December 4, 2024 • 37 mins
In the series finale of Superman & Lois, we are left with a poignant, heartfelt, and fitting end to this version of Superman. It beautifully wraps up the journey of the Kent family, highlighting themes of growth, unity, and the lasting impact of love.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I've got you, You've got me, Who's got you?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Come to me? Son of Joel Neil before.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
So hey everybody, it's the moment we've been waiting for
and have been dreading. It is the final episode of
Superman and Lois. It is season four, episode ten. It
(00:46):
went by so fast, and man, this was this is
a great episode. I mean I've been saying that this
entire season, but this this ending. There's a couple of
I mean, there's a couple of teeny tiny pieces that
I had a couple of issues with, but as a
way of ending a Superman story, it was fantastic. And
(01:11):
I mean you get to well we'll get into it,
but you get to like almost the last like the
last ten minutes or so is we're jumping a little
bit forward in time and we get that entire monologue
at the end. I'll stop because we're gonna get there.
But anyway, I just wanted to want to start off
with that that this is the moment that I have
(01:34):
been looking for but also dreading, as I knew that
this show was coming to an end, and I wish,
I wish we had gotten more seasons of this show.
But to go out the way that we did, on
the high note that we went out. You know, sometimes
a show, you've got an option. It's a Batman option.
You can live long enough to see yourself jump the
(01:55):
shark and become the villain, or you can go out
on a high point like this and be the hero
that Gotham and the rest of us deserve. So here
it is season four, episode ten, the series finale. We
start off with Lana and John Henry Iron's playing pool,
which is not a euphemism, and they're talking about how
they haven't had too many chances to go on dates
(02:16):
in like the last several months. They've gone on like
four dates. Lives just aren't lining up. Maybe they're not
going to work out as a couple. And as they're
trying to talk this out, all of a sudden, they
hear some crashes outside and realize that the Doomsday Creature
has returned. John Henry tries to run out and help.
When they hear Doomsday returning, the front of the bar explodes.
(02:36):
John Henry is injured. Lana goes to help and sees
the doo Doomsday creature just pounding on Superman in the
entryway of the bar, and we have the title card
that comes up for the last time. This final battle
with Doomsday is a big portion of the beginning of
the first kind of act or two of this episode,
(02:58):
and we've got Lois and Amanda are arguing on the
streets of Smallville. She's trying to get out she didn't
mean for any of this to happen. Lois is like, look,
you got to help fix this because you're part of
the reason that all this is going down, because this
is what we told you. We told you Lex was
a bad guy, and you did not listen. We continually
get to see Ba Doomsday beating the BA crap out
(03:19):
of the Superman and just like Soups is not even
barely landing any punches at all, he is just getting
beaten to Smithereens fraternals show up to help their dad,
and he argues with them to get them to leave, like,
keep the people of Smallville safe. Get out of here.
You are not prepared for this. Go keep the people safe.
We cut back to a scene John Henry is busted up,
(03:40):
but he's got an idea to help Superman, and Lana
is going to go with him and help get this
ready over at the steel works, the boys come back
and Lois is like, you've got to help your father,
and the boys say, well, we tried. He won't let us,
and Lois realizes that at this point in time, they
don't have a choice. Like Clark cannot handle Doomsday on
his own, he needs the boys to help him out.
(04:02):
I'm going to stop there for a second and say
that again. Overall, I commend this show for doing a
daytime Doomsday battle scene in full sunlight. That is risky
because most of the times, to hide any imperfections or
any any issues with the CGI, you do it at night,
(04:23):
or you do it when the lighting is a little
bit lower. They went full I mean, you never go
full daylight, but they went full daylight, and I commend
them for that. There are a couple of moments where
the CGI was a little rough in parts of this fight.
There was a scene where we come a little bit
it's a little bit more of a wide shot and
we get to see Doomsday kind of pounding on Superman
(04:43):
from Afar. In that moment, it looked like video game
graphics and like not like PlayStation four graphics, not like
PlayStation five or you know what you'd expect from from
a very high end CGI job, but it was just
for a few moments, and it just there was a
a couple little parts that I was like, eugh, that's noticeable.
But that is one of my very, very small critiques
(05:05):
of this episode. The Fraternals come in to help save
their dad. They heat Vision but Doomsday and then they
get him to chase them out of town. John Henry
has a prototype bomb that is going to attach to
anything metal or kryptonite. Lois encourages Clark to trust their
son's capabilities and emphasizes their growth and unity as a family.
She's like, you gotta trust the boys. They have each other.
(05:27):
She says, they have each other and they have you,
and that's going to have to be enough, because you
cannot do this on your own. So the boys go
off to help, and as they fly off and get
Doomsday to follow them, Clark then gets up and tells
the boys lure it back to main Street. We've got
a plan, and we've got a great image of Superman
standing there with the billowing cape, the slow motion explosion
(05:48):
in the background, and Clark dodges the fist, the massive
fist of Doomsday at the last second in slow motion
and as he dodges this pun which John Henry's hammer
flies through the flames and just caves in be Doomsday's skull.
Just a massive shot to the head and he is down,
(06:11):
and he is dead for the time being. The plan
is to take it to the sun because it does
not heal like Clark does. Remember this is bizarro, so
he responds the opposite to yellow sunlight that Clark does.
The sun will make him weak. So Lowest mouths the
words I love you, and Superman flies off with the body.
He carries Be Doom's Day through space to the Sun. Okay,
(06:34):
after the battle, I mean the battle is pretty much
over there waiting for him to get back. They have
a three sixty shot of everybody standing in a circle
having a little mcglofflin group as our friends. Well we're
not friends. They don't know who we are, but we
are fans of the Greatest Generation podcast. They like to
call out the mcglofflin group. So here's a mcglofferin group.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
But he he one on a Doomsday scale of zero
to ten, zero meaning zero doom, ten meaning absolute metaphysical doom,
a total wyat wipeout annihilation, nothing remaining.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Issue one is the plan to get Amanda on livestream
to reveal who Lex really is. Lex calls Amanda while
she's trying to get away and he launches a rocket
at her car to kill her, but the boys save
her and get her back to town in time. Back
at the Gazette, they expect Amanda to confess everything and
John Henry heads out to confront Milton when his B
(07:27):
thirteen virus takes over. Or actually he hears the name
Milton and he heads out. Thirteen virus hasn't done anything yet.
He heads out to confront Milton when he hears the
name at the Sun, but Doomsday wakes up. Clark is
about to punch him into the sun and be Doomsday
holds out a hand and that's when we find out
that he's actually Kevin Costner paw Kent from Man of Steel.
(07:47):
Then he does the arms spread Jesus fall into the
sun with a montage of images from his life on
Bizarre World, and starts to pull a full Infinity War
and disintegrate. As he falls back at the Gazette, the
feed goes down with Milton's B thirteen virus. Lex is
headed their way. The boys have to intercept him. He
blasts John into the hotel, which has seen better days.
