Superman & Lois: Heritage

This week’s episode found Clark, Lois, and the boys moving back to Smallville. As you might expect, the transition was a bit rough for everyone.

**Spoilers ahead**

Building on the big reveal about his super secret from the pilot, Clark strives to help Jordan learn more about his heritage. However, a father-son bonding trip to the Fortress of Solitude has the opposite effect when Clark and Jordan find out that perhaps he isn’t as super as they thought that he might be. Meanwhile, the repercussions of Jordan kissing Sarah at the bonfire are very much felt by Jonathan, who has to deal with her boyfriend’s animosity at school and on the football field.

Lois continues to investigate Morgan Edge and causes a scene at a Smallville town council meeting when she questions his promises to the town. She follows up with an exposé on him for the Daily Planet which he only publishes after he has rewritten to appear laudatory to him (seriously, what was she expecting would happen?). This is the last straw for her, so she travels to Metropolis, storms into one of his meetings, and quits. Back in Smallville, she volunteers to work for the Smallville Gazette, leading all viewers to wonder how the heck she and Clark are going to manage to put food on the table (let’s hope that they had a lot of equity in their brownstone in Metropolis!)

The biggest reveals in this episode involved Captain Luthor, but they just brought up so many more questions! Luthor continued to rampage military institutions around the world looking for kryptonite. When Superman pursued him, he sacrificed his ship to distract him and escape. He then sent his suit to the Department of Defense to warn Lois’ father that Superman was going to destroy the Earth. So, this leaves him with no suit, no ship, and no kryptonite. He does, however, still have access to his AI assistant.

In flashbacks (flashforwards? flash to another Earth?), we see him in the trenches of a war, alongside someone who looks like General Lane, when someone who looks like Superman comes and kills all the soldiers with his laser vision. Whether this is a time-jump or a multiverse jump is unclear, but my vote is on an Earth 2-kind of situation as we’ve seen plenty of those in the Arrowverse already and there are no shortage of “evil Superman” stories in DC lore.

Overall, a pretty good second outing for the series. I am just loving the chemistry between Tulloch and Hoechlin – they are just totally believable as a couple and they effectively ground what is a rather fantastical premise. Some of the stuff between the boys got a bit syrupy at times but overall the family dynamic seems pretty realistic.

They didn’t waste much time hooking the viewer’s on the story of the series’ first “big bad”. What makes Luthor interesting is that he seems to have a legitimate rationale for his vendetta against Supes – it’s not just that he’s a psychopath with a twisted sense of what’s for the public good as in other “Luthor” versions. That probably makes him even more dangerous as he thinks he is on the side of good.

The next episode of Superman & Lois can be see on The CW on Tuesday, March 9, at 9pm and streamed from The CW site or app the next day.