The Layered Ending of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow

Tom King often eschews endings that resolve all conflicts and send the audience home satisfied. He prefers, instead, what we might simply call a ‘challenging ending,’ one that forces the reader to reflect on the story and the deeper meanings it seeks. Supergirl is a good example. #supergirl 1/17

This leads to an unsettling yet deeply relatable mental collapse for Kara who, after Ruthye talks her out of murder, declares “It’s too big. We’re too small.” There’s no direct resolution here, in that we immediately jump forward to a distant time and place after this panel. 5/17

In this far future we learn that Krypto is indeed fine, and that Krem has been rehabilitated (though by no means forgiven as Ruthye’s assault on him makes clear). The sublime nature of existence wasn’t quite too big and, though small, Kara and Ruthye were large enough to endure in their values. 6/17

There’s a nice inverse comparison to the Epic of Gilgamesh here, which features Gilgamesh and Enkidu (world literature’s original superheroes) traveling through the forest through the power of strength and the emotional support of each other whenever their courage wanes. 7/17

Instead of slaying monsters, though, Ruthye and Kara support mercy. They both falter in their values, but by leaning on each other when this happens, they allow each other their moments of weakness, something that ultimately makes them stronger and makes the very concept of mercy possible. 8/17

In the final pages of the story, King reveals a 2nd twist: Ruthye has been a faulty narrator the entire time – the captions that we’ve seen have been pages from an idealized story instead of the lived reality of the narrative. 9/17

Kara tells Ruthye “I liked your book,” and Ruthye replies “That fictitious fiddle-faddle. I’m sorry you had to waste your time on it. Don’t know why I wrote it in the first place. I should’ve told what really happened.” 10/17

This is a conceptually challenging thing to accept for the audience who is asked to then trust the thought bubbles, speech bubbles, and actions of the character they’ve come to know and love, whilst divorcing these from the narration captions which have now been rendered retroactively “fiddle-faddle.” 11/17

This becomes a little easier to accept and absorb in the final page of the story which demonstrates this rupture through a rare comics use of what Scott McCloud calls ‘parallel combinations’ of text and image in which “words and images seem to follow very different courses – without intersecting.” 12/17

In a page that inversely mirrors the opening page, we watch a red sun rise over the prone body of Krem, now rehabilitated and aching from the sting of Ruthye’s cane. The narration reads “Instead, she moved her sword through the air and stabbed down and through the chest of the kneeling brigand.” 13/17

This, as evidenced by the very alive body we see in the panels, establishes, resolutely, that the yellow narrative captions were Ruthye’s book, distorted in the name of her interests. “And that is where I shall end the long story of Ruthye, Supergirl, and Krem of the Yellow Hills.” 14/17

There’s ambiguity here, but the surface level motivation to lie about Kara killing Krem was to keep Ruthye safe from revengers and to make Krem’s rehabilitation possible. From the reader’s perspective, though, we are left to ponder whether justice was done as two resolutions are presented. 15/17

Do we prefer Ruthye’s version, in which Kara crosses the line and takes cold revenge for them both or do we prefer the gentler way? Which is more satisfying, which more righteous, and, most importantly, which one makes the better story? 16/17

Perhaps Ruthye really did learn the message of Kara and the greatest proof of that is the lies that Ruthye tells us. All told, it’s a pensive and provocative ending that gives the story an enduring power to evade resolution and to linger, not unlike Krem in the phantom zone, in the reader’s consciousness. 17/17