Wow, what an episode. This one really put me through the ringer, folks, hence the bumper review. I tried, I really did, to find a way to cover this in the usual Five Thoughts, but I just have so much to say about everything going on here. We’re really, truly entering the endgame of Superman & Lois‘s second season and things are ramping up far more than I could have ever guessed and, just, wow. Wow. It floors me every week that this show manages to one-up itself so consistently. There were a few bum episodes last season, but this season? The show’s been firing on all cylinders since the word go and it’s not letting up any time soon.
So, let’s dive right into this beast and take a look at Superman & Lois‘s “Into Oblivion” in an unconventional Seven Thoughts!
There will definitely be spoilers abound below. We’re cracking this one wide open.
1. Trapped Between Worlds
I tried to avoid, as much as possible, bringing up Natalie and John Henry’s continued absence since John Henry got put in the ICU following his scrap with Bizarro. For one, I don’t know for a fact why the show decided to write them out for those episodes in the way they did and, frankly, I’m not interested in commenting on it out of turn and, for two, using it as a way of highlighting John Henry’s comparative vulnerability and Natalie’s subsequent feelings of betrayal and distrust around Superman lead to the throughline of this episode, one I quite enjoyed. Tayler Buck’s Natalie’s had quite a rough go of it since she crash-landed on the Kent farm in the final moments of Season One and as much as I just said I don’t like commenting on things out of turn, I have to wonder if the minds behind the show found themselves struggling to figure out what to do with her, initially. She’s kind of ping-ponged around the background of this season; first going off to Metropolis with her dad before returning back to the farm and going to school with the boys before disappearing completely after her dad was hospitalised. I don’t know if Tayler Buck’s simply impressed the folks behind the show enough that her role has been expanded as the season moved forward or if there’s simply been so much crammed into the season that not everything has had a chance to shine yet, but I was glad to see that we finally got a look into Natalie’s mindset and, crucially, what happened to her after John Henry left his world for this one.
The pairing of the flashbacks to Natalie’s time stuck between worlds, desperately trying to follow her dad through the rift of time and space, scared and unaware if he had met the same fate as her mother at the hands of Kal-El, with her current spats with our Clark was a nice touch. These CW shows have had a pretty bum history with casting their few and far between black women and girls as irrational and confrontational (years of how The Flash treated Iris is going to have to be reckoned with once that show finally wraps up), and my alarm bells were ringing throughout this episode. I didn’t want to see Natalie cast simply as the girl pissed off at Superman for the rest of the season, even if she did have plenty of reason to be. Instead, I was glad to see that, amidst everything else going on in this episode, we got an acknowledgement that Natalie was simply never given the time to adjust to this world. Coming out of her pod not just to see her dad alive, but standing right next to her mother who just so happens to be married to this world’s version of the man who killed her in her world? That’s a hell of a shock and one that this season has tried to address, but never really got the chance to. With all the chaos in their lives currently, I appreciated this throughline of a genuinely positive development as Clark acknowledged how hard a transition it must have been for Natalie, validated her feelings towards him and took a positive step towards making amends. Giving Natalie and John Henry their own space moving forward will, hopefully, do wonders for them as a family unit and, who knows, it might even serve as the basis for a spin off? Or am I just dreaming?
Continued belowP.S. I’m not really going to bother bringing up John Henry’s bouts of confusion because, outside of literally the show’s opening scene, it had no real bearing on the episode and I’m struggling to understand it’s inclusion. Maybe it’ll go somewhere following this? But until then, it’s a footnote in the episode.
2. The New Normal
I really, truly appreciate Superman & Lois sticking to their guns and following through on Lana and Kyle’s separation. It would have been so, so easy for them to follow suit with the history of CW’s other cape shows of introducing relationship turmoil only to run it back episodes later because they have a status quo to uphold. It illustrates one of the most distinct differences in how the writers of this show have approached these characters compared to the other shows that make up the so-called Arrowverse. Those shows had a tendency to operate under the formula that certain characters would eventually end up together (Barry and Iris, for example) and would introduce drama that would delay or complicate that inevitable outcome, but eventually the train would get back on track and keep moving forward. It’s classic sitcom romance writing. Everyone knew from the very first episode that Ross and Rachel would eventually get together, so we gotta fill ten years worth of television with “will they? won’t they?” complications to keep people watching.
And that’s a fine way to write television if you’re into that kind of thing, but Superman & Lois has other aspirations. The most obvious point of fact is that the central relationship of Lois and Clark is cemented as a stable, lasting marriage from the jump. This isn’t about the dance of people finding each other, but an examination of lives lived together and the things that keep them together or tear them apart. And, as much as it pains me to admit it, Kyle’s adultery seems to have firmly tore him and Lana apart. What I loved to see here, though, is the lack of animosity between them. While they’re certainly still processing their separation, there’s no surface ill will to be had. It’s a little awkward, sure, when Kyle comes to pick up Sarah for breakfast, but it’s important to show that Lana is willing to allow Kyle to grow and change and learn from this separation and for him to still be in his daughters’s lives. That then developing into Kyle being the one that Lana calls to help her with her debate prep and the way their history and connection comes to the fore when he’s the one to push her on the topic of their separation, knowing that Mayor Dean will do so in the debate, was a fantastic way of bringing them together despite the separation. It creates a moment of genuine emotion as Lana vents her frustrations at him that it was his actions that tore their family apart, that it’s unfair for her to be targeted by such scrutiny for his mistakes, and I really felt for her because, well, it’s true.
