With the John Henry Irons storyline put to rest for the time being as he drives the lonesome roads of middle America looking for purpose in this new world, Superman & Lois pulls its focus back to the machinations of Morgan Edge and his plan to resurrect a Kryptonian army. Now, let’s dive into this, shall we?
Oh, and spoilers ahead. Obviously.
1. Digging Deeper
With the last couple of episodes pulling their focus towards the John Henry Irons storyline, finally revealing the identity of the Stranger who has been hounding Superman since the first episode, it was nice to see the show pivot back towards Morgan Edge and the stuff with X-Kryptonite. Even from the episode’s opening seconds, it was clear that he would be the focus and I think it was sorely needed. While the resurrecting of a Kryptonian army was definitely a factor in Irons’s whole deal, it took a backseat to his specific confrontation with Superman. Here, though, we’re finally getting a taste of what that process looks like and who is actually affected.
I’m not going to lie, I do like the twist towards the end of the episode that the reason Smallville has been such a focus for Edge is not simply because X-Kryptonite was found there, but because the latent radiation from the meteor shower that carried Kal-El’s shuttle makes the people of Smallville the perfect hosts. It works for me not just because it feels like a sly reference to Smallville‘s old monster of the week framing, but also because of the simple fact that Edge is turning the people who know Clark the most against him. It’s both of Clark’s worlds at war with each other and to save Krypton he would have to sacrifice Smallvile, but to save Smallville must eventually mean killing Krypton for good. It’s a classic dichotomy for Superman, but one I think has been set up really well and I’m interested in where it goes from here.
2. Weakened From The Inside
While I didn’t necessarily clock it last week, this week’s “Previously On…” ending with Sam’s line about the synthetic Kryptonite weakening Clark from the inside made me wonder how we’d see that in action. While his attempt to stop the bank robbery under the affects of the synthetic Kryptonite was a fun little vignette and it was nice to see him do a plot-unrelated Superman thing, it was the way in which it affected Jordan that really got me. Sure, Jordan’s had a lot going on lately and it did end up being another superpower-related thing which forced him to skip school and bail on Sarah and create more drama there and I feel like we’ve seen enough of that to do us for now, it did give us some really wonderful scenes between Clark and Jordan in which Clark really shows the weight of the burden he has as a father.
He’s seen his son go through so much in such a short amount of time: so much strife and turmoil and pain. And he can’t do anything about it. He can’t save him from it because, in a way, he caused it. Clark knows that everything Jordan is going through is because of who his dad is and Jordan’s the only person Clark can’t just save as Superman. But he can be there for him as a father. That was genuinely lovely to see, especially after everything they’ve gone through lately.
3. Making A Scene
I have to admit, this one was a bit weird. It feels like the writers needed a confrontation between Lois and Edge in this episode and just worked backwards from there, so Lois storming into Edge’s meeting felt more than a little haphazard to me. We’ve seen Lois make these plays before and they never pan out and it’s so weird to see a character who, especially in this episode, is praised for her intelligence act with such little self-awareness? From a writing standpoint and from a diagetic character perspective, it just comes off as forced and, as Edge puts it, desperate. I don’t know if this is supposed to be setting up Lois as the woman who cried wolf in order to have her scramble to get evidence as we move forward, but it was just a really weird scene that stood out to me in an otherwise pretty stellar episode.
Continued below4. Priorities
Family’s been a big theme for this show from the off. I’ve talked about how the show plays with the theme of consequence enough in the past, that I’ve only touched on this as it’s come up and, boy, did it come up in this episode. To tackle the biggest one first, Sam’s arc has been one of the most fascinating things to me in this show. As I’ve also mentioned before, Sam Lane has never been a particularly deep or well thought out character so much as he was a cardboard cut-out of an obstacle for Lois and Clark early in their relationship. Here, we get an actual realised character with internal conflicts who is, for better or worse, part of this family. One thing I really liked was both how Lois put her foot down after Sam endangered both Clark and Jordan and promised to cut ties with him after all of this was over only for that (and the conversation he has with Jonathan about trusting one’s family in which he gets called a coward, which was just perfect) to galvanise him into defending his family and coming to terms with his absences as a father and re-prioritising his family.
What I like about this is that these characters feel like people and they make mistakes and they have their own biases and perspectives, but, in the end, there’s little that can’t be resolved by them simply sitting down and talking. Any other show would have had Lois blow up at Sam and strung that conflict out for a few episodes before eventually reconciling and both admitting they were wrong, but here all it takes is him showing some backbone when his family is threatened to make him realise that he needs to change his priorities. It’s really good dramatic writing because it doesn’t have to escalate drama out of nothing, but takes these very simple differences between family members and uses it to create rifts and then resolves them with a conversation. It’s like all those people who wanted drama about characters who went to therapy and actually talked about their feelings and it’s happened in a Superman show no one is talking about.
5. Home Invasion
Not to be outdone by the revelation that Captain Luthor’s true identity was one John Henry Irons, this episode drops two whole bombshells on us. Neither are exactly as Earth-shattering as that one, but one had a real nice bait and switch. After spending weeks drilling into the fact that Kyle had been passed over repeatedly by Edge and had decided to get his life together despite that and spending most of this episode focusing on Emily going through the process, having Kyle turn out to have gone through it too was a nice twist, actually. Not only is it a nice twist, but it creates even more tensions for the Cushings as he reveals he has no memory of almost choking the life out of Jonathan and Lois. That part’s more interesting to me than the surprise superpowers, truth be told, because now we have to contend with Kyle trying to just be a guy and good dad and really believing in Edge’s promise being an unwitting pawn in his schemes.
And speaking of Edge: turns out he was first in line for Kryptonian superpowers. Makes a lot of sense, really, I would have been shocked if he didn’t end up giving himself powers. I think I was expecting him to save himself for last and for a major plotpoint being that Clark and Lois have to stop him before he does, but I guess that’s a non-issue now. I guess my biggest question now, going into the next episode, is who is inhabiting Edge’s body? He calls Kal-El brother, but I can’t really tell how literal he’s being. Is he another son of Jor-El? Because that would certainly follow the theming of the show so far. Could this be some version of Zod? Well, that’s certainly a possibility, but one maybe too obvious for the show to jump on. Either way, I can’t wait to see where this goes.