(08:09):
I mean, that's a rough hotel room at this point.
Don't stay there, and starts to strangle Jordan on the
ground in the middle of the street. Clark is up
there getting a recharge from the sun. Here's Lex trying
to kill Jordan, so he flies off to get back
to them. Lex is telling Jordan while he's choking him,
you are weak and worthless, just like your mother. That's
(08:29):
one of the interesting things I think about this Lex
Luthor is in a lot of the different iterations of Lex.
It's just such a hatred between Lex and Superman, and
Lex is not Superman's villain in this show. In fact,
I thought that's what was interesting, is everybody's got their
villain that they're fighting. For the most part, Superman is fighting,
(08:52):
but Doomsday that's his villain. Lois is fighting Lex, and
Lex hates Lois a lot more than he hates Superman
in this show, so he is more of Lois Lane's
villain than he is Superman's villain, which I think is
an interesting twist on the story on the mythos, because
that is not the case in most other Superman stories.
(09:13):
Lex is Superman's nemesis, and you know this time around
he is Lois's nemesis. He is about to kill Lois,
but she right up in front of his supersuit just
goes to what seems like to punch him right in
the chest and plants that prototype bomb on his chest
and it goes off and knocks him back. She checks
on Jordan, who says he can't hear John. Clark flies in,
(09:35):
grabs Luthor, takes him to the sky and they are
fighting in a lightning storm. Lex hits him with those
kryptonite screws that he and Milton had been designing, and
they look super painful. Jordan finds John and he's not breathing,
so he administers CPR. Thankfully, he knows the song Staying
Alive and so he can he can administer CPR, knows
(09:55):
exactly how to do the timing of it all. Does
his super CPR does a heat vision blast to the chest,
which finally wakes John up. And John has this funny,
kind of like bewildered look on his face. He's like,
did you just blow me up? But John is fine,
He's live. He's good to go. Superman's trying to remove
the screws while Lex is beating him. We cut to
another scene of DD troops showing up and grabbing Milton.
(10:16):
John Henry forces him to shut down the B thirteen
virus so that they can get the live feed going
and have Amanda tell the world who Lex really is
and what he's been doing. Clark is able to remove
the screw from his chest and crushes it. And apparently,
here's another little criticism I have of some of the
visual effects. Apparently the suit can heal too, because there's
(10:36):
no hole in the Superman symbol when we look at
Clark later on when he's talking to Lex. So a
little oversight there, but that's okay. And Lex keeps coming
at him, soups punches him every single time that he approaches,
and we finally get a big time punch punish him.
(10:57):
And this is a great image. If you've read Justice
League number twenty five, there's an image in that comic
that looks exactly like what we see on screen here.
But it's even better because in the moment in Justice
League twenty five when Superman goes to land the punch
that he's trying to land, he is thinking of both
his father and his son, and we see them kind
of appear spiritually quote unquote behind him as he's about
(11:19):
to land this punch, and that is kind of the
moment I get because he's thinking about his wife, he's
thinking about his family, he's thinking about his town. And
that is when he gathers the rest of his strength
to take Lex out. As Lex separates from the rest
of the suit, he's falling and Clark grabs him as
(11:42):
he's falling, brings him safely to the ground. Clark wins
flawless victory, non fatality, and then we cut to one
year later, and it is a serious finale requirement that
we have a wedding. I think we're legally obligated to
do so. So we have Lana and John Hen's wedding.
Lois is the efficient. She refers to Lana as the
(12:04):
best of Smallville, which is a nice callback to the
season one, episode five episode the best of Smallville, and
that was a term that the people of Smallville used
for Martha Kent because there wasn't anyone she would not
help and it was harvest festival time. Do we remember
how excited Clark was about the harvest Fest and there
was going to be corn, lots and lots of corn.
But Lanna has now taken on the mantle of the
(12:26):
best of Smallville. That was a great scene that they
did in that episode back in season one where they
had dedicated a bench to Martha Kent and it said
on the bench on the little plaque best the best
of Smallville.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
As you know, the harvest festival was your mom's favorite
time of the year, and we really feel her absence.
Martha Kent was everything this town aspires to be. She
was kind, she was generous, and she was always there
when you needed her. Everyone in Smallville can remember her
(12:59):
sitting right here, talking with, laughing with whoever was right
there beside her. And though she is no longer physically
with us, her spirit remains and she will be right
here for whoever needs her.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
So Lana has now embodied the best of Smallville. There
Chrissy is pregnant again. Kyle and Lana have a little
conversation and he's happy for her, and they have one
last dance together. This is kind of the section where
we get to check in with everybody and see, you know,
how everybody's doing. And a year later, you know where
everybody is headed. We're gonna jump even further in time
here in just a little bit. But we get to
(13:35):
see all of our Smallville folks. We get to see
Kyle and Chrissy. We get to see Lana and John Henry.
We get to see Sarah who's come back from Greece.
We get to see Coach Gaines, you know, cutting a
rug there while he's dancing. And I missed her. I
guess they just don't recognize her anymore. But apparently I
read or saw somewhere that somebody said, we do get
to see Sophie here. I didn't think we did. Maybe
(13:57):
I just missed her. I did watch the episode twice,
but I think she's gotten old enough at this point
that I just I don't recognize her anymore. So I
didn't see her, but a quick thing that I just
made up. If they had a season five, I don't
know if you know this. The villain was going to
be Sophie that after growing into her seven foot tall
form at the last wedding, she would continue to grow
(14:17):
exponentially and she would now be terrorizing Japan as the
kush Zilla, the neglected child Kaiju. So that is what
was coming for a season five Absolutely not true whatsoever,
but there you go. Sarah and Jordan are talking about
her future and whether she's going to come back to Smallville,
and whether Jordan is happy staying in Smallville. He's content
to stay. At this point, it's home. John Henry and
(14:40):
Natalie are talking. They have finally found peace being on
this earth, and it feels like home as well. Everybody's
kind of expressing that this feels like home, even though
there had been long stretches in the first couple of
seasons where that was a big theme was Jordan and
Jonathan didn't feel like this was home because they just
didn't fit in. It wasn't Metropolis. Natalie and John Henry
from a different Earth, so they didn't fit in. It
(15:01):
didn't feel like home because everything was different. Then we
have Clark and Lois talking in the kitchen one more time,
and you know, kind of asks a little bit of
a meta line, what do you think Superman and Lois
Lane will be remembered for? And Lois says, I'd like
to think truth and justice, and Clark says, and a
better tomorrow. Lois gets a text at this moment from
Janet Olsen that Luther's appeal was denied, so he is
(15:24):
going to stay in jail at Striker's prison. We cut
to a scene of Luther at Striker's prison and he
has tried to tell the warden that he wants his arrangement,
his regular arrangements that he had before, but he's not
top dog anymore. And Bruno Vannheim shows up. Normally we
don't talk about Bruno, but he shows up and just
to let him know who's running things now. And he says,
(15:46):
you know, a man in charge needs a good chair,
and you, Alexander, you're gonna make a hell of a chair,
which is a callback to when Luther did that. I
think when he did that to otis back when he
first went to jail in that one episode. Okay, here's
where we get to the part that is grab the tissues, folks. Okay,
we get Clark's voiceover, and we get the voiceover. This
(16:09):
is our kind of time lapse montage of the lifetime
together that they have and this entire show is, this
entire show has been about love, and not always romantic love,
but love of family, love of home, love of friends. Yeah,
just in all the different ways that love manifests itself.
