Welcome back! Last week, we dove into the pilot episode of CW’s Superman & Lois and I found it to be a genuinely heartwarming exploration of the human drama not only at the core of Superman’s story, but inherent in the stories of all superhero fiction. While it’s early days yet, it’s clear already that this show is setting a benchmark in how superhero stories can explore human family drama without skimping on the mythology or the action. As Lois, Clark and the boys settle into their new lives on Kent farm in Smallville, it becomes clear in this week’s episode, “Heritage,” that life isn’t going to be quite as easy as they thought.
Read on to find out my Five Thoughts on CW’s Superman & Lois‘s sophomore episode, “Heritage.” As always, there will be spoilers below.
1. Settling In
Last week, the show went at great pains to showcase the change in dynamic from the setting that the average person would expect a Superman story to take place in (a Superman living and working in Metropolis as a reporter with an on again, off again relationship with Lois who may or may not know he’s also Clark Kent to a married Lois and Clark living on a farm with their two teenage sons) and it was a pretty significant upheaval that came with a lot of personal drama. That was what struck a chord with me most: the human drama. Here, we see that things aren’t just magically fixed. As Lois’s voiceover in the beginning (a touch I liked that showed that this isn’t just a show from Clark’s perspective, but, as the show’s title suggest, from both his and Lois’s), the family has left behind everything. All of their memories and relationships and comforts of a settled life to move to something that is fundamentally new and alien to all involved, even the actual alien.
“Heritage” is an episode about how even the simplest solutions to life’s problems won’t fix things over night, especially when it comes to family. Sure, moving across the country to settle in a place that really only Clark feels familiar with in order to be closer together sounds like a good idea on paper, but it doesn’t magically make the pre-existing problems go away. All it means is that they’re as prominent as ever and require even more work to solve. It’s a theme woven through the entire episode from Clark still struggling to balance being a superhero, nay, the world’s greatest superhero with being a present father to Lois trying to balance speaking truth to power without making herself a pariah in a town that is looking desperately to man who is clearly a capitalist parasite to save them because they have nowhere else to turn to Jordan and Jonathan’s continued teenage angst of finding out their dad is Superman and what it means for them as they have to fit into a new way of life.
Everything is up in the air in this episode and things are about to come crashing down around them if they don’t support themselves and each other as family and that’s something we rarely see in superhero stories to this dramatic extent.
2. Crisis Of Infinite Luthors
I’m going to work backwards from the big reveal towards the end of this episode when talking about Captain Luthor because we actually learn a surprising amount already about the Stranger that is hounding Superman at every turn. I genuinely think it’s for the better for the show to be transparent with the audience about Luthor and his backstory this early while keeping it obfuscated from Clark’s perspective for the simple reason that it creates an asymmetrical story. We, as the audience, now know exactly why Luthor hates Superman and why he wants to kill him, but Superman has no idea. That creates genuine tension, especially (as I’ll get into in a bit) with the revelation that, on his Earth, Luthor was comrades with Sam Lane against a tyrannical, black suited Superman in a war that it’s pretty clear Supes won.
Superman, especially in recent years, has never had any shortage of mysterious figures from a shadowy past hellbent on the destruction of the idea of Superman only for the revelation of who they are and why they’re acting so to be largely deflating. Recently, Mr. Oz being revealed to be a surviving Jor-El and whatever the hell was up with Rogol Zaar quickly come to mind. Unless you have a serious twist to build up, taking such lengths to obfuscate identity and motive serves only to make the mysterious villain a cardboard cutout hellbent on destruction. Knowing the broad strokes of the Stranger’s background and motive already gives him just enough depth to create a hook that, fingers crossed, the show can capitalise on going further. Especially now that Luthor’s warsuit and ship have been sacrifice to the cause. Where he goes from here is anyone’s guess, but I, for one, am far more interested in where he’ll go now than I was last week.
Continued below3. The World Has Always Been Ending
Jordan and Jonathan Kent are making this show for me so far. Sure, Hoechlin and Tulloch are quickly cementing themselves as an iconic modern take on the classic pair of Lois and Clark and their drama has far more depth than most live action attempts at Superman I’ve ever seen, but that doesn’t exist if the boys don’t work. And I can’t imagine a more thankless task than bringing to life not only the daunting character pairing of Superman’s two teenage sons, but also bringing heart and life and humour to roles that are entirely original for the canon and mythos of the character. I’m sure there are people out there holding a grudge that Jon Kent didn’t get a one-to-one adaptation from the pages of Rebirth, but I struggle to imagine this show without these two.
