Been a while, ain’t it? Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been waiting with baited breath ever since the last episode ended with the spoiler shocking reveal that Superman has, in fact, turned against humanity. With Superman sacrificing himself to keep his family from the clutches of Tal-Roh, everything John Henry Irons feared has come to pass. As the finale reaches, how will he and the world react to Superman’s fall from grace?
Well… about that. Major spoilers from here on out, folks, this is a rough one.
1. Wait… The Hell Was That?
Normally, I try to structure these Five Thoughts into something of a chronological order so you can see my thought process and reaction to the episode with each point, but I just couldn’t do that here. As this episode developed, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that never went away until those final moments of the episode when I realised… this was a bad episode. Like, real bad. This was, handily, the worst episode of the show so far and it fell into so many easy CW-level narrative clichés and pitfalls that it actually kind of soured a lot of the journey to get here. Let’s break it down: so last episode featured an extended look at Lois and Clark’s first meeting and expanded on the brief introductory flashback of the pilot before fastforwarding to reveal that it had all been a ploy by Tal-Roh to look deep in the mind of the man he had offered the world to and who had rejected him. Using what knowledge he found inside Kal-El’s head, he threatened Lois and the boys as leverage to get Kal-El to submit to him, a move that actually worked and left Lois and the boys unprotected as they were forced to contact John Henry and tell him that he had been right all along and that Superman had turned against them.
This was the culmination of everything the show has been building towards, right? The turning point in the overall season’s third act that firmly pointed us in the direction of a finale where John Henry must lead a charge against a blinded and mind-altered Superman who must decide whether to follow through with his original plan of killing the Man Of Steel or whether to spare a good man and a husband and father in order to fight alongside him in a final, desperate battle against Tal-Roh and his father. So why did all of that… get wrapped in this episode? I have to imagine that this episode suffered greatly from pandemic-related production nightmares hence why most if not all of it feels like it was shot on a green screen or on sets and why the pacing felt rushed and weird, but it’s such a dire shame that all of that set-up was built and built and built only for the show not to follow through on the actual conflict they set up. It really feels like shooting yourself in the foot just before jumping the last hurdle and I don’t know what happened here.
2. Stranger In A Strange World, or Dealing With The Devil
Like, why the hell did John Henry go from cold-blooded killer to Superman’s best friend in like thirty seconds? I remember seeing him towering over Superman’s prone body, holding a Kryptonite spear to his heart, and being talked down by Lois and feeling like this show had to know what they were doing reckoning with and outright using the same imagery as Batman V. Superman when it came to this conflict over the potentiality of Superman being a threat. They had to have something up their sleeve to make such an obvious and earnest reference, right? They had to have something to say. So, when it came to this episode calling John Henry back in and his immediate plan being to kill Superman, I thought, sure, we’ll have a couple episodes of John Henry and Lois butting heads over what to do about Superman before something returns him to them and Clark and John Henry fight side by side.
Yet, the fight between Steel and Superman in this episode went down like just about every other CW fight. On a terrible green screen and, for some reason, locked in one location, the two throw some uninteresting punches before John Henry just stands there while Kal-El begs him to kill and just… decides not to. Out of the blue, John Henry switches from cold-hearted killer to kind-hearted grant of mercy and it just… works. Just like that, he brings back Superman within one episode of him turning evil. All of that… for that. I’m not mad, just disappointed. It feels too clean and far too easy for the entire reason for John to exist in this story to be wrapped up with three episodes to go. Which is even more of a shame because this episode opened with such promise. Having John Henry trying to reconcile with the fact that he is marooned on a world where not only does his past not exist, but the past of his other self, the version of himself who lived and died on this world, still lingers on is a compelling direction to take the character in. He still has a sister here and maybe even other family, who he never thought he’d see again or who never thought would see him, and that’s interesting drama. Suddenly, you have a story about a man who lost his world and a family who lost their son and brother colliding. Punching and kicking Superman until he just magically decides to stop being evil simply doesn’t cut it here, not without something to back it up, and it’s a crying shame that this is how this plotline is wrapping up.