That's what the show has been about over the course
(16:30):
of its four seasons, and so it's very very clear
in these final moments. Clark has the voiceover throughout all
this that he lived for thirty two more years with
Sam's heart, and he talks about coming back to a
world that was struggling, and he shows images which actually
look like real news footage images of our world. There's homelessness,
there's war, there's children suffering, there's starvation, there's all these things,
(16:54):
and we hear him talk about how he wants to
make more of a differerence than just saving the world
from disasters and super criminals and things like that. We
see a fun scene he goes to the fortress and
he's fashioning suits for the boys so that they have
their supersuits, and we do get to see I think
there had been some images from a concept art of
(17:17):
what the boys could look like if they had their supersuits.
And we have a great image of the Superman family,
Superman the Fraternals steal Natalie all flying through the air,
which is just awesome. It's an awesome shot there. We
have a scene of Clark and Lewis sitting down with
Bruno Manheim, and Clark says, I spent time saving the world.
(17:38):
Now I want to fix it. And so he really
does want to get down to doing what he can
to fix some of these problems, to feed the hungry,
to find housing for people, to do things that have
a lasting impact, not just you know, stopping a volcano.
I mean that has a lasting impact too, But he
wants to do more. He wants to do more kind
of on a humanitarian level. So Clark and Lewis set
(18:01):
up a foundation to help people. It's, you know, the
other thing about this show has been legacy as well,
and he knows that with his human heart, he does
not have forever. We don't know if he had forever,
if he had still had his Kryptonian heart from before,
he could have lived forever. He could have been eternal.
There are some Superman stories where Superman is immortal and
does not die, but he's human. He's more human than
(18:23):
he had been before now, and so as part of
his legacy, he and Lois set up a foundation to
help people that whole idea of a better tomorrow. And
so we can see them hard at work at the
Gazette that seems to be kind of their headquarters for
their foundation, and they know that being celebrities has helped
them get more support than they might have otherwise. We
(18:44):
get to see Clark and Lois age, we get to
see the boys age. And this was if you're a
fan of the Grim TV show, one of the I
think it was older Jonathan is actually and I'm going
to blank on his name, I don't remember it. I
didn't watch Grim, but he played one of the characters
with Bitsy Tullock in the Grim TV show. And actually,
my understanding is that is also Bitsy's husband, So maybe
(19:06):
a little weird that her husband played her son, but
that's okay, We're gon we're gonna let that go. We
won't spend too much time there. But she had put
out on Twitter or other social medias that there was
going to be a surprise. There's going to be a
bit of a cameo, I think for Grim fans there.
So I did not watch the show, but if you did,
you maybe caught that one. And this is where this
(19:29):
is where if you haven't pulled out the tissues yet,
pull him out now. Clark says, for the rest of
her life, we never spent a day apart. That was
a magical time, and you just the way he worded it,
just the tense of everything. For the rest of her life,
we never spent a day apart. And then you know
that she is going to pass before he does. He's
going to outlive Lois. He talks about how her cancer
(19:51):
came back and only this time it was too much.
Clark and the boys are there when she passes, and
the final thing she says or sees as she is dying,
she says, daddy, And so you know that there's that
kind of final reconciliation. You know, she and her father
didn't always have the greatest of relationships, and that when
we get a sense of what Clark sees when he
dies later in the episode, that that may be the
(20:13):
same experience that Lois is having. Clark and the boys
are there when she does pass away. Then we see
that Clark is lonely after friends stop by. He talks
about John and Jordan's stopping by almost every day. And
so he got a dog and he named him Crypto,
And I love his line. He's like, seriously, how and
I never had a dog before? And I love that
Crypto is just like a fun, goofy golden retriever kind
(20:36):
of a dog, which is a little bit of a
callback to there was a Crypto who for a moment
was superpowered in the Smallville TV show, and Clark's dog was.
I believe he was a Golden Retriever named Crypto in
that show. Not a superpowered dog, but superpowered for like
a hot second in the first episode he showed up
in but then the powers went away. So now he's
got a dog and he's spending time with his dog. Eventually,
(21:00):
Lark's heart gives out at nearly the same spot where
his father had died. Kyle ends up saving him, but
then Clark does end up dying at home soon after.
When Clark passes. At this last part of the episode,
when he passes, he gets to see the boys as
they were again as teenagers. He gets to see all
of his grandchildren, and then there's different things that he
lists as he sees each of these group of people.
(21:20):
As he sees his grandchildren, it's hope for the future
he sees, and I thought this was a very interesting take.
Lex is sitting at his kitchen table and the word
that goes along with that is forgiveness and he sits
down with Lex, and Lex just looks broken and Clark
is there to basically take his hand and forgive him
for what he did. That is I'm gonna pause for
(21:40):
a second. That is the strongest piece of this version
of Superman is the goodness, the giving of second chances,
the always thinking the best of people. That is what
Superman does so well, and that is what Tyler Hecklin
(22:03):
has done so well and the writers have done so
well with his version of Superman. Is that as Clark
is dying, Clark has died, one of the people he
sees as he is going through his list of people
that he will miss is Lex Luthor, his enemy, sitting
at his kitchen table, and he's forgiving him. Awesome. He
(22:24):
sees Crypto there and the word wonder goes along with
Crypto because he's a golden retriever. That's what wonder. That's
what golden retrievers do. They're goofy and they wonder. Kyle
and Chrissy, friendship is the word John Henry and Lana family,
and then the boys open the front door and there
is Lois in a stunning red dress and the word
is love. There this is the dress from season three,
(22:45):
episode nine, the dress where the title refers to the
red dress that Lois got from Clark for her to
wear at an awards gala that was seventeen years before
that episode, so seventeen years like before the boys were born.
And initially in that apsio, it's because she was going
through cancer. She was going to donate it due to
concerns with how she'll look after having the double naseectomy
(23:07):
that she was going to have, but she does end
up wearing again after talking with Lana and Clark, and
that's the dress he sees her in when they open
the door and she's surrounded by light and he goes
out to her, and the final line of the episode,
the final thought that he leaves us with as everything
fades out and goes to the title card.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
And I came to this world alone, but when I
left it, I had so much and it was all
because of love. It's the thing that makes life worth living.