The heightened emotion of high school melodrama fit perfectly into a world where every day there’s a new world threatening crisis. While their dad has the weight of the world on his shoulders, even something as simple as kissing the wrong girl at the wrong time can create ripple effects that can make it feel like a teenager’s entire life is ending as they know it. Alex Garfin and Jordan Elsass as Jordan and Jonathan, respectively, bring such heart to these simple, earnest stories that the emotional weight of Jon likely experiencing the feeling of being bullied for the first time, and for something he didn’t even do, stands up against a megalomaniacal Luthor from a destroyed world trying to enact his revenge.
It’s a testament to the show’s vision, direction and cast that not only can these two storylines stand up to one another amidst the tapestry of this episode, but they both work harmoniously to continually heighten the drama of these characters’s lives. While I don’t doubt that eventually these two kids will be folded into the superhero world more and more, I am enjoying the dichotomy of storytelling on display here while I can.
4. The Simple Life Of Lois Lane
When this episode opened with Lois doing the voiceover, I was entirely ready for this to be Lois’s episode in a way that, because of the way he voiced over the beginning of the episode and his life so far, last week’s Pilot felt like Clark’s episode. However, as the episode went on, it became clear that this is everybody’s episode. That the strength of Lois’s individual drama and arc in this episode exists only in contrast and harmony with everything else going on amongst the rest of the cast. Everyone has their own problems, everyone has their own drama, everyone has their own arc. That, in many ways, feels better to me than purposefully halting everyone else’s well established drama simply to arbitrarily focus on Lois.
Now, don’t get me wrong, Elizabeth Tulloch is being megastar work to this show and her Lois is pitch perfect. She’s hard headed and brash when she knows she’s in the right about something and that’s fully on display throughout this episode, but she’s also warm and caring as a mother even when she needs to put the foot down on something. As the title of the show suggests, this is as much her show as it is Superman’s and she earns that co-lead spot handily. Her burgeoning rivalry with corporate vampire Morgan Edge is exactly who Lois Lane should be taking to task and the way that the show continually puts her on the back foot and backs her into a corner from the way she casually butts heads with Lana’s husband Kyle to her eventually quitting the Planet and taking the fight to Edge personally with the Smallville Gazette is perfect Lois Lane.
This is exactly what I’ve always wanted from the character. Not some empty girlboss who eschews basic feminism in favour of showing how rough and tumble she is, but a genuinely well rounded portrait of a journalist and a mother who sticks up for what she believes in in order to help the common person. It’s perfect and Tulloch is well on her way to being the Lois Lane of the 21st century in the way that Margot Kidder was for the 20th.
Continued below5. Father 2 Father
I was seriously not expecting the relationship between Clark and Sam Lane to slap this hard, guys. There’s no way I would have guessed that this show would take a character who has generally been used to little more effect than a generic tough army guy who just happens to be Lois’s dad in order to be an obstacle in their relationship. He’s there to disapprove of Superman’s antics and to see Clark as weak and embarrassing and not worthy of his daughter, regardless of how estranged they are. That’s it, that’s every Sam Lane story ever told.
Here, though, we’re way passed that. Not only have Clark and Lois been married for years, but they have kids. Sam is the grandparent to Superman’s kids and he knows that. He’s a part of this family whether he likes it or not, so there must be a part of him that appreciates and cares for Superman of all people as his son-in-law. I know I keep saying it, but that’s one hell of a dynamic shift than what we’re generally used to in these stories and Dylan Walsh nails that dichotomy. He loves Lois and he loves his grandkids in his own way and he wants them to have a better life than to be saddled to the whims of an alien supergod whose life will always be torn between the world and his family.
He sees the road they’re on and he knows it will be a rough one and everything tells him that Lois and Jordan and Jonathan would have an easier and better life without Clark and without Superman, as much as he knows the world needs Superman. Their conversation is brief, but it’s refreshing to see that it’s an earnest, man to man conversation about their family from two different perspectives each weighed down by vastly different life experiences. It’s the kind of writing I’ve been craving for in superhero stories and it’s kind of wild that, after everything, it’s a bloody CW show that gives me it.
