Hawkgirl is one of the most famous heroines of the DC universe and that’s almost entirely
because of her appearances in Justice League and Legends of Tomorrow.
Though believe it or not, she’s really not all that popular and she’s usually just
a supporting character in the Hawkman comics.
In fact, the only time she’s ever had a solo series of her own was because they renamed
one of Hawkman’s series.
I’m serious.
Issue forty nine?
Hawkman.
Issue fifty?
Hawkgirl.
Not hot girl, Hawkgirl.
Well…
I guess both are applicable...
But hey, enough about that.
Let’s get into her history.
Hawkgirl’s is kind of all over the place because of how heavily associated she is with
Hawkman and if you want to know about how messed up THAT is, you should really watch
our video on him.
The first Hawkgirl, Shiera Saunders, was introduced alongside the first Hawkman, Carter Hall,
in Flash Comics #1 where it’s revealed that much like Carter, she’s the reincarnation
of Egyptian royalty.
In her case, the princess Chay-Ara.
For a while Shiera was simply Carter’s girlfriend, but in order to confuse one of his enemies,
Carter asked her to don a spare Hawkman costume.
Like Carter’s outfit, this spare was heavily comprised of Nth Metal which allowed Shiera
to break the laws of gravity and making it seem like there were two Hawkmen flying in
the air.
After this rouse, Shiera frequently fought criminals alongside Hawkman and took up the
identity of Hawkgirl.
For a while, that was it.
Shiera frequently tagged along with Hawkman and even joined him in the Justice Society
of America, but everything quickly changed.
DC Comics established that all of their Golden Age characters and adventures took place in
the parallel universe known as Earth-Two and that the characters that we all know and love
today existed on Earth-One.
This is where we got the Hawkgirl that was featured in the Justice League cartoon.
The Earth-One hawks were a pair of space cops from the alien planet Thanagar.
Shayera Hol and her husband/partner Katar tracked a shapeshifting criminal to Earth
and quickly apprehended him.
However, the couple decided to stay on Earth to learn more about its police methods and
for that, they needed to blend in with the Earthlings which is why they adopted the secret
identities of Shiera and Carter Hall.
Oh would you look at that, those are the names of their Golden Age counterparts.
That’s a neat little throwback!
Again, Hawkgirl was more or less tagging along with her husband, but she wasn’t immediately
given a spot on the Justice League because get this, they only admitted one new member
at a time and since Hawkman is the star of the book, guess who got the short end of the
stick.
Okay.
Ready for things to get complicated?
Let’s go!
After the event Crisis on Infinite Earths, bits and pieces of the entire DC multiverse
were merged into one.
This included having both pairs of hawks living on the same Earth at the same time.
Though to make things a bit easier, the Justice Society was thrown into limbo where they had
to fight in the Norse Ragnarok for all of eternity meaning that they were out of the
picture.
Now, the only hawks left were the Thanagarians.
In an attempt to expand on their origins, a mini-series called Hawkworld was release
which retold the story of how Katar and Shayera came to Earth.
Katar was still a police officer and when he attended a party, he met a woman named
Shayera Thal, the daughter of a high ranking government employee.
Shayera and Katar flirt for a bit, but almost immediately after they first kiss, Shayera
dies in an explosion.
It’s revealed that Katar’s father was responsible for the big boom and by association,
Katar was found guilty as an accomplice even though he had nothing to do with it.
After ten years of banishment, Katar meets a rookie police officer who, get this, was
actually a human orphan that was adopted by the late Shayera Thal’s father and was given
her name which made her Shayera Thal II.
Katar and Shayera become partners and track a corrupt colleague to Earth where they became
the heroes Hawkman and Hawkwoman.
Not Hawkgirl, HawkWOMAN.
See, that name change isn’t the only thing different about Hawkworld.
See, even though it was meant to retell the origin story of the Thanagarian hawks, DC
Comics decided to say that it took place in the MODERN DC universe which meant that there’s
now TWO sets of Thanagarian hawk people.
DC decided to explain this by saying that the characters that we all thought to be the
original Katar and Shayera Hol were actually the Thanagarian sleeper agent named Fel Andar
and his brainwashed human wife, Sharon Parker.
