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- "Everybody, this is my friend, Kara Danvers, or, as she's known on her Earth, Supergirl."
- —Barry Allen[src]
Kara Danvers (born Kara Zor-El) is a reporter for CatCo Worldwide Media, and the former personal assistant of Cat Grant. When her home planet Krypton was dying, she was sent to Earth to protect younger cousin, Kal-El. However, her pod was knocked off course by Krypton's explosion, sending her ship into the Phantom Zone, where she slept for decades while suspended in time, un-aging. Her pod later escaped, and she arrived on Earth where she was placed with the Danvers family by Kal-El - who having arrived on Earth decades earlier had grown into an adult, becoming the hero Superman. When she grew up, she was forced to reveal her Kryptonian powers to the world, deciding to become a superhero like her cousin, known as Supergirl, stylized as the "Girl of Steel".[1]
Biography
Early life
Kara Zor-El originated from the planet Krypton,[1] where she had a room that overlooked a city.[2]
Livewire and Silver Banshee
After Siobhan Smythe fell from a roof, Kara took Siobhan to the D.E.O., as she'd displayed the power to save herself. Later at CatCo, Kara was sent flying by Siobhan using her sonic scream. However, she was caught by The Flash, who accidentally ran them to the desert. Kara proceeded to fly off, but stopped in order to talk to him. Introducing himself and explaining that he was from another universe, he asked for her help to return. Kara took Barry to their makeshift base at CatCo, where he was introduced to Winn and James, explaining to all of them the concept of the multiverse. Promising to help him get home, Kara enlisted Barry's help with Siobhan and Livewire. She then took him to the D.E.O., introducing him to director Lucy Lane. Tracking Siobhan and Livewire, they found them at an abandoned warehouse. Despite being unsuccessful in their attempts to subdue them, Barry suggested that Kara needed to slow down and stop trying so hard, drawing from personal experience. Back at the D.E.O., Kara was contacted by James, telling her than Cat Grant had been kidnapped by Livewire and Siobhan, now known as Silver Banshee. Utilizing ear bud-type devices, the two villains were quickly defeated, along with the help of National City citizens and the fire department. Later, Barry and Kara returned to the desert. They combined their speed in a race, with Kara throwing him through a portal that was created. Later at her apartment, Kara and James shared a kiss, though afterwards she was surprised to see him walk away with a blank stare, and joined hundreds of other people marching blankly down the street, all under the control of Myriad.[1]
Medusa virus
Preparing for Thanksgiving dinner, Kara helped to cook the turkey using her heat vision. She soon after walked over to Winn and James, the former of whom claimed to not be able to wait for Eliza's glazed carrots. She answered the door to Mon-El, who came bearing flowers and mattress stuffing, having mistaken food stuffing for the latter. She introduced him to Eliza, who hit it off right away with him. When she asked her mother about this, thinking he was hitting on her, Eliza voiced her belief that he was doing this in order to impress Kara, as he in fact liked her. Later on, as they sat down for dinner, they expressed what they were thankful for. Before Alex could come out, they were interrupted by a breach. The following day, Kara, Alex and Winn all headed to work at the D.E.O. Hoping to find out what Lena Luthor knew, Kara headed for L-Corp under the guise of writing a piece for CatCo. However, their interview was cut short. The day after, Kara visited a contained Mon-El, who had come in to contact with a toxin released by Cadmus. Due to its targeting of aliens, she was forced to stay at the D.E.O. Kara and Mon-El played