DC’s ‘Supergirl’ Trailer Doesn’t Actually Tease Brainiac – Here’s What You Missed

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The new trailer for Supergirl might have hinted at the big bad villain from the upcoming Man of Tomorrow series. While showcasing Milly Alcock as Supergirl and Jason Momoa as Lobo, the trailer briefly showed a Kryptonian city being enclosed in a dome as Krypton was destroyed. This suggests Supergirl will depict the destruction of Krypton, an event that Superman’s story didn’t fully explore.

This initially suggests the introduction of Superman’s famous enemy, Brainiac. While Brainiac is rumored to be the villain in the upcoming Man of Tomorrow movie – which is slated for release a year after Supergirl – the Supergirl trailer doesn’t actually hint at Brainiac’s appearance. Instead, it focuses on a tragic event for Kryptonians, taken from the original DC Comics, and a significant scene from the Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow comic book by Tom King, Bilquis Evely, and Matheus Lopes.

The Shot in ‘Supergirl’ is Argo City, Not Kandor


Warner Bros.

The trailer for Supergirl shows a city trapped inside a bubble, appearing just as Krypton is destroyed. Viewers might think this is the work of Brainiac, who famously shrinks the city of Kandor in the comics. However, the trailer actually depicts Argo City, not Kandor, and it wasn’t Brainiac who created the bubble.

Argo City was a major city on the planet Krypton and the home of Supergirl and her parents, Zor-El and Alura In-Ze. It first appeared in a 1959 issue of Action Comics. Later stories revealed that when Krypton exploded, a piece of the planet containing Argo City broke away. Zor-El managed to create a protective bubble around this fragment, allowing its citizens to survive in space. However, as they drifted towards yellow suns, the planet’s soil transformed into Kryptonite, and the citizens slowly perished – this is the event shown in the Supergirl trailer.

What’s fascinating to me is how different this is from the story of Kandor. It wasn’t just a city like Krypton, it was Krypton’s capital, and Brainiac actually captured and shrunk the whole thing before the planet exploded! I learned it first appeared way back in Action Comics #242, almost a year before we even met Supergirl and heard about Argo City. It’s cool to know Otto Binder and Al Plastino, the guys behind a lot of the wild stuff in Superman’s Silver Age comics, are the ones who created it – and James Gunn is pulling from that era for the new DCU, which makes this even more exciting!

Both Argo City and Kandor were fragments of Krypton that survived its destruction, but they have very different stories. In the comic Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, everyone in Argo City dies except for Kara Zor-El, also known as Supergirl. Kandor, however, survives as a miniature city contained within a bottle, and Superman later keeps it safe in his Fortress of Solitude.

Why Do Fans Think Brainiac Would Be Teased in ‘Supergirl?’


DC Comics

Fans sometimes confuse Argo City and Kandor because both are depicted as cities encased in protective bubbles, resembling towns in bottles. This confusion is also fueled by recent DC Comics stories and adaptations, which strongly link Brainiac to both the destruction of Kandor and Supergirl’s backstory. A 2008 storyline by Geoff Johns clarified that Kara Zor-El saw Brainiac capture Kandor. Later, the Injustice 2 storyline accelerated the timeline, showing Kara witnessing Brainiac’s arrival during Krypton’s destruction before she fled the planet.

With Injustice 2 selling around 1.5 million copies quickly, many viewers thought the destruction of Krypton in the Supergirl trailer hinted at the villain Brainiac. However, the trailer doesn’t seem to connect Brainiac to Supergirl’s backstory, or combine the cities of Kandor and Argo City in any meaningful way. It looks like the movie is closely following the story from Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which didn’t include Brainiac or link him to the destruction of Krypton.

The trailer for Supergirl doesn’t show the city of Kandor being shrunk by Brainiac, so it doesn’t hint at or lead into a future Man of Tomorrow movie. This is partly because Supergirl is based on the Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow comic, and also because James Gunn has stated the new DC Universe films won’t focus heavily on setting up future installments. Brainiac will probably be introduced in Man of Tomorrow when that film eventually happens.

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2025-12-12 17:05