The end of Supergirl season 1, episode 2, “Stronger Together,” saw a twist relating to Hank Henshaw. His comic book identity might offer some clues about what is going on.
At the end of “Stronger Together,” we saw Hank Henshaw, after appearing to soften a bit toward Kara — even calling her Supergirl to Alex — with eyes that glowed red. Wait, what?
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Well, in the DC Comics, Hank Henshaw was an astronaut whose mission came in contact with a solar flare. As a result of the radiation, his body began to decay. Hold that thought.
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Hank told Kara that he once had a family; in the comics, Hank’s wife, Terri, was one of the crew members on the doomed mission. As a result of her radiation exposure, Terri began to phase into an alternate dimension. (As you do.) Though Hank was able to save her, it came at the cost of his life — sort of. His consciousness survived and eventually transferred into a robotic body. (Again, as you do.)
The combination of the radiation effects, her husband’s death and return drove Terri into insanity and she eventually died. (Another member of the crew, completely made up of radiation, ended up flying into the sun while the final crew member committed suicide via MRI.) Cheery, right?
Hank, becoming increasingly unstable, created a cyborg body identical to Superman’s. After learning Superman had thrown the Eradicator, a Kryptonian artifact, into the sun during the space mission, Hank placed all his blame for the deaths of his wife and crew as well as his own fate onto the Man of Steel. Hank would go on to have a fairly large role in some Green Lantern stories.
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Curiously, in the New 52 relaunch of the DC Comics, Cyborg Superman had a completely different identity: Zor-El. Yes, Kara’s father. Brainiac rescued him from Krypton’s destruction and configured him into a cyborg scout looking for strong species in the universe.
As for the story behind Supergirl‘s Hank Henshaw, EP Andrew Kreisberg is keeping quiet. While he acknowledges comic book fans will know the previously mentioned history of the character, he tells EW, “As always with these things, we have to make this show for more than just comic book fans.”
He adds, “We always try to satiate what the comic book fans’ expectations are, while also letting in the wider audience. If you’re a comic book fan, you’re obviously going to come to it with some preconceived notions, and that’ll be exciting for you. And if you’re not, you’re just going to be like, ‘Why are Hank’s eyes glowing? What does that mean?!’ We’ve seen the gruff Hank and this adds another layer to it.”
As with Arrow and The Flash, Supergirl will no doubt put a unique twist on its characters and their backstories. We don’t know much about Hank yet, so there is plenty of room for his character to grow; indeed, we don’t even know if he was aware that his eyes were glowing red! We’ll be interested to see how much of Cyborg Superman’s backstory Supergirl ends up drawing upon.
Supergirl airs Mondays at 8:00 p.m. ET on CBS.
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