Monopoly to pass the time, before Kara questioned whether Mon-El had feelings for her. He ambiguously denied it, before collapsing in a coughing fit. She opened the cell, seeking medical attention. Deducing that the virus was from Krypton, Kara further deduced that Cadmus had used a sample of her blood to get in to the Fortress of Solitude, thus obtaining the virus. Kara traveled to the Fortress, where she was greeted by a reprogrammed Kelex. He attempted to kill her, but she used her heat vision to destroy him. Using the Fortress' computers, she was greeted by a hologram of her father, who explained the virus, Medusa, to her. Returning to the D.E.O. with all of the information she could, Kara sat by Mon-El's bedside, before later reminiscing of her life on Krypton to J'onn, admitting that her parents were not who they seemed. Suddenly, J'onn was struck by an immense wave of pain, showing his oncoming White Martian form. He explained what had happened with M'gann's blood transfusion, believing there to be no cure. Soon after, Supergirl headed to L-Corp, taking on Cyborg Superman. When another breach was opened for a moment, Hank was distracted, allowing Supergirl to gain the upper hand, but he escaped. Kara returned to the D.E.O. with an injured Maggie Sawyer, before she went to talk to Lena. She explained her mother's role in Cadmus, but Lena refused to believe her. Kara, distraught that her family had caused Mon-El's condition, went to sit with him as he woke up. The two kissed, before Mon-El returned to sleep. Later on, Supergirl and J'onn left to the National City port, where Cadmus planned to release Medusa via air. While J'onn took on Cyborg Superman, Kara went after the rocket with the virus. As she caught up with it, Lillian Luthor detonated it. With the virus having been made inert, with no risk to any alien, she returned in time to knock out Cyborg Superman and save J'onn. Back at the D.E.O., Mon-El woke, fully recovered thanks to Eliza's reverse engineering of a living sample of the virus. Kara questioned if Mon-El remembered anything they'd discussed, but he played coy. The following day, Kara returned home with a number of bags to find Barry Allen and Cisco Ramon, wishing to have a favor repaid.[2]
Assisting with the Dominators
Arriving on Earth One, Barry introduced Kara to everyone, before they all trained against her, much to everyone's losses as they realized her near-invincibility. Barry later appeared, telling everyone that because he created Flashpoint, he had screwed up everyone's lives, and asked to not be trusted, instead staying behind with Oliver. Kara and the other heroes arrived at the salt mine where the Dominators were. A trap was set in place, causing them to be mind controlled and turned against The Flash and Green Arrow. With the Flash's quick thinking, he led Supergirl to the salt mine and tricked her into destroying the mind control device, freeing everyone. As a precaution, Supergirl scouted around Central City and made sure there weren't any more of the devices.[3]
Supergirl and The Flash headed to Star City to assist Team Arrow's recruits in taking down Laura Washington, a scientist who stole a completed prototype of a regulator, something the team needed to decode their alien technology. She double-teamed with the Flash and took down Washington in a flashy technique, thus earning the praise of Rene, who had previously despised them.[4]
Powers and abilities
Powers
- Kryptonian physiology: Due to the nature of her race's physiology, Kara possesses the power to absorb the light and radiation of young stars, specifically those in the main sequence yellow spectrum. In turn, this energy grants her superhuman powers.
- Yellow sun energy absorption: Kara's Kryptonian physiology allows her to absorb the energy from the stars. She is able to absorb the energy of the yellow sun what gives her powers.