It’s a horrible position to be put in when it feels like Kyle is getting away scot free and she’s only going to continue to be scrutinised and harassed for something that is entirely separate to her campaign. And yet, after the outburst, she manages to brush that frustation off and offer a poignant answer that fairly addresses the situation and her response to it. It’s a great bit of writing and Emmannuelle Chiqrui and Erik Valdez continue to be two of my favourite players in this show. When an episode like this is crammed so full of big moments, it’s the little things like this that end up sticking with me.
3. Called On Account Of Kryptonite
Jonathan got an entire season of football cancelled? Son.
It’s truly incredible to me the way this show can switch from putting me, as a viewer, in the emotional state of a disappointed parent watching their child make mistake after mistake when I knew about Jonathan’s XK usage and his parents didn’t to making me empathise wholly with Jonathan now that that’s come to light and he’s getting both barrels of Tyler Hoechlin’s superb turn as Disappointed Dad Clark. I feel genuinely torn as an audience member who can see both sides of this divide that neither party can look past. When Clark throws it in Jonathan’s face that he sees him as acting without integrity, that sting is fully present knowing that Jon believes he’s doing exactly that by taking the fall and protecting Candice. It’s such a strong element of dramatic irony to the whole affair that makes me twist in my seat because, honestly, there’s no easy answer. There’s no simple solution to this mess that Jon’s found himself and having been a teenager and found myself in (not exactly to the same scale, I was never caught dealing drugs) similar situations, I really feel for the kid.
Continued belowBecause he’s left to either continue to grit his teeth and accept this ongoing punishment that, frankly, he didn’t really deserve – at least, not to this degree – and watch his father look at him with such distrust and disappointment in order to protect his girlfriend or he sells Candice out and not only loses his relationship with her but could jeopardise her safety. It’s a masterclass in handling a storyline like this because it’s actually exploring the situation beyond simply moralising that drug use is bad because yeah, we know. Instead it’s focusing on the fact that, at the end of the day, Jon’s being the kid that Lois and Clark taught him to be. He’s acting with integrity. He’s owning up to his mistakes and facing his punishment, and acting in the interest of protecting another, even if it means lying to his parents’s faces in order to do it. There’s one little moment that really brought it all together for me and it’s when Jon’s leaving the convenience store he’s now working at because he’s taking online classes and the guy running the store commends him on a great first day. That kid that Lois and Clark raised is still in there. He’s still doing his best, even in the face of an awful situation that he feels he can’t come clean about without jeopardising things with Candice. That’s good writing, right there.
4. Become As Gods
Woof, things have really, uh… escalated of late, haven’t they? I almost didn’t realise that we’re now firmly in the latter half of this season, assuming we’re still getting fifteen episodes of this season like we did last time around. Things have been such a roller coaster with Anderson fully turning against Superman, taking off to join Ally with both pendants after murdering Bizarro and not to mention the way that Clark has been distracted by the myriad of problems in his personal life and with John Henry still not being fighting fit, it’s no wonder that by fifteen minutes into this episode, it felt like there was little standing in the way of Ally and Anderson completing their ascension. Before we dig into this episode’s dip into full cosmic horror, though, I have to admit that, y’know what, I’m beginning to dig Anderson as a bad guy now that he’s slid from being the stuck up replacement for Sam into this disheveled, desperate, XK-huffing lackey of Ally’s. He’s lost everything he held dear from his position to his principles and is now just this husk of a man and not only does that make him emotionally vulnerable enough to be easily manipulated by Ally, but his use of the XK makes him her muscle in a far more interesting way than, say, if Bizarro had turned out to be cartoonishly evil and on her side all along. I’m still holding out hope that the show isn’t done with Bizarro, by the way, and that his “death” is just a fakeout because, c’mon, how many times have we seen Kryptonians come back from the dead at this point?
Now, with that out of the way, let’s talk about how a giant portal between dimensions opened up underneath the Shuster mines and Ally had her followers walk into the gaping maw of the void. This show has everything: marital disputes, the difficulties of acting with integrity even if it means lying to your parents, the turmoil of being refugees from a dead world and trying to find your place in the new, the struggle of responsibility between family and relationships, giant wormholes to mirror dimensions, pendants that allow for ascension to godhood, football. Wait, no, now it doesn’t even have football anymore. Thanks, Jon. Anyway, this ruled, and I’m going to dig into Ally herself in the next point, but this whole Ascension plot is fascinating because I still can’t bring myself to guess what this show has up its sleeve. There’s gonna be something, I just know it, I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop in order to see where this show can go next. Because where it’s taken us so far has been a damn good ride.
