresh start closer to Clark. It was giving Serena van der Woodsen’s redemption arc on Gossip Girl when she returned from boarding school to turn a new leaf in Manhattan, leaving her party girl days behind to become someone she could be proud of.
I know there’s been some discourse online from people who wish Sydney Sweeney had been cast as Supergirl instead, so the role could have been more sexualized, but I 100% disagree with that take. There’s a time and a place for an actress like Sydney Sweeney, and this wasn’t it. We already saw Sydney’s attempt to take on a physically athletic movie role when she starred in Christy last year, a movie about a female boxer. That movie tanked at the box office, mostly because of Sydney‘s offscreen antics and the reveal of her political stance. But we also saw Sydney play the role of a literal superhero in Madame Web in 2024. And that movie also tanked. So let’s drop the conversation about Sydney Sweeney in action movies for a while. I felt like the role of Supergirl was perfectly suited for Milly Alcock because there’s no reason Supergirl needs to be heavily sexualized in the first place.
The costume she wears and has always worn, even in the comic books, was never a super revealing one or an overly sexualized one. Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow is widely sexualized because she wears a skin-tight black bodysuit. Wonder Woman as well, since her costume is cleavage-heavy. We can also add Catwoman, Starfire, and Gamora to this convo. And that’s because all of their costumes force them into that conversation. Delving into anti-hero territory, Harley Quinn was obviously always going to be sexualized, before Margot Robbie picked up that role, because Harley was depicted as a sexualized anti-hero, even in the comic books. But Supergirl’s costume was never meant to evoke that vibe or energy. So the frustration a lot of viewers have, specifically male viewers, about the lack of sexuality for Supergirl is wildly annoying.
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