To everything you can to find love, I give it
(23:53):
to hold on to it because life it goes by
so fast.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
That's the end of Superman and Lois, And it has
been a wonderful four seasons of television. I have watched
every Superman show that has ever existed, and this is
by far probably my absolute favorite. I loved Smallville, I
loved Lois and Clark, I loved all the animated series,
(24:32):
the Superboy Show back in the day. I enjoy every
single one of them. This one is by far my
absolute favorite of all the Superman live action TV shows
Superman TV shows, and it ranks up there even with
the movies. If I were to list them with some
of my favorite movies, it's up there. I have different
reasons why I like the different Superman's Christopher Reeve, Henry Cavill,
(24:56):
Tyler Hecklin. But I think of all the different super
this is I don't know. It's too soon, I think
for me to try to decide where Tyler Hecklin fits
on there, But he is. He is one of the
top Superman actors to have portrayed the character, and he
he did a fantastic job the writing that was given
(25:17):
to him, for the storylines and for his character. Fantastic job,
just amazing, an amazing show. I'm going to jump back
for a second to the moment where they're going through
and they're seeing all the different people that were part
of his life. And as I'm watching this, one of
the things that it did for half a second it
did take me out of this was I'm like, this
(25:38):
is a missed opportunity. You didn't show Talrow, you didn't
show and it doesn't have to be that we get
him back from Bizarro world. This is Clark dying, so
this is him just seeing these people as he's headed
to the afterlife. So you didn't get Talrouw, you didn't
get jo l and Laura, you didn't get mon pod Kent.
And I feel like, with this whole show being about family,
(26:04):
I really wanted to see all of Clark's family, and
I think you could have taken some moments to have
those characters come in just for a moment. It didn't
have to be a long time. Honestly, my scene that
I would probably have cut shorter or cut out of
this was the wedding scene. I didn't feel like I
needed the wedding scene. You could have given me a
(26:26):
real quick scene of John, Henry and Lana, you know,
promising each other to spend more time. You know, they've
reevaluated what's important to them and spending more time together.
You could have given them that you didn't have to
have a wedding a year later. You didn't even have
to have that as a reason to bring all the
characters together necessarily, And then you could have spent a
(26:47):
little bit. You could have given a little bit more time,
just a few more moments to the parade of folks
that he's seeing on the way to the afterlife. Now
I understand why they didn't, because there was an interview
with the showrunners, with Fletcher and helping, and they were
asked like, what did you Was there anything you wish
you'd gotten a fit into the finale that you couldn't,
And Fletcher said, I would have liked to have had
(27:08):
more characters come back, and I think Todd agrees, And
this is why I understand. You know, budgets were with
the way that this show was ended, and I'm thankful
that this show got an ending. Some shows don't, so
I'm thankful it got an ending. But clearly there were
budgetary reasons why they couldn't get them back, even for
just a moment. They said, if we had more time
and money, we would have loved tal Row. Superman's brother
(27:29):
was a great character for us. We love him we
would have liked the opportunity to have acknowledged that. We
would have liked to have Sam Lane back, maybe see
him in Lois's final vision. Just didn't have the time
and the resources to get people back for that, so
we had to pick our shots and acknowledge it without
maybe all the bells and whistles, and tried to do
it in a satisfying way. Helping said, it would have
been nice to get Jenna Dowan back, who had played Lucy.
(27:50):
That was a struggle that we had the whole season.
So I understand, and I understand that was not within
their power. They have to work within the budget that
they're given and the constraints that they're given. And you know,
I think they had ideas for more seasons of this show,
and they had so much they wanted to fit into
this last season, and I thought they did it masterfully.
One other things some interesting stuff about what they would
have liked to have done if they had had more
(28:12):
time and more resources for it. Helping said, we tend
to end the season while we set up a new villain.
It would have been fun to explore Brainiac a little
bit more and go further with that character. I think
we would have made a hard pitch to DC to
get dark Side in there somehow. I don't know if
they would have said yes, but we're going to try
to come up with something super cool and see if
we could do that. It's hard to say now, but
dark Side it would have been like my favorite thing
to do for sure, Fletcher said, I think knowing the
(28:34):
resources and the time and everything, we knew what we
had and we were going pretty early and where we
were going pretty early, so that was just a matter
of addressing and that in a way we were satisfied with.
The other wants and dreams kind of fade out after
a time because you're so focused on delivering the road
that you've chosen. So there are some things I would
have liked to do with more seasons, but at the
end of the day, I wanted to make sure this
season I felt was something special. I think we're both
(28:55):
happy with how it turned out. So that is it.
That is the end of Superman and Lois. I wanted
to just comment real quickly too, how this is almost
even more bittersweet that this wasn't just the end of
Superman and Lois. This is the end of DC superheroes
on the CW. I was there for the beginning. When
Smallville premiered, it was October sixteenth, two thousand and one,
(29:17):
on the WB, and from two thousand and one to
two thousand and six, Smallville was on the WB, and
then from twenty six to twenty eleven it was the
as it switched over to the CW. But I have
been following these shows for nearly a quarter of a century,
which seems bizarre to say. Starting with Smallville that ran
ten seasons. There we had, gosh, what else did we have?
(29:39):
We had, Well, we had the Arrowverse shows. You had
Arrow from twenty twelve to twenty twenty. You had The
Flash from twenty fourteen to twenty twenty three. You had
Supergirl from twenty fifteen to twenty twenty one. You had
Legends of Tomorrow from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty two.
You had Black Lightning that ran for three years starting
in twenty eighteen. You had Batwoman that ran for a
couple of starting in twenty nineteen. Stargirl started in twenty
(30:03):
twenty and I think had a couple of seasons. You
had the show Naomi, I think ran for one season
Gotham Knights ran for one season. You have all these shows,
and you have a bunch of shows that were going
to get developed over these nearly twenty five years. There's
a fun pilot that it was an unaired pilot, but
you could get in on iTunes back in the day.
That was an Aquaman pilot that was supposed to have
(30:25):
Justin Hartley was going to play Aquaman in that. He
actually ended up later playing Green Arrow in Smallville and
other people may know him from He's in a show
now called Tracker. He was in This Is Us, the
TV show that ran for several years and was so popular.
But yeah, so you would have had an Aquaman. There
was one they were planning called The Graysons. It was
a prequel series about Dick Grayson before he becomes Robin.
(30:46):
Amazon was going to be about Diana's early life in
Themiscara before she becomes Wonder Woman. There was going to
be a Booster Gold series, I think in around twenty eleven.
There was a plan for it to be kind of
a comedy drama focusing on the time traveling hero Booster Gold.
Dead Man. There was going to be a dead Man series.
Hour Man member of the Golden Age Superheroes. Justice You
(31:10):
was going to be where John Diggle David Ramsey was
going to be training a new generation of young superhumans,
and that I think even got referenced earlier in this season.