Continued below3. The Absence Of A Father
So, you’re dad’s Superman, right? And you just watched him submit to the will of his half brother in order to stop said half brother from lasering you and your entire family to diced Kent. You’d think that would be cause for some drama in this episode, something this show has been stellar at providing, but sadly it all falls flat. Lois becomes largely mopey and inactive and the boys seem lost in an episode that doesn’t really know what to do without Superman. I get the feeling that either pandemic-related production problems or some cold feet ended up curtailing a planned, longer evil Superman arc that had to be wrapped up now or never. Everything moves so fast and without the grounding of the family drama that really made the rest of the show what it is.
Even Jordan’s half hearted attempt at spinning some drama out of feeling helpless because he was easily overpowered by Edge has nowhere to go because he and Jon immediately just find Clark through superhearing and off John Henry goes to wrap up the episode’s storyline. Hell, even the fact that the personality being written over Clark’s is General fucking Zod is barely a footnote by episode’s end. Did the writers or executives or whoever just not have the faith in this show surviving a multi-episode arc where Superman is evil and Clark is largely absent? Or did the pandemic really force their hand to change their plans this much? I’ll never know, but the fact that it feels like something happened to this episode speaks volumes. I really expected better from this show.
4. Picking Up The Pieces
If I can give credit to this episode for one thing, it’s the continuation of the Lang/Cushing family storyline in the wake of Smallville realising that everything Lois ever said about Morgan Edge was true. Forcing Kyle to come to terms with the harm he brought to the town by believing in Edge in the first place is a good epilogue to his part of the story and goes a long way in making his journey feel important. I’ve mentioned it before, but it felt significant that this show managed to turn a blowhard, toxic masculinity spouting, Oakleys worn backwards ass redneck like Kyle into a rounded character with flaws and problems whose family and marital life are key to the overall story. Yet, if anything, this episode plays out this sort of emotional epilogue in a really strange way.
I don’t know if, now that Kyle seems like a nicer guy whose gotten past a lot of his problems, the writers were worried about walking back that character arc if they made him face the consequences of his actions so instead the townspeople who are mad at him are painted like they’re in the wrong for being mad at him. If this episode wanted, it could have easily tackled the dramatic irony of the guy who rallied the town around Edge now being a social pariah because everyone knows Edge is a tyrannical alien despot, but instead we get this bloom washed scene of the Cushings washing grafitti off their home like they don’t have a care in the world? It reminds me of the finale of Wandavision where, instead of leaving the audience questioning the morals of the character in question and how they feel about their actions, the narrative bends over backwards to downplay anything questionable about their actions and playing them as entirely sympathetic. It’s a complete swing and a miss for me.
5. Racing In Place, Or Living Long Enough To Become A CW Show
I don’t know how I haven’t gotten around to mentioning the John Diggle cameo, but, boy, if this is what I have to look forward to as the show progresses, I’m giving up now. This show has all together benefited from a complete lack of connection to the rest of CW’s ouvre and, despite what anyone says, I think it could only get stronger as a standalone offering. Not necessarily because I have anything specific about a character like Diggle showing up here, but because he doesn’t do anything. His inclusion adds nothing to the stakes or the narrative themes (not that this episode bothered with those) and he shows up just to be another voice in the room to argue against Sam and John Henry when they’re trying to kill Superman.
This whole episode feels in fastforward to get back to a status quo it never had. Again, I can only speculate as to how we got here, but between the complete lack of stakes, the neutering of the character drama, the non-sensical cameo and the curtailing of a season long plotline, this feels more like a CW show than ever. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. I can only hope the show I’ve come to know and love comes back to me in these final episodes and that this misstep doesn’t undo everything the show has built in its favour.
