We’re back! After yet another short break (this season’s scheduling has been so weird), Superman & Lois returns for its final two episodes. But before we can look to next week’s finale, we need to stop in on Smallville and see how things are getting on now that Tal-Roh has become the Eradicator and completely fallen off the grid. Turns out, things are less than great.
So, let’s dive into Superman & Lois‘s penultimate episode (of the first season, at least), “The Eradicator,” in Five Thoughts. Oh, and spoilers, obviously.
1. Smallville In Crisis
With Edge having disappeared off the face of the Earth at the end of the last episode, a lot of questions linger for Smallville. Who was Morgan Edge really? What part did he play in irrevocably affecting the lives of the people of Smallville? Is the danger over? What is the DOD still doing in Smallville? Those questions form the basis of this episode, a collective holding of breath between cataclysmic events where no one is quite sure if they’re safe enough yet to return to their daily lives. It’s in those moments, blind and without hope for the future, that tensions start to rise and it all it takes is one spark to set off a blaze.
It’s interesting to see how this episode shows the disconnect between Lois and her community now that her connection to her father has strengthened. In trying to support him, she’s put herself at odds with the people of Smallville as she perpetuates his misinformation campaign. Yes, it’s in effort to keep the peace, but maybe that’s not what this town needs right now. It needs a break, frankly, but what it really needs is the truth and so long as Lois is acting in her family’s interest, she can never be what this town needs her to be and it leaves Christie in the position of rallying a crowd of angry, mistrusting and confused citizens right to the door of the DOD. I love that this show continues to explore the reality of what it’s like for everyday people to come face to face with the larger than life troubles of Superman’s world and how picking up the pieces, even in the middle of the eye of the hurricane, can be the toughest thing in the world.
2. The New Heart Of Smallville, or When The Going Gets Tough
I love Emmanuelle Chriqui’s Lana Lang so much. In so many iterations of Superman’s story, Lana is little more than a high school sweetheart that Clark must leave behind in order to become Superman and meet Lois. She’s a stepping stone more than a character, a metaphor for the life Clark must leave behind who rarely gets a chance to live out her own life. We’ve seen versions of her come back later in Clark’s life (a notable instance of this that I loved was in Greg Pak and Aaron Kuder’s run on “Action Comics”), but there’s something so special to me about this show giving her a very normal, imperfect life. She’s a good woman with a good heart who still retains so much of the love she found in the Kents, both Martha and Clark, and has to contend with having a marriage on the rocks and a daughter with an unmatched temper and is now torn between the decision to put her foot down and stay in Smallville or leave with Kyle for his new job.
I’ve shown a lot of people the pilot to this show since it aired in an effort to convince those around me this show is worth watching (which so far has a 300% success rate) and every time they struggle to believe me when I say that this show makes you give a shit about the Cushings. Their lives are important to the narrative of this show, their struggles are inextricable from those of the Kents because they’re all in this together. Clark and Lana might not be the joined at the hip high school sweethearts they once were, but their orbits will never stray far from one another and I really, genuinely hope that Lana and Kyle don’t move away from Smallville.
Continued below3. Playing War Games
I’m not going to lie, I’m not really sure where they’re going with this stuff between Jonathan and John Henry. I do really like their interplay, but with so many people commenting on how much time they’ve been spending together when we’ve only really seen some bits and pieces, I’m not sure what it’s really contributing to either character. Jonathan has been feeling powerless ever since finding out his dad is Superman and it’s a running theme throughout his arc in this season, but I don’t really know what the endgoal of his time with John Henry is. Is it just to give something for them both to do now that John Henry’s living out of the Kents’s barn? It’s not like he’s popping in for family mealtime, so they have to have something for him to do now that he’s not trying to kill Superman every waking moment.
I did like how it paid off in the episode’s finale, showing Jonathan as capable under pressure when he has to protect himself and his family from the Eradicator and I’m sure that the Eradicator kidnapping Jordan will continue to push Jonathan down this path, but I ask to what end? Are we seeing Jonathan become the black sheep of the family? The human so fragile amongst gods that he’s willing to risk his connection to his family in order to follow in the footsteps of John Henry Irons, a man so broken and hellbent on revenge that he almost lost everything he stands for? We’ll have to wait and see, but I really hope we don’t see Jon becoming a Bad Boy™ when his heart is what’s so important to him as a character.
4. The Battle For Metropolis
God, I loved this. This is the best action scene this show has done and, let me tell you, there have been some amazing action scenes in this show so far. For one, shifting the setting to Metropolis worked because it’s the first time we’ve seen the show utilise Metropolis as a backdrop for a fight on this scale. Sure, we saw Superman tackle Killgrave early on in the show and there was that whole Nazi business in the flashback episode, but this is some Man Of Steel level shit with Superman and Steel blowing through buildings and fighting beings with powers just as potent as Superman’s. What makes this so impressive to me is that it’s not the norm. This show has explored the varying levels in which Superman can tackle conflict and most of them don’t involve any physicality at all so things boiling down to a massive mid-air fight through the skyline of Metropolis makes this feel like an important moment.
Plus, it’s not destruction for the sake of destruction. We see moments of calculation in Superman and Steel’s action to keep civilians as far out of harm’s way as possible. I don’t want this to become a simple compare and contrast between this show and Man Of Steel because they’re clearly using the backdrop of Metropolis to tell a completely different story with the fight, but it was comforting to see that everything that has made this show’s use of Superman as a piece of the puzzle when creating these setpieces hasn’t changed. This is still a seasoned Superman with his head screwed on who isn’t about to let Tal-Roh and Leslie Larr use him to cause even further destruction in Metropolis. Not to mention the payoff of John Henry saving Lois from the same fate he couldn’t stop on his world. That was a perfect bookend to the story told with him so far.
5. Losing A Son, Gaining A Father
Well, that was unexpected. Tal-Roh, or Morgan Edge, or the Eradicator, or whatever you want to call him wasn’t really much of a presence in this episode and, I gotta admit, that’s a bit of a shame. I’ve come to really enjoy Adam Rayner’s portrayal of the character, especially since the reveal of his true nature and motivations. He has a sort of shattered vulnerability that comes with having to mask so much pain and trauma. The image of the glorified, British gentleman billionaire slipped to reveal a small boy with daddy issues in the body of a god who just wants someone to be on his side for once. It’s a really interesting take on a villain like this and now that he’s the embodiment of the Eradicator, making him this stoic, silent and floating menace does actually rob him of a lot of character. It’s something I hope is reversed in the next episode even if it’s just to give Rayner a chance to really emote again.
That being said, Tal-Roh kidnapping Jordan and implanting the consciousness of his father, Zeta-Roh, in him makes up for a lot of what he lacked in this episode. That’s a big deal and ending the episode on the image of Lois and Clark holding each and sobbing knowing that despite all of his powers, his son is in danger and he can’t help? That’s a really good, emotional lead-in to what is sure to be an explosive finale. I have no idea where things go from here, but I can at least say it’s been a hell of a ride.