Continued below5. Sitting Down With The Enemy
Y’know, it’s almost easy to forget that this show introduced Ally at the fringes of all the stuff going on with the mine. She was the target of Lois’s investigations and seemed to have nothing to do with the turmoil Clark was going through with his visions back when it seemed like the show was teasing an appearance from Doomsday and instead was integral to the Lane family drama. Since then, we’ve come to realise that she’s actually the mastermind behind all of this with even her doppelgänger in the mirror dimension seemingly being the ruler of that world. After a couple of episodes shifting Anderson’s position from lightly antagonistic head of the DOD to XK junkie under the sway of Ally, this episode fully brings Ally into the spotlight as the Big Bad for the season. At least, for the time being, who knows what the future will bring for this show.
What fascinates me about Ally is that Superman’s rogues gallery is almost universally populated by some combination of incredibly strong villains or incredibly intelligent villains. There’s been very little room for incredibly charismatic villains. The kind of bad guy to really get under the skin of our heroes. Even Morgan Edge at his best was limited by his smarmy businessman affectations before the Tal-Roh reveal dropped it completely. Just that one scene between Ally and Sam after the mine incident shows how juicy it can be to position a master manipulator against such stoic and principled characters. This isn’t Doomsday or Zod trying to outmuscle Superman, this isn’t Luthor or Brainiac trying to outsmart him either. This is someone who can see right through them all, who can say just the right thing that can throw even someone like Sam off-kilter. That can pry at insecurities and who knows her gift of manipulation will always keep her on top of any situation. It’s a killer combination of great writing and a continually surprising performance from Rya Kihlstedt that turned a character I fully wrote off to be a minor element early in the season into a fresh and engaging antagonist that this entire season is built on.
6. Boys Of Steel
Man, things just keep going from bad to worse for these boys. It’s not often that a show can make me fully turn off a my critic brain and stop me from taking notes while I just take in what’s happening, but that entire confrontation at the end between Jon and the guy threatening Candice only for Jordan to turn up had me hooked. Not only does it continue the thread of Jon acting out of genuine integrity, putting himself in harm’s way for the girl who just admitted she loves him (now, I must admit: I don’t trust this girl as far as I could throw her and I’m waiting for the penny to drop, but that’s another matter), but we finally get to see Jordan step up and use his continually developing powers to their fullest extent. I’m not one for jumping for joy or cheering while watching these shows because I’m a miserable, dour, Scottish bastard, but that moment of Jordan super-speeding in with his hood drawn down? That’s killer. That’s the culmination of a lot of heavy lifting from the writing, the directing and especially the performance by Alexander Garfin to take this beautiful, sweet, troubled kid all the way from screaming and yelling at his dad after finding out that he’s Superman to this genuinely triumphant yet bittersweet moment of justice.
I say bittersweet because the show also manages to deftly weave through the scene a sense of the true cost of this moment of vigilante justice. Sure, Jordan shows up for his brother even after everything that went down between them because, at the end of the day, his brother needed him. But his brother needed him to rail on a guy so hard that Jordan came away with bloody knuckles and a beat up face. His brother got up in the guy’s face and used the threat of Jordan’s use of physical violence as a means of scaring him away from Candice. His brother’s continued involvement in Candice’s life and its association with people like this guy driving up on two kids in the middle of the night meant that Jordan had to skip out on something that meant a lot to Sarah, that could put their relationship in further turmoil. I really appreciate the show for tying these conflicting emotions together in this scene because, yeah, seeing Jordan rock up in the dark with his hoodie down over his face and wail on the guy does feel triumphant. He has changed so much since we first met him back in the Pilot, but much like Jonathan’s actions have called his own character into question, you have to wonder how much of Jordan’s change and growth is actually good for him.
Continued below7. To Get To The Other Side
Okay, we’re nearly there, folks. We’ll get to the other side of me waxing poetic about this episode one way or another, I promise. But first: God, I knew Lucy coming back at the last second was too good to be true. There was just this sinking pit in my stomach that it felt too clean. That this show doesn’t go in for things like characters saving themselves off-screen (especially when she was specifically not shown to be part of the crew in the mines, from my recollection) and I thought we might have to wait ’til the promised brunch for it all to come out, but no. This episode had to end on a banger of a final moment with Lucy revealing herself as Ally’s backup plan after drugging her dad. What has this show come to, I ask you, when Lucy turning out to be a brainwashed turncoat willing to throw her own family under the bus for a woman willing to throw away all life in favour of some promised ascension is more interesting than anything she did on Supergirl.
Well, we’ve only got a week to wait before we find out what the actual hell this show has in store for us next. I’ll just be over here, doing wrist exercises.
