Superman Star Isabela Merced Teases Hawkgirl’s “Really Dark” DCU Backstory From the Comics

David Corenswet’s Man of Steel isn’t the only superhero soaring into the new DC Universe in Superman. The James Gunn written and directed DC Studios film is set to introduce the Element Man Metamorpho (Barry‘s Anthony Carrigan) and, as members of the corporate-sponsored Justice Gang bankrolled by LordTech mogul Maxwell Lord (Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Sean Gunn), superheroes Mister Terrific (For All Mankind‘s Edi Gathegi), the Guy Gardner Green Lantern (Firefly‘s Nathan Fillion), and the high-flying Hawkgirl (The Last of Us season 2 breakout Isabela Merced).

“Kendra is reincarnated, but she’s reincarnated from an alien,” Merced said on the DC Studios Showcase Official Podcast. “So she has all those memories. The story is actually really dark, it’s actually so f-cked up that I wonder how they’re going to handle that when it comes to addressing that.”

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While it sounds like Kendra’s backstory won’t be addressed in Superman, Merced added, “She carries all of the memories and the traumas and the mistakes of her past lives in her body wherever she goes, so she has a little bit of a grumpy demeanor.” (Merced will next reprise the role in Peacemaker season 2 opposite Fillion’s Green Lantern later this year on HBO Max.)

Merced is playing the Kendra Saunders version of the winged warrior, who debuted in the pages of 1999’s JSA Secret Files #1. The grandniece of Shiera Sanders Hall (introduced alongside Hawkman in 1940’s Flash Comics #1 before taking flight as the first Hawkgirl in the Justice Society of America-fronted All Star Comics #5 in 1941), Kendra is also related to another golden age adventurer: she’s the granddaughter of Cyril “Speed” Saunders.

A 19-year-old Kendra assumed the Hawkgirl mantle in the James Robinson and David Goyer-penned JSA run, where her grandfather equipped Kendra with her great-aunt’s wings. Haunted by strange dreams of ancient Egypt and other planets like Thanagar, it was later revealed that Kendra attempted suicide after her parents were murdered.

In 2001’s JSA #21, written by Goyer and Geoff Johns, the fallen guardian angel Zauriel explained Kendra’s history: she didn’t survive her second suicide attempt, and that the visions in which she died over and over again in different time periods were her past lives. Speed then confirmed that the green-eyed Kendra died when she overdosed on pills, and that the brown-eyed Shiera — herself a reincarnated form of the Egyptian princess Chay-Ara — was inhabiting Kendra’s body. (Prince Khufu Kha-Taar of ancient Egypt would one day be reincarnated as Carter Hall: Hawkman.)

“I love it. Honestly, it gives me so much backstory and it’s super helpful,” the Madame Web star added of Kendra’s complicated history in the comics. “But then, also, with the James Gunn twist, you know, that self-awareness and the comedy of it all … It gives me [the] opportunity to sort of make light of my trauma.”

Ciara Renée played the reincarnated Kendra Saunders in live-action on the Arrowverse series The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow, while Sahar Biniaz briefly appeared as the Shayera Hall version of the character (a portmanteau of Shayera Thal/Shiera Hall) on Smallville. Most famously, Maria Canals-Barrera voiced the Shayera Hol Hawkgirl in the animated series Justice League and Justice League Unlimited.

Superman — starring David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, Nicholas Hoult, Edi Gathegi, Anthony Carrigan, Nathan Fillion, Isabela Merced, Skyler Gisondo, Sara Sampaio, María Gabriela de Faría, Wendell Pierce, Alan Tudyk, Neva Howell, Pruitt Taylor Vince, and Frank Grillo — is only in theaters July 11.