‘Supergirl’ Writer on Comic Book Changes, ‘Wonder Woman’ Script

Midway through the movie, Kara’s mother delivers a line that ultimately becomes the core takeaway. On her deathbed, she tells her daughter, “Just be good. That doesn’t mean you cannot be tough. That doesn’t mean you must be nice. Just be good and do what is right. Protect others who cannot protect themselves.” Where did that dialogue spark from?

There’s not a lot about her parents in the lore and canon — or at least not that I had touched on — and it was just the fun of [wondering] who did she get what trait from. I imagine her mom as being this deep, earthy woman; she’s not from the House of El, like she’s not Jor-El and Zor-El. So, I’m like, “Who is this woman that he married? And what does she bring to the table if she’s not from this more aristocratic family?” I imagined her as being this woman who was so sure of who she is, and isn’t really afraid, and is really thoughtful. So, I was like, “What if [Kara] got this from her mom? What if her softness is from her dad, and her edge is from her mom?”

Fans are eager to see what happened on Krypton and what her experience was like in Argo City. What was it like to get to introduce that aspect of the DCU, since we don’t get that in “Superman?”

It was a little bit of a journey, because there are different versions of her backstory, and the one directly from “Women of Tomorrow” was what I believe was in my first draft — which is that she’s there when the core implodes. There are all these little things that work in comics, but then suddenly in a script, they don’t work, because then there’s a whole aspect where she gets stuck in the Phantom Zone for a decade. It suddenly took over the movie. It’s like you either need to say it in a sentence, or it takes over the movie, and that doesn’t totally work. It was almost crafting a new version of her backstory, because the one that we’ve known for so long is that she’s actually older than Clark/Superman, and she gets stuck.

That felt like a big responsibility to take on, to change it from what is canon and what is lore. But I still tried to get to the root of what matters about that: She had a whole life and childhood somewhere, and that it was lost to her. It was Krypton, and everything Krypton is, but it’s almost like it could be anywhere; any home that you grow up in is going to be meaningful to you, whether that’s your house in Ohio or your house on another planet. So, I just tried to zero in on that.

Lobo, the cigar-smoking alien bounty hunter played by Jason Momoa, was originally in the “Woman of Tomorrow” comic, but got cut from the story. Take me through the decision to add him back for the movie?

So that was brought to me. [Gunn and Safran] were like, “We want to do ‘Woman of Tomorrow,’ and we want you to find a way to put Lobo in. We think Lobo has a place in this.” I think their thinking was we know Jason Momoa is interested in this, and how can you turn that down? He’s so excellent in it, and you have to find a place when somebody is willing to go there. But at the same time, it also makes sense, because it’s intergalactic. It’s hard to bring Lobo to Earth — he’s always taken place in outer space — so they’re like, “This is an opportunity to bring in this character that would be hard to bring in.”

I knew Tom King had based the comic on “True Grit,” but originally, Lobo was the bounty hunter and Kara was the girl. Then he was like, “That doesn’t quite work.” He flipped it, and he brought in Ruthye. But when I was trying to bring in Lobo, I was like, “There is a third character in ‘True Grit’: Matt Damon’s character,” so if we follow that structure, there’s still room for this guy who is like a frenemy to the two of them. And Lobo is the ultimate frenemy.

Ruthye is the narrator of the comic, but in the film, it’s more about seeing the action through her eyes. How did you go about shifting that perspective?

In the original draft of the script, the movie opened with meeting Ruthye and getting to know her. But what we realized is that comic readers know Supergirl really, really, really well, so they are OK with meeting her through somebody else’s eyes. But for the movie-going public, Supergirl is not Batman; we haven’t seen her parents die a bunch of times [like Bruce Wayne’s], we don’t know it that well. I’ve seen Spider-Man get bitten by a radioactive spider a bunch of times, but we don’t have that with her. So, we realized we had to onboard the audience to [Kara] as the focus of the movie, not just through Ruthye.

But we wanted to maintain the sense of wonder of this little girl seeing this extraordinary woman and wanting more from [her]. There’s this element of [Kara] not totally living up to her potential, so we wanted to maintain that, but take the voiceover Ruthye out of it.

The film is about two young women learning to save themselves — and each other. But they also save all these other girls who’ve been kidnapped by the Brigands. How did that come to be?

So, that is not in the comic. I put it in for very boring writer reasons: in the comic, there’s this central planet where there’s been this horrific act in the past — essentially a genocide, an ethnic cleansing — and you find out that Krem was in some way involved. What’s really important about this is them coming and seeing loss that is not perfectly reflective of theirs, but just that deep pain that these girls have been through. And we also had to see that Krem is just like a total POS; that this guy is somebody that we are going to want to see meet a certain end. But I needed it to be something that was happening in the present and not the past, because in the comic, you can jump around to the past, but you can’t do that here. I needed something to feel really immediate, like there was saving to be done now.

I also wanted it to be something that specifically put our girls in jeopardy, so that they would be a target. Because otherwise, I don’t know why the Brigands would come after them. So, it’s those silly, boring writerly things that then end up leading to a larger plot. And it just tracked for me that the Brigands are an all-male race: What do they need?

The final battle sees an emotional breakthrough for Kara and Ruthye, but also a very final moment for Krem. It also leads us to what we’re going to see for Supergirl when she joins Superman in “Man of Tomorrow.” How did you go about crafting the ending?

The ending between Kara and Krem was always in it, from the pitch — truly from the very beginning. Because the comic ends with Ruthye killing him, but in the far, far future. We knew we weren’t gonna be able to do that kind of time jump, and I find it’s quite a dark ending of the comic. He essentially has changed, and she kills him anyway, because she still just has this anger, and you understand there’s this element of deserve, right? So, we wanted to craft a villain who would deserve this, but we also wanted Kara to really care about preserving Ruthye’s innocence, and to feel like she could take on [killing him], that she could be the one to bring justice to this man, and do it without burdening this child. It’s different for Supergirl, and I think it will feel different for audiences.

But I also find it really interesting because it means she has her own moral compass going forward. One that is separate from what Superman’s famous moral compass is: that he never takes a life. It’s really exciting to see. I have no idea what happens between the two of them in “Man of Tomorrow,” that’s above my pay grade. But it’s really exciting to think about them going forward and having these different viewpoints on how you deal with villains.

James and Peter kept you in the fold on “Superman” to know about the connective tissue to “Supergirl,” but I understand not giving you all the deets on the next one, because you’re a little busy crafting “Wonder Woman” and “Teen Titans.” What stage are those two in?

Oh, they’re so early. They’re in very different stages, I’ll say that. They’re all just such great characters, and I can’t believe I get to figure out what I would do with them the way that we did with Kara and Supergirl. But it’s still early days on both.

What was it like to get the green light from James and Peter, and to know that you were going to continue in this universe?

It’s a huge compliment and a vote of confidence. It’s honestly quite overwhelming. I can’t even think of the size of it. I just really try to keep my head down and make sure that I like the work that I’m doing, and that I think that it’s good work. I can’t write something that I don’t like. I can’t write something that I don’t see. I don’t have that gear. So, taking in how big it is is something I actually try not to even think about. I just try to stick to the script.

This interview has been edited and condensed.