- Flight: Kara is able to manipulate her own gravitational field and fly, often at supersonic speeds, much faster than she can travel by foot.[1][2][3]
- Heat vision: By concentrating every solar energy reserve she has in her body, Kara can emit blue energy beams of variable intensity from her eyes.[1][2][3]
- Invulnerability: Kara is essentially invulnerable to all Earthly weapons, with bullets simply ricocheting whenever they come in to contact with her skin. However, her durability has proven to be somewhat weaker than that of her cousin, Kal-El. This is probably due to the fact that he has spent more time under the Earth's yellow sun than Kara has. She is immune to most forms of extreme punishment, as shown when she was completely unaffected by attacks with the A.T.O.M. Exosuit, Mick Rory's Heat Gun, and several of Green Arrow's arrows. She also was able withstand the Flash's lightning despite it having knocked out both Firestorm and Atom though this might be because it was not all directed at her.[3]
- Super breath: Kara is able to exhale powerful gusts of air from her mouth which are similar to force winds. She can also cause the temperature of her breath to drop, therefore able to freeze nearly anything.[1]
- Super speed: Kara possesses the ability to move at incredible speeds, far greater than that of any normal human. She is able to exceed well over Mach 1 - the speed of sound. Once she started to actually use her powers in a less restrained way, she was easily able to move at greater supersonic speeds, even to the point where she could almost catch up with a speedster like Barry Allen who could go at mach 13.[1]
- Super strength: Kara's strength is enhanced under a yellow sun, enough to easily kill a normal human if she were to attack them directly. After embracing her powers as Supergirl, Kara's true potential started to manifest, allowing her to stop a train moving at Mach 1, or lift over a million tons of condensed star material. While not limitless, the extent of her super strength is undetermined; making her among the strongest terrestrial beings in the known multiverse alongside her cousin and J'onn J'onzz. Despite her strength, Kara still must physically exert herself when fighting other superpowered beings of similar levels of strength and durability, such as other empowered Kryptonians.[1] Caitlin Snow even stated that Kara was "invincible" while she was mind controlled into fighting Barry.
- X-ray vision: Kara has the ability to see through objects, using this object to detect the kidnapped Earth One President of the United States in a salt mine.[3]
Abilities
- Multilingual: Kara is capable of fluently speaking English and her native Kryptonian.
- Trained hand-to-hand combatant: Since joining the D.E.O., Kara's sister Alex has been teaching Kara to better handle herself in battle against opponents with formidable powers of their own, including how to use their own momentum against them. Ultimately, even with her powers temporarily disabled, Kara has become a highly proficient fighter, able to compete against the more experienced Alex and Astra. As the series went, Kara became even better at this, managing to hold her own against Indigo in their fight, also defeating Maxima. She also was able to defeat Mon-El, a former royal protector, during their training session, though this may have been due to her using her powers.
Weaknesses
- Dominators' orb: Kara has immunity to telepathy, however the Dominators' orb was capable of overriding this barrier and forced Kara to do what the aliens willed, even forcing her to battle her trusted friend and ally The Flash.[3]
- Ultra loud frequencies: When battling foes with sound based powers, Kara is vulnerable to them due to her super hearing. She was shown to have this disability when fighting Silver Banshee.
- Electricity: Despite her invulnerability, Supergirl seems relatively vulnerable to large amounts of electricity. This was seen when fighting against Livewire, as she was hit with a rather large blast while mid-air and it nearly knocked her unconscious. She seems to have developed her powers since then, as she was able to withstand a blast of the Flash's lightning with little to no effect. Though this may have had something to do with her being on another Earth, or possibly due to Flash's electricity not being as powerful as Livewire's, as it has shown to knock him out before as well.
Equipment
- Interdimensional Extrapolator: Given to her as a present by Cisco, it can create small breaches to allow travel between Earth 1 and Earth 38 anytime she wants to. It also has communication functionality that can allow contact between universes.
- Supergirl suit: Kara wears a suit as her super-heroine alter-ego, Supergirl, to hide her identity from her enemies, when she goes out fighting crime. It was designed by her friend Winn Schott, it is also unknown what materials it is made from.
- Lead-based glasses: As a teenager Kara was given a pair of lead lined glasses to help her control her visual powers.
Appearances
Supergirl
Season 1
Season 2
- "Medusa"
The Flash
Season 2
- "Welcome to Earth-2" (vision)
Season 3
Arrow
Season 5
DC's Legends of Tomorrow
Season 2
Trivia
- It was shown that Supergirl is extremely powerful, as she was able to defeat the likes of The Atom, Heat Wave, White Canary, Spartan, Speedy, and Green Arrow all at once numerous times. She was also able to nearly match the Flash in speed.
Behind the scenes
- In a nod to Brandon Routh's previous role as the title character in the 2006 film Superman Returns, Ray Palmer made a brief remark about Kara resembling his cousin.