Celebrating Pride Month: Should Kara Danvers/Zor-El aka Supergirl be a Lesbian?
Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2024 8:00 pm
Saw the clip for the upcoming My Adventures with Superman which properly introduces us to Clark's Cousin and Distaff Counterpart, Supergirl aka Kara.
Kara is a rather interesting character mainly, because unlike her Cousin, she has no defined character to speak of. She's mostly been portrayed as "Superman but a girl" and as such she's a hard character to write as most who do write her tend to change her personality to fit their stories. The Supergirl TV series leans into the idea of her just being Clark with the same girl scoot personality, same job, same arc and so forth. The DCAU version makes her more of a tomgirl and almost more of a thrill seeker before her final episode comes around and she's now acting more like Clark with the episode even drawing attention to that fact. And in MAWS that show seems to be leaning more towards her being more of a fighter and seems that she's leaning into more of the Emotionless Girl trope.
And one thing that's often changed about Kara is her love life. Her most common love interest is Jimmy Olson but the two are by no means a popular pairing with writers quickly breaking them up as soon as possible to pair her with pretty much anyone who comes along. Now to clarify I have no issue with Kara having a LOT of different love interests, I give Batman, James Bond and even Spider-Man a pass so I don't see why I can't do the same thing here.
No my issue is that Kara has no romance that I find interesting and I'm obviously not alone in this because it seems the reason for Kara's constant shift in love interests is because writers quickly grow bored with said romance and just keep switching them out in the hopes that one will stick. The reason Jimmy is her most common love interests comes more from the fact that she was her first love interest and that it seems the most logical choice. She's a Superman type character, Superman's single most iconic love interest is Lois Lane who is a reporter, Jimmy is a friend of Superman, Jimmy is a reporter so let's just do that. This has been the stated reason for these two to hook up by almost every writer who's written Kara over the decades with no one having them get together because it makes sense for the characters and again they almost immediately break the two up as soon as possible. And again, the reason for breaking these two up is because they're boring together.
Over the years Kara has been in a relationship with characters like Brainiac but good, Mon-El, random Kryptoian boys and random Earth guys. She even has had a crush on characters like Green Arrow, Kyle Rayner and I think Steel as well, not sure about that. And just like Jimmy, these don't stick.
Thus we come to the point of this topic, the most popular character to pair Kara with romantically to the point that many assume it is canon and was even believed to be made canon in a deleted scene that has proven to be fake, is Lena Luthor from the Supergirl TV series.
Buy and Large this is the most popular Supergirl pairing to date which is best shown in a number of fanfics and fan art. In the past 7 years since season 2 of Supergirl, despite the shows best efforts to sink this ship, Kara/Lena has gone on to become The OTP for Supergirl beating out literally every other canon romance Kara has ever had. Just as an example, in the recent clip for MAWS when it was shown that Jimmy fell for Kara right after seeing her the general reaction in the comments and several fan sites was "Oh, not this again!"
But one comment section was literally nothing but wondering if Lena would be in this show and if she would become Kara's real love interest.
I think the reason Kara/Lena aka SuperCorp has become so popular is because it's NOT something we've really seen in Superman. While Clark and Lex have become friends in some continuities they usually start off as enemies with Lex being outright Xenophobic and hating Clark just because he's a good person. But with Lena, most people's first introduction to the character was in Supergirl where she and Kara start off as friends and Lena is unquestionably an Allie of Supergirl. Helping matters is the fantastic chemistry between Melissa Benoist and Katie McGrath which really sells the idea of these two being friends. Further helping matters is the first real scene between Kara and Lena in season 2 where Lena talks about making a name for herself and Kara seeming to fall in love with her at that moment.
Kara's relationship with Lena is, IMO, the single most compelling relationship Kara has had with any character romantic or otherwise mainly because it's something that helps her standout from her cousin. Lena is a Luthor that starts out as and, more or less, remains an ally and friend to a Kent with only really one real speed conflict between the two which was resolved after one season.
So, given her utter lack of a stable male romantic interest, her lack of chemistry with pretty much every guy she's been in a relationship with and her single most engaging and complex relationship being with another woman with enough Homoerotic Subtext to Power both Metropolis and Gotham for the next 50 years, should DC just make Kara a lesbian and have her hookup with Lena Luthor?
