Supergirl: Reign twist revealed!

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Supergirl‘s new big bad, Reign, is not going to be your typical villain — well, mainly because she has no idea that she actually is one.

At the close of season 2, it was revealed that another pod escaped Krypton’s destruction, housing a bio-engineered weapon called Reign, also known as a Worldkiller. In the comics, the Worldkillers are bloodthirsty, super-powered beings that set out to conquer Earth. But when House alum Odette Annable makes her debut in the season premiere, she’ll be playing a very different character than what comic book fans have come to know from the New 52s.

“When we meet Reign, she’s just a woman,” executive producer Andrew Kreisberg tells EW. “Her name is Samantha and she’s a single mom, and she has no idea that she is Reign; she has no idea that she was the baby in the pod at the end of last season, so the journey that she takes this season is watching her realize her heritage and see how it manifests.”

Samantha’s transformation into Reign will really speak to the show’s theme this year. “The thing that everybody is struggling with on Supergirl this season is What does it mean to be human?” Kreisberg says, stressing that Supergirl needed to shake things up with its choice of big bad. “I’m not only competing with myself on Supergirl, but I’m competing with myself on all the other shows that I’ve done, and by that I mean I don’t want to repeat what I’ve done on Supergirl, nor do I want to repeat what I’ve done on Arrow and Flash.”

“Usually on these shows,” Kreisberg continues, “you either meet the big bad at the end of episode 1 or you meet them at episode 7 or 9, and you realize that they’ve been pulling the strings the whole time, and were out there working with their multi-year plan to take down the heroes or destroy the city. When we were figuring out Reign, one thing we’ve never really seen on any of these shows is we’ve never seen the big bad become the big bad.”

Well, get ready for it when Supergirl returns Monday, Oct. 9 at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.