Supergirl is two months away from theaters, and DC Studios is starting to widen its marketing beyond Kara Zor-El. The next film in James Gunn and Peter Safran's DCU adapts Tom King and Bilquis Evely's Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, a comic that pairs Kara with a young alien farm girl named Ruthye Marye Knoll on an intergalactic revenge quest. In the film, Eve Ridley plays the role, and she carries a dramatic share of the story.
DC Studios has unveiled the first solo character poster for Ruthye, Supergirl’s DCU sidekick, ahead of the film’s June 26 release. This new piece of promo art gives Eve Ridley’s character her own spotlight, evidence of how important she is. The image places Ruthye against a dark background with a glowing crest behind her. She rocks a cropped jacket, combat trousers, and brown boots with her sword hanging at her back.
It's not the only promo art she appears in, though. DC Studios paired the solo poster with a duo piece that shows Ridley's Ruthye next to Milly Alcock's Kara inside a red diamond crest, gripping the handle of her sword.
Supergirl's DCU sidekick also features in another duo poster. That one has Ruthye next to Kara under a tagline: "Be Tough. Be Good." The line plays into a pattern DC Studios has used across its DCU posters so far. Superman used "Look Up." The first Supergirl poster flipped that to "Look Out." Clayface's recent trailer used "Look Fear In The Face." "Be Tough. Be Good" sounds like words of advice passed between the two heroes.
The young sidekick's prominence on Supergirl promo material doesn’t stop there.
Another poster, this time a sticker-bomb piece, shows Alcock's Supergirl mid-flight with Ruthye, behind her, surrounded by numerous stickers: Interlac text, a spaceship, and a Krypto paw print, with Supergirl's logo prominent in the image as well.
Ruthye’s Sidekick Role Is Important to Supergirl’s Story
Ruthye will play an important role in Supergirl's storytelling just as she did in the comics. In Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, she's a key part of Kara's story and even narrates the entire eight-issue series. Tom King wrote the comic as a journal Ruthye keeps decades later, looking back as an old woman on the time she spent with the Last Daughter of Krypton. Every observation about Supergirl's drinking, her grace, her grief, and heroics comes filtered through Ruthye's pen.
Her arc opens on a small farming planet that orbits a red sun. Ruthye, 14 years old, watches Krem of the Yellow Hills murder her father over his refusal to laugh at a joke he made. Krem leaves a kopis blade buried in her father's chest. Ruthye pulls it free and rides into the nearest town to barter the sword for a killer of her own. The mercenary she finds tries to rob her instead. Supergirl, off-world to celebrate her birthday on a planet where her body actually metabolizes alcohol, knocks the man out cold. Ruthye fixates on her in that moment and refuses to let go.
The sidekick dynamic Tom King writes between them is interesting because of the power balance. Kara is the Kryptonian, and Ruthye is the kid with a sword. Yet in the series, it is often Ruthye who holds the moral compass. When the two witness victims of the Brigands stone a captured pirate to death, Ruthye expects Supergirl to step in, but she does not. "Did you?" Kara asks when Ruthye admits she expected mercy. This shows how different Supergirl and her sidekick are.
In Issue #4, when Supergirl tries to spare her from witnessing the atrocities committed on the planet they visit, Ruthye refuses, snapping back at Kara for saying she's too young to witness the murders. Ruthye wants to be treated as a partner in the quest instead of a child. As the story moves forward, she earns it. She fights alongside Kara and even defends her when she gets weakened on Barenton, a planet with a green sun. She fights and defeats a vicious creature while Kara is unconscious. Without her, Supergirl most likely gets ripped to shreds.
By the final issue, although she wants revenge, she ends up the one talking Supergirl out of crossing a line she could not come back from, telling Kara that she does not need to kill Krem on her behalf. The way she functions as Kara's moral compass and emotional support system makes her a great sidekick. The film is expected to capture this dynamic vividly when it arrives in theaters in the coming months.
Geraldo Amartey is a writer at The Direct. He joined the team in 2025, bringing with him four years of experience covering entertainment news, pop culture, and fan-favorite franchises for sites like YEN, Briefly and Tuko.