Green Arrow in the Canaries was going to be a
spin off of Arrow. There was going to be a
show called Painkiller that was a spinoff of Black Lightning.
So a lot of different things, ones that got made,
ones that never got made. But it has been an
amazing run of superhero shows for the last nearly twenty
(31:33):
five years on the WB ANDCW. Some of my final
thoughts here, I just wanted to share that this is
I thought this was such a well done ending to
the Superman story. Very rarely do you ever get to
see the end of a Superman story and for it
to be done in a hopeful and optimistic way. Sure,
he died in the end, but he died after he
(31:56):
and Lois got to live long and fruitful lives. It
makes me think of two of my other favorite kind
of farewell stories to Superman, What Happened Whatever Happened to
the Man of Tomorrow. It is kind of a goodbye
to the classic era of Superman after years of peace,
Superman's enemy's resurface and Brainiac. Brainiac is controlling Lex Luthor's
(32:18):
body and You've got mister Mix's Pitlock, And in a
climactic battle where they reveal his secret identity as well,
they lose Jimmy Olsen, Lana Lang Crypto dies, I believe,
and they ultimately He ultimately defeats Missus Pitlock with the
Phantom his Oonne projector, but he is now torn that
(32:39):
he's broken his no kill rule and he exposes himself
to gold kryptonite, stripping him of his powers permanently, and
he disappears. And years later, Lois Lane is married to
a man named Jordan Elliott, who is implied to be
the powerless Superman, now living out a quiet, happy life
with Lois and their son. One of the other stories
I really love All Star Superman, and in that one,
(33:02):
after rescuing a scientist from a sabotage mission to the Sun,
Superman learns that Lex Luthor has poisoned him with an
overdose of solar radiation, which enhances his powers but leaves
him with only a year left to live. Keeping his
fate a secret, he reveals his identity to Lois gives
her temporary superpowers so they can spend some time together,
in which she becomes Superwoman for a day. As the
(33:22):
end approaches, he completes the twelve Labors of Superman to
benefit humanity. Meanwhile, Luther escapes execution by getting superpowers of
his own, and with the help of Solaris, attacks Metropolis
and corrupts the Sun. In the final confrontation, Superman defeats Luthor,
sacrifices himself to restore the Sun, becoming a being of
pure solar energy, and lives within it in order to
(33:45):
keep it running. A year later, Lois believes that Superman
is still alive inside the Sun and may return someday,
and the scientist that he saved in the beginning hints
at somehow being able to create a new Superman to
keep the legacy going. Those are some great if you
want to find some great Superman stories where the end
is told so well and in a very inspirational way,
(34:05):
in a hopeful way. Those are a couple of other
great examples of Superman stories. Guys, this is it. This
is the end of the show. I have had so
much fun doing this podcast with d and with Jason
Tristan has been on a few times as well as
thank you to those guys for talking Superman with me
for three seasons. Had to go solo for this season
(34:27):
just because of all our timing and apparently we all
have different projects we're working on and I don't know
somehow we got busy, but it has been so much
fun to cover this show and talk about this show,
and it is it is my plan. I might have
to take a little bit of time off from this
as we're working on some things over at the thirty
something podcast, but I have full intention so keep this
(34:49):
in your podcast feed because I have full intentions of
keeping the podcast Full of Kryptonite going. I have been
wanting for some time to go back and do a rewatch,
and I mean, there's so many other Superman shows. I'd
love to go through, all the different Superman TV shows,
the different animated series that he's appeared in from time
to time, maybe covering some of the comics things like that.
(35:09):
But there is plenty of Superman still out there, so
I have full intentions of keeping the podcast going. So
if you want to come back here and get some
more and we'll have you know, some guests come in
and co host from time to time depending on what
the project might be, but looking forward to keeping it going.
Thank you so much for all the listeners who have
(35:30):
enjoyed this show and just supported it by sharing with
other people. It's just it was a fun little side
project to start off with with Dean Jason, and it
is kind of become its own thing and something that
I'm always a big Superman fan, have been since Childhood's,
will continue to be. We've got a new movie coming
out next year, so looking forward to that too. There's
gonna be plenty of Superman stuff. It is not going
(35:52):
away anytime soon. So with that, thank you for being
here with us. We'll be back soon with more Superman
stuff for you. But in the meantime, everybody, as Clark
said in the end of this one, we came to
this world alone. When we left it, we had so much.
It's the same with this TV show. We came in
not really knowing what this is going to be, but
(36:14):
we left it we got so much. We got so
much out of this show. Thank you to all the
people who made it. Thank you to all the actors
who are in it. Just thank you. We appreciate it.
Everybody up up in a way, We'll see you back
here soon
I've got you, You've got me, Who's got you?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Come to me? Son of Joel Neil before.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
So hey everybody, it's the moment we've been waiting for
and have been dreading. It is the final episode of
Superman and Lois. It is season four, episode ten. It
(00:46):
went by so fast, and man, this was this is
a great episode. I mean I've been saying that this
entire season, but this this ending. There's a couple of
I mean, there's a couple of teeny tiny pieces that
I had a couple of issues with, but as a
way of ending a Superman story, it was fantastic. And
(01:11):
I mean you get to well we'll get into it,
but you get to like almost the last like the
last ten minutes or so is we're jumping a little
bit forward in time and we get that entire monologue
at the end. I'll stop because we're gonna get there.
But anyway, I just wanted to want to start off
with that that this is the moment that I have
(01:34):
been looking for but also dreading, as I knew that
this show was coming to an end, and I wish,
I wish we had gotten more seasons of this show.
But to go out the way that we did, on
the high note that we went out. You know, sometimes
a show, you've got an option. It's a Batman option.
You can live long enough to see yourself jump the
(01:55):
shark and become the villain, or you can go out
on a high point like this and be the hero
that Gotham and the rest of us deserve. So here
it is season four, episode ten, the series finale. We
start off with Lana and John Henry Iron's playing pool,
which is not a euphemism, and they're talking about how
they haven't had too many chances to go on dates
(02:16):
in like the last several months. They've gone on like
four dates. Lives just aren't lining up. Maybe they're not
going to work out as a couple. And as they're
trying to talk this out, all of a sudden, they
hear some crashes outside and realize that the Doomsday Creature
has returned. John Henry tries to run out and help.
When they hear Doomsday returning, the front of the bar explodes.
(02:36):
John Henry is injured. Lana goes to help and sees
the doo Doomsday creature just pounding on Superman in the
entryway of the bar, and we have the title card
that comes up for the last time. This final battle
with Doomsday is a big portion of the beginning of
the first kind of act or two of this episode,
(02:58):
and we've got Lois and Amanda are arguing on the
streets of Smallville. She's trying to get out she didn't
mean for any of this to happen. Lois is like, look,
you got to help fix this because you're part of
the reason that all this is going down, because this
is what we told you. We told you Lex was
a bad guy, and you did not listen. We continually
get to see Ba Doomsday beating the BA crap out
(03:19):
of the Superman and just like Soups is not even
barely landing any punches at all, he is just getting
beaten to Smithereens fraternals show up to help their dad,
and he argues with them to get them to leave, like,
keep the people of Smallville safe. Get out of here.