After his identity was revealed, Fel Andar was more or less written away and Sharon died.
This meant that the Hawkworld Katar and Shayera were here to stay, but to make things even
more confusing, the Golden Age hawks also came back from their time in limbo so once
again, there were two sets of hawks.
However, every time that DC tried to make the hawk problem easier to manage, all they
really ended up doing was making it more complicated.
In the book Zero Hour, both versions of Hawkman were fused together along with a Thanagarian
hawk god AND THE GOLDEN AGE HAWKGIRL to form one hybrid Hawkman thing that took the identity
of Katar Hol.
Just to make things clear, there’s one ONE Hawkman and ONE Hawkwoman at this time, but
because the new hybrid Hawkman thing was also kind of a douche, Shayera retired from crime
fighting and became a police officer in Detroit, but don’t worry.
She’ll be back.
Oh yeah, and Hawkman more or less killed himself by willingly going into the spirit realm or
something.
So now with there being NO hawk people whatsoever, DC decided to create a brand new Hawkgirl.
This was Kendra Saunders, the grandniece of the Golden Age Hawkgirl, Shiera Saunders,
but she also isn’t.
Stay with me here.
Shiera’s soul didn’t die when she was fused together with the Hawkmen during Zero
Hour.
Not only that, but Kendra Saunders attempted suicide, but even though she didn’t die,
she actually did.
Confused?
Let me explain.
Kendra died when she slit her wrist, but Shiera’s soul found her body and took over.
This made her eyes change color and magically learn all of Shiera’s fighting abilities,
but she still believed that she was Kendra and didn’t remember any of Shiera’s memories.
Now, around the time that she started getting her memories back, Kendra was summoned to
a destroyed Thanagar by some priests in order to use her connection with Katar in order
to bring him back to life.
So despite this being a Thanagarian ritual that took place on Thanagar, Carter Hall was
the Hawkman that was resurrected, not Katar.
Now Carter could instantly tell that it was Shiera’s soul that was inside of Kendra’s
body, but his more or less creepy attempts at wooing her only made things more awkward
so he left.
Now remember how I said that Shayera Thal the Hawkwoman was going to come back?
That was right around this time when war erupted between the planets Rann and Thanagar and
Hawkwoman was killed off by Starfire’s sister, Blackfire.
Now that we’ve tied up that loose end, back to Kendra.
For a short while, Hawkgirl hooked up with Green Arrow’s old sidekick, Roy Harper,
who was going by Red Arrow at the time.
After they split up, Shiera’s soul left Kendra’s body making Hawkgirl one hundred
percent Kendra Saunders and she finally gets together with Hawkman.
Now, we’re finally approaching the end of this madness because the hawks got killed
off in the first issue of Blackest Night, are brought back to life as zombie Black Lanterns,
and then they’re brought back to life a second time as White Lanterns.
There’s only one big difference though.
The newly resurrected White Lantern Hawkgirl isn’t Kendra Sanders.
She’s Shiera.
That-Yeah, that’s weird right?!
But what’s even weirder is that Hawkman’s girlfriend pretty much died, got replaced
by his dead ex-girlfriend, and he doesn’t seem to care.
Now forget everything I just told you because in 2011, the entire DC universe was rebooted
post-Flashpoint.
Now, there’s only Hawkgirl and she’s the Thanagarian princess Shayera Thal who’s
a supervillain.
Yeah, I’m serious.
She’s a former lover of Katar Hall and thought that he killed her brother.
When it was revealed that her brother was still very much alive and kind of a prick,
she saves Katar’s life and dies in the process.
Now there IS a pretty awesome Hawkgirl on the rebooted parallel universe, Earth-2, but
this video is complicated enough as is when we stick to the mainstream universe.
So at long last, my dear viewer, we are at the end of this story because as of this recording,
there is currently not a Hawkgirl OR a Hawkwoman in the main DC universe.
So which version of Hawkgirl do you like more?
The live action Arrowverse one or the animated Justice League one?
Click to cast your vote or tweet me @TrailerDrake.
But hey, you can’t really know Hawkgirl unless you know Hawkman so click on this annotation
right there and learn all about HIS crazy history.