Caroline Preece has more than 15 years of experience writing entertainment content. Her work for outlets including Den of Geek, Backstage, Tom’s Guide, CultBox, and Starburst prioritizes sharp analysis and reader-first reporting with a particular interest in the ways storytelling, audience behavior, and digital culture drive modern entertainment trends.
Actors don't usually get to manifest a role into being. However, Jason Momoa, who texted James Gunn two words on the morning Gunn took over DC Studios and spent years telling anyone who'd listen that he was built to play Lobo, is the exception. The new look at Supergirl unveiled this week suggests the obsession paid off.
The image, shared ahead of Empire's latest issue, offers the most detailed view yet of Momoa's take on the Czarnian bounty hunter. He's on his cosmic motorcycle, cigar clamped between his teeth, riding away from a landscape that's very much on fire behind him. It's the 1990s comic-book Lobo brought across more or less intact: chalk-white skin, red eyes, and a particular kind of swagger.
Giving the reveal its weight, though, is what director Craig Gillespie said alongside it. "I was thrilled to have him," the Supergirl director told Empire. "I couldn't imagine anybody else, but it's a pressure... [we asked ourselves a] million questions to pay homage to the original."
The latest look at Supergirl will certainly excite those who have followed Lobo's long, cursed road to live action. There was a Guy Ritchie version announced in 2009, then there was another rumored project in 2012 with director Brad Peyton and Dwayne Johnson attached, but none of them made it to the screen. Momoa, a genuine fan who has collected the character's comic appearances, kept his name in the frame throughout.
Momoa originally had Lobo in mind when Warner Bros. first came calling, but was steered toward Arthur Curry (aka Aquaman) instead, a role that handed the old DCEU its only billion-dollar hit but never quite scratched the itch. When Gunn and Peter Safran took over DC Studios in 2022, Momoa's pitch was two words, sent by text: "F***ing LOBO." Gunn, by his own account, had wanted him for it for years.
His co-star sees it the same way. "Jason had such presence," Milly Alcock said of Lobo, who spends much of the film alongside her Kara Zor-El. "He is Lobo. And it was exciting to see somebody living out their dream." Momoa had put it even more plainly at CinemaCon in April: "This is a dream come true. This is the comic I collected."
Supergirl, out this month, has dropped the "Woman of Tomorrow" subtitle but kept the source material — Tom King and Bilquis Evely's acclaimed run, which gives Alcock a harder, more bruised Kara than the bright costume usually implies. The plot sends her across the galaxy on a revenge quest after a young alien girl, Ruthye, recruits her to hunt the pirate who killed her father (Matthias Schoenaerts as Krem of the Yellow Hills). Lobo, by most accounts, is a supporting presence rather than the central villain.
There's also the question of where Momoa's Lobo goes after this. DC views the character as its potential answer to Deadpool or Wolverine — a foul-mouthed, hard-to-kill wildcard who can puncture an otherwise earnest universe, and Supergirl looks built in part to gauge the appetite for more of him. Cameras are already rolling on Man of Tomorrow, the 2027 Superman sequel, where Momoa and David Corenswet's Man of Steel are widely expected to meet.