You are not prepared for this. Go keep the people safe.
We cut back to a scene John Henry is busted up,
(03:40):
but he's got an idea to help Superman, and Lana
is going to go with him and help get this
ready over at the steel works, the boys come back
and Lois is like, you've got to help your father,
and the boys say, well, we tried. He won't let us,
and Lois realizes that at this point in time, they
don't have a choice. Like Clark cannot handle Doomsday on
his own, he needs the boys to help him out.
(04:02):
I'm going to stop there for a second and say
that again. Overall, I commend this show for doing a
daytime Doomsday battle scene in full sunlight. That is risky
because most of the times, to hide any imperfections or
any any issues with the CGI, you do it at night,
(04:23):
or you do it when the lighting is a little
bit lower. They went full I mean, you never go
full daylight, but they went full daylight, and I commend
them for that. There are a couple of moments where
the CGI was a little rough in parts of this fight.
There was a scene where we come a little bit
it's a little bit more of a wide shot and
we get to see Doomsday kind of pounding on Superman
(04:43):
from Afar. In that moment, it looked like video game
graphics and like not like PlayStation four graphics, not like
PlayStation five or you know what you'd expect from from
a very high end CGI job, but it was just
for a few moments, and it just there was a
a couple little parts that I was like, eugh, that's noticeable.
But that is one of my very, very small critiques
(05:05):
of this episode. The Fraternals come in to help save
their dad. They heat Vision but Doomsday and then they
get him to chase them out of town. John Henry
has a prototype bomb that is going to attach to
anything metal or kryptonite. Lois encourages Clark to trust their
son's capabilities and emphasizes their growth and unity as a family.
She's like, you gotta trust the boys. They have each other.
(05:27):
She says, they have each other and they have you,
and that's going to have to be enough, because you
cannot do this on your own. So the boys go
off to help, and as they fly off and get
Doomsday to follow them, Clark then gets up and tells
the boys lure it back to main Street. We've got
a plan, and we've got a great image of Superman
standing there with the billowing cape, the slow motion explosion
(05:48):
in the background, and Clark dodges the fist, the massive
fist of Doomsday at the last second in slow motion
and as he dodges this pun which John Henry's hammer
flies through the flames and just caves in be Doomsday's skull.
Just a massive shot to the head and he is down,
(06:11):
and he is dead for the time being. The plan
is to take it to the sun because it does
not heal like Clark does. Remember this is bizarro, so
he responds the opposite to yellow sunlight that Clark does.
The sun will make him weak. So Lowest mouths the
words I love you, and Superman flies off with the body.
He carries Be Doom's Day through space to the Sun. Okay,
(06:34):
after the battle, I mean the battle is pretty much
over there waiting for him to get back. They have
a three sixty shot of everybody standing in a circle
having a little mcglofflin group as our friends. Well we're
not friends. They don't know who we are, but we
are fans of the Greatest Generation podcast. They like to
call out the mcglofflin group. So here's a mcglofferin group.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
But he he one on a Doomsday scale of zero
to ten, zero meaning zero doom, ten meaning absolute metaphysical doom,
a total wyat wipeout annihilation, nothing remaining.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Issue one is the plan to get Amanda on livestream
to reveal who Lex really is. Lex calls Amanda while
she's trying to get away and he launches a rocket
at her car to kill her, but the boys save
her and get her back to town in time. Back
at the Gazette, they expect Amanda to confess everything and
John Henry heads out to confront Milton when his B
(07:27):
thirteen virus takes over. Or actually he hears the name
Milton and he heads out. Thirteen virus hasn't done anything yet.
He heads out to confront Milton when he hears the
name at the Sun, but Doomsday wakes up. Clark is
about to punch him into the sun and be Doomsday
holds out a hand and that's when we find out
that he's actually Kevin Costner paw Kent from Man of Steel.
(07:47):
Then he does the arms spread Jesus fall into the
sun with a montage of images from his life on
Bizarre World, and starts to pull a full Infinity War
and disintegrate. As he falls back at the Gazette, the
feed goes down with Milton's B thirteen virus. Lex is
headed their way. The boys have to intercept him. He
blasts John into the hotel, which has seen better days.
(08:09):
I mean, that's a rough hotel room at this point.
Don't stay there, and starts to strangle Jordan on the
ground in the middle of the street. Clark is up
there getting a recharge from the sun. Here's Lex trying
to kill Jordan, so he flies off to get back
to them. Lex is telling Jordan while he's choking him,
you are weak and worthless, just like your mother. That's
(08:29):
one of the interesting things I think about this Lex
Luthor is in a lot of the different iterations of Lex.
It's just such a hatred between Lex and Superman, and
Lex is not Superman's villain in this show. In fact,
I thought that's what was interesting, is everybody's got their
villain that they're fighting. For the most part, Superman is fighting,
(08:52):
but Doomsday that's his villain. Lois is fighting Lex, and
Lex hates Lois a lot more than he hates Superman
in this show, so he is more of Lois Lane's
villain than he is Superman's villain, which I think is
an interesting twist on the story on the mythos, because
that is not the case in most other Superman stories.
(09:13):
Lex is Superman's nemesis, and you know this time around
he is Lois's nemesis. He is about to kill Lois,
but she right up in front of his supersuit just
goes to what seems like to punch him right in
the chest and plants that prototype bomb on his chest
and it goes off and knocks him back. She checks
on Jordan, who says he can't hear John. Clark flies in,
(09:35):
grabs Luthor, takes him to the sky and they are
fighting in a lightning storm. Lex hits him with those
kryptonite screws that he and Milton had been designing, and
they look super painful. Jordan finds John and he's not breathing,
so he administers CPR. Thankfully, he knows the song Staying
Alive and so he can he can administer CPR, knows
(09:55):
exactly how to do the timing of it all. Does
his super CPR does a heat vision blast to the chest,
which finally wakes John up. And John has this funny,
kind of like bewildered look on his face. He's like,
did you just blow me up? But John is fine,
He's live. He's good to go. Superman's trying to remove
the screws while Lex is beating him. We cut to
another scene of DD troops showing up and grabbing Milton.
(10:16):
John Henry forces him to shut down the B thirteen
virus so that they can get the live feed going
and have Amanda tell the world who Lex really is
and what he's been doing. Clark is able to remove
the screw from his chest and crushes it. And apparently,
here's another little criticism I have of some of the
visual effects. Apparently the suit can heal too, because there's
(10:36):
no hole in the Superman symbol when we look at
Clark later on when he's talking to Lex. So a
little oversight there, but that's okay. And Lex keeps coming
at him, soups punches him every single time that he approaches,
and we finally get a big time punch punish him.
(10:57):
And this is a great image. If you've read Justice
League number twenty five, there's an image in that comic
that looks exactly like what we see on screen here.
But it's even better because in the moment in Justice
League twenty five when Superman goes to land the punch
that he's trying to land, he is thinking of both
his father and his son, and we see them kind
of appear spiritually quote unquote behind him as he's about
(11:19):
to land this punch, and that is kind of the
moment I get because he's thinking about his wife, he's
thinking about his family, he's thinking about his town. And
that is when he gathers the rest of his strength
to take Lex out. As Lex separates from the rest
of the suit, he's falling and Clark grabs him as
(11:42):
he's falling, brings him safely to the ground. Clark wins
flawless victory, non fatality, and then we cut to one
year later, and it is a serious finale requirement that
we have a wedding. I think we're legally obligated to
do so. So we have Lana and John Hen's wedding.
Lois is the efficient. She refers to Lana as the
(12:04):
best of Smallville, which is a nice callback to the
season one, episode five episode the best of Smallville, and
that was a term that the people of Smallville used
for Martha Kent because there wasn't anyone she would not
help and it was harvest festival time. Do we remember
how excited Clark was about the harvest Fest and there
was going to be corn, lots and lots of corn.
But Lanna has now taken on the mantle of the
(12:26):
best of Smallville. That was a great scene that they
did in that episode back in season one where they
had dedicated a bench to Martha Kent and it said
on the bench on the little plaque best the best
of Smallville.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
As you know, the harvest festival was your mom's favorite
time of the year, and we really feel her absence.
Martha Kent was everything this town aspires to be. She
was kind, she was generous, and she was always there
when you needed her. Everyone in Smallville can remember her
(12:59):
sitting right here, talking with, laughing with whoever was right
there beside her. And though she is no longer physically
with us, her spirit remains and she will be right
here for whoever needs her.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
So Lana has now embodied the best of Smallville. There
Chrissy is pregnant again. Kyle and Lana have a little
conversation and he's happy for her, and they have one
last dance together. This is kind of the section where
we get to check in with everybody and see, you know,
how everybody's doing. And a year later, you know where
everybody is headed. We're gonna jump even further in time
here in just a little bit. But we get to
(13:35):
see all of our Smallville folks. We get to see
Kyle and Chrissy. We get to see Lana and John Henry.
We get to see Sarah who's come back from Greece.
We get to see Coach Gaines, you know, cutting a
rug there while he's dancing. And I missed her. I
guess they just don't recognize her anymore. But apparently I
read or saw somewhere that somebody said, we do get
to see Sophie here. I didn't think we did. Maybe
(13:57):
I just missed her. I did watch the episode twice,
but I think she's gotten old enough at this point
that I just I don't recognize her anymore. So I
didn't see her, but a quick thing that I just
made up. If they had a season five, I don't
know if you know this. The villain was going to
be Sophie that after growing into her seven foot tall
form at the last wedding, she would continue to grow
(14:17):
exponentially and she would now be terrorizing Japan as the
kush Zilla, the neglected child Kaiju. So that is what
was coming for a season five Absolutely not true whatsoever,
but there you go. Sarah and Jordan are talking about
her future and whether she's going to come back to Smallville,
and whether Jordan is happy staying in Smallville. He's content
to stay. At this point, it's home. John Henry and
(14:40):
Natalie are talking. They have finally found peace being on
this earth, and it feels like home as well. Everybody's
kind of expressing that this feels like home, even though
there had been long stretches in the first couple of
seasons where that was a big theme was Jordan and
Jonathan didn't feel like this was home because they just
didn't fit in. It wasn't Metropolis. Natalie and John Henry
from a different Earth, so they didn't fit in. It
(15:01):
didn't feel like home because everything was different. Then we
have Clark and Lois talking in the kitchen one more time,
and you know, kind of asks a little bit of
a meta line, what do you think Superman and Lois
Lane will be remembered for? And Lois says, I'd like
to think truth and justice, and Clark says, and a
better tomorrow. Lois gets a text at this moment from
Janet Olsen that Luther's appeal was denied, so he is
(15:24):
going to stay in jail at Striker's prison. We cut
to a scene of Luther at Striker's prison and he
has tried to tell the warden that he wants his arrangement,
his regular arrangements that he had before, but he's not
top dog anymore. And Bruno Vannheim shows up. Normally we
don't talk about Bruno, but he shows up and just
to let him know who's running things now. And he says,
(15:46):
you know, a man in charge needs a good chair,
and you, Alexander, you're gonna make a hell of a chair,
which is a callback to when Luther did that. I
think when he did that to otis back when he
first went to jail in that one episode. Okay, here's
where we get to the part that is grab the tissues, folks. Okay,
we get Clark's voiceover, and we get the voiceover. This
(16:09):
is our kind of time lapse montage of the lifetime
together that they have and this entire show is, this
entire show has been about love, and not always romantic love,
but love of family, love of home, love of friends. Yeah,
just in all the different ways that love manifests itself.
That's what the show has been about over the course
(16:30):
of its four seasons, and so it's very very clear
in these final moments. Clark has the voiceover throughout all
this that he lived for thirty two more years with
Sam's heart, and he talks about coming back to a
world that was struggling, and he shows images which actually
look like real news footage images of our world. There's homelessness,
there's war, there's children suffering, there's starvation, there's all these things,
(16:54):
and we hear him talk about how he wants to
make more of a differerence than just saving the world
from disasters and super criminals and things like that. We
see a fun scene he goes to the fortress and
he's fashioning suits for the boys so that they have
their supersuits, and we do get to see I think
there had been some images from a concept art of
(17:17):
what the boys could look like if they had their supersuits.
And we have a great image of the Superman family,
Superman the Fraternals steal Natalie all flying through the air,
which is just awesome. It's an awesome shot there. We
have a scene of Clark and Lewis sitting down with
Bruno Manheim, and Clark says, I spent time saving the world.
(17:38):
Now I want to fix it. And so he really
does want to get down to doing what he can
to fix some of these problems, to feed the hungry,
to find housing for people, to do things that have
a lasting impact, not just you know, stopping a volcano.
I mean that has a lasting impact too, But he
wants to do more. He wants to do more kind
of on a humanitarian level. So Clark and Lewis set
(18:01):
up a foundation to help people. It's, you know, the
other thing about this show has been legacy as well,
and he knows that with his human heart, he does
not have forever. We don't know if he had forever,
if he had still had his Kryptonian heart from before,
he could have lived forever. He could have been eternal.