Kara is a rather interesting character mainly, because unlike her Cousin, she has no defined character to speak of. She's mostly been portrayed as "Superman but a girl" and as such she's a hard character to write as most who do write her tend to change her personality to fit their stories. The Supergirl TV series leans into the idea of her just being Clark with the same girl scoot personality, same job, same arc and so forth. The DCAU version makes her more of a tomgirl and almost more of a thrill seeker before her final episode comes around and she's now acting more like Clark with the episode even drawing attention to that fact. And in MAWS that show seems to be leaning more towards her being more of a fighter and seems that she's leaning into more of the Emotionless Girl trope.
And one thing that's often changed about Kara is her love life. Her most common love interest is Jimmy Olson but the two are by no means a popular pairing with writers quickly breaking them up as soon as possible to pair her with pretty much anyone who comes along. Now to clarify I have no issue with Kara having a LOT of different love interests, I give Batman, James Bond and even Spider-Man a pass so I don't see why I can't do the same thing here.
No my issue is that Kara has no romance that I find interesting and I'm obviously not alone in this because it seems the reason for Kara's constant shift in love interests is because writers quickly grow bored with said romance and just keep switching them out in the hopes that one will stick. The reason Jimmy is her most common love interests comes more from the fact that she was her first love interest and that it seems the most logical choice. She's a Superman type character, Superman's single most iconic love interest is Lois Lane who is a reporter, Jimmy is a friend of Superman, Jimmy is a reporter so let's just do that. This has been the stated reason for these two to hook up by almost every writer who's written Kara over the decades with no one having them get together because it makes sense for the characters and again they almost immediately break the two up as soon as possible. And again, the reason for breaking these two up is because they're boring together.
Over the years Kara has been in a relationship with characters like Brainiac but good, Mon-El, random Kryptoian boys and random Earth guys. She even has had a crush on characters like Green Arrow, Kyle Rayner and I think Steel as well, not sure about that. And just like Jimmy, these don't stick.
Thus we come to the point of this topic, the most popular character to pair Kara with romantically to the point that many assume it is canon and was even believed to be made canon in a deleted scene that has proven to be fake, is Lena Luthor from the Supergirl TV series.
Buy and Large this is the most popular Supergirl pairing to date which is best shown in a number of fanfics and fan art. In the past 7 years since season 2 of Supergirl, despite the shows best efforts to sink this ship, Kara/Lena has gone on to become The OTP for Supergirl beating out literally every other canon romance Kara has ever had. Just as an example, in the recent clip for MAWS when it was shown that Jimmy fell for Kara right after seeing her the general reaction in the comments and several fan sites was "Oh, not this again!"
But one comment section was literally nothing but wondering if Lena would be in this show and if she would become Kara's real love interest.
I think the reason Kara/Lena aka SuperCorp has become so popular is because it's NOT something we've really seen in Superman. While Clark and Lex have become friends in some continuities they usually start off as enemies with Lex being outright Xenophobic and hating Clark just because he's a good person. But with Lena, most people's first introduction to the character was in Supergirl where she and Kara start off as friends and Lena is unquestionably an Allie of Supergirl. Helping matters is the fantastic chemistry between Melissa Benoist and Katie McGrath which really sells the idea of these two being friends. Further helping matters is the first real scene between Kara and Lena in season 2 where Lena talks about making a name for herself and Kara seeming to fall in love with her at that moment.
Kara's relationship with Lena is, IMO, the single most compelling relationship Kara has had with any character romantic or otherwise mainly because it's something that helps her standout from her cousin. Lena is a Luthor that starts out as and, more or less, remains an ally and friend to a Kent with only really one real speed conflict between the two which was resolved after one season.
So, given her utter lack of a stable male romantic interest, her lack of chemistry with pretty much every guy she's been in a relationship with and her single most engaging and complex relationship being with another woman with enough Homoerotic Subtext to Power both Metropolis and Gotham for the next 50 years, should DC just make Kara a lesbian and have her hookup with Lena Luthor?