Supergirl photos reveal a first look at young Superman

Supergirl's introduction reminds us each week that while technically she's older than her cousin, due to an unforeseen set of circumstances, Superman is now older than her. So when it was announced that a young Kal-El would make an appearance in an upcoming Supergirl episode, it was a little puzzling: how can that be? The end of the last episode revealed a big clue about how it occurs, and we've now got a first look at the young Kal-El (Daniel DiMaggio) in a couple of images.

Entitled "The Girl Who Has Everything", the episode adapts the classic Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons comic book storyline "For The Man Who Has Everything" with the Girl of Steel taking the place of the Man of Steel. It picks up from the end of last week, when Kara arrived home to find a gooey, plant monster - which looked remarkably like the offspring of Audrey II and that thing from Prometheus - clinging to her ceiling. The entity is called Black Mercy, a parasitic plant that taps into the pleasure centre of its comatose host. In this case that host is Kara, which is how we see her sat beside a young Kal-El on Krypton: she's dreaming of a perfect existence.

“There was something about that particular story that, to me, was almost even more resonant for her,” executive producer Andrew Kreisberg told EW. “For Superman, when it happens to him, it’s his wish for something that he never had. But for her, she wants something back that was taken from her. It really is like her stepping into this fantasy of what life would’ve been like if she had never left Krypton and had grown up there, if her parents were still alive, if she had grown into the person and the life that she wanted to lead."

"Again, because it’s coming at a time where she’s feeling so low about her life on Earth, it becomes that much more potent. … She’s actually getting back everything that was taken away from her and the only way out of it is to reject it. Imagine how horrible that’s going to be.”

While UK viewers have to wait until April for Supergirl's return to Sky 1, the episode airs in the US February 15 on CBS.

Images: CBS

Gem Seddon is GamesRadar+'s west coast Entertainment News Reporter, working to keep all of you updated on all of the latest and greatest movies and shows on streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Outside of entertainment journalism, Gem can frequently be found writing about the alternative health and wellness industry, and obsessing over all things Aliens and Terminator on Twitter.