There are some Superman stories where Superman is immortal and
does not die, but he's human. He's more human than
(18:23):
he had been before now, and so as part of
his legacy, he and Lois set up a foundation to
help people that whole idea of a better tomorrow. And
so we can see them hard at work at the
Gazette that seems to be kind of their headquarters for
their foundation, and they know that being celebrities has helped
them get more support than they might have otherwise. We
(18:44):
get to see Clark and Lois age, we get to
see the boys age. And this was if you're a
fan of the Grim TV show, one of the I
think it was older Jonathan is actually and I'm going
to blank on his name, I don't remember it. I
didn't watch Grim, but he played one of the characters
with Bitsy Tullock in the Grim TV show. And actually,
my understanding is that is also Bitsy's husband, So maybe
(19:06):
a little weird that her husband played her son, but
that's okay, We're gon we're gonna let that go. We
won't spend too much time there. But she had put
out on Twitter or other social medias that there was
going to be a surprise. There's going to be a
bit of a cameo, I think for Grim fans there.
So I did not watch the show, but if you did,
you maybe caught that one. And this is where this
(19:29):
is where if you haven't pulled out the tissues yet,
pull him out now. Clark says, for the rest of
her life, we never spent a day apart. That was
a magical time, and you just the way he worded it,
just the tense of everything. For the rest of her life,
we never spent a day apart. And then you know
that she is going to pass before he does. He's
going to outlive Lois. He talks about how her cancer
(19:51):
came back and only this time it was too much.
Clark and the boys are there when she passes, and
the final thing she says or sees as she is dying,
she says, daddy, And so you know that there's that
kind of final reconciliation. You know, she and her father
didn't always have the greatest of relationships, and that when
we get a sense of what Clark sees when he
dies later in the episode, that that may be the
(20:13):
same experience that Lois is having. Clark and the boys
are there when she does pass away. Then we see
that Clark is lonely after friends stop by. He talks
about John and Jordan's stopping by almost every day. And
so he got a dog and he named him Crypto,
And I love his line. He's like, seriously, how and
I never had a dog before? And I love that
Crypto is just like a fun, goofy golden retriever kind
(20:36):
of a dog, which is a little bit of a
callback to there was a Crypto who for a moment
was superpowered in the Smallville TV show, and Clark's dog was.
I believe he was a Golden Retriever named Crypto in
that show. Not a superpowered dog, but superpowered for like
a hot second in the first episode he showed up
in but then the powers went away. So now he's
got a dog and he's spending time with his dog. Eventually,
(21:00):
Lark's heart gives out at nearly the same spot where
his father had died. Kyle ends up saving him, but
then Clark does end up dying at home soon after.
When Clark passes. At this last part of the episode,
when he passes, he gets to see the boys as
they were again as teenagers. He gets to see all
of his grandchildren, and then there's different things that he
lists as he sees each of these group of people.
(21:20):
As he sees his grandchildren, it's hope for the future
he sees, and I thought this was a very interesting take.
Lex is sitting at his kitchen table and the word
that goes along with that is forgiveness and he sits
down with Lex, and Lex just looks broken and Clark
is there to basically take his hand and forgive him
for what he did. That is I'm gonna pause for
(21:40):
a second. That is the strongest piece of this version
of Superman is the goodness, the giving of second chances,
the always thinking the best of people. That is what
Superman does so well, and that is what Tyler Hecklin
(22:03):
has done so well and the writers have done so
well with his version of Superman. Is that as Clark
is dying, Clark has died, one of the people he
sees as he is going through his list of people
that he will miss is Lex Luthor, his enemy, sitting
at his kitchen table, and he's forgiving him. Awesome. He
(22:24):
sees Crypto there and the word wonder goes along with
Crypto because he's a golden retriever. That's what wonder. That's
what golden retrievers do. They're goofy and they wonder. Kyle
and Chrissy, friendship is the word John Henry and Lana family,
and then the boys open the front door and there
is Lois in a stunning red dress and the word
is love. There this is the dress from season three,
(22:45):
episode nine, the dress where the title refers to the
red dress that Lois got from Clark for her to
wear at an awards gala that was seventeen years before
that episode, so seventeen years like before the boys were born.
And initially in that apsio, it's because she was going
through cancer. She was going to donate it due to
concerns with how she'll look after having the double naseectomy
(23:07):
that she was going to have, but she does end
up wearing again after talking with Lana and Clark, and
that's the dress he sees her in when they open
the door and she's surrounded by light and he goes
out to her, and the final line of the episode,
the final thought that he leaves us with as everything
fades out and goes to the title card.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
And I came to this world alone, but when I
left it, I had so much and it was all
because of love. It's the thing that makes life worth living.
To everything you can to find love, I give it
(23:53):
to hold on to it because life it goes by
so fast.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
That's the end of Superman and Lois, And it has
been a wonderful four seasons of television. I have watched
every Superman show that has ever existed, and this is
by far probably my absolute favorite. I loved Smallville, I
loved Lois and Clark, I loved all the animated series,
(24:32):
the Superboy Show back in the day. I enjoy every
single one of them. This one is by far my
absolute favorite of all the Superman live action TV shows
Superman TV shows, and it ranks up there even with
the movies. If I were to list them with some
of my favorite movies, it's up there. I have different
reasons why I like the different Superman's Christopher Reeve, Henry Cavill,
(24:56):
Tyler Hecklin. But I think of all the different super
this is I don't know. It's too soon, I think
for me to try to decide where Tyler Hecklin fits
on there, But he is. He is one of the
top Superman actors to have portrayed the character, and he
he did a fantastic job the writing that was given
(25:17):
to him, for the storylines and for his character. Fantastic job,
just amazing, an amazing show. I'm going to jump back
for a second to the moment where they're going through
and they're seeing all the different people that were part
of his life. And as I'm watching this, one of
the things that it did for half a second it
did take me out of this was I'm like, this
(25:38):
is a missed opportunity. You didn't show Talrow, you didn't
show and it doesn't have to be that we get
him back from Bizarro world. This is Clark dying, so
this is him just seeing these people as he's headed
to the afterlife. So you didn't get Talrouw, you didn't
get jo l and Laura, you didn't get mon pod Kent.
And I feel like, with this whole show being about family,
(26:04):
I really wanted to see all of Clark's family, and
I think you could have taken some moments to have
those characters come in just for a moment. It didn't
have to be a long time. Honestly, my scene that
I would probably have cut shorter or cut out of
this was the wedding scene. I didn't feel like I
needed the wedding scene. You could have given me a
(26:26):
real quick scene of John, Henry and Lana, you know,
promising each other to spend more time. You know, they've
reevaluated what's important to them and spending more time together.
You could have given them that you didn't have to
have a wedding a year later. You didn't even have
to have that as a reason to bring all the
characters together necessarily, And then you could have spent a
(26:47):
little bit. You could have given a little bit more time,
just a few more moments to the parade of folks
that he's seeing on the way to the afterlife. Now
I understand why they didn't, because there was an interview
with the showrunners, with Fletcher and helping, and they were
asked like, what did you Was there anything you wish
you'd gotten a fit into the finale that you couldn't,
And Fletcher said, I would have liked to have had
(27:08):
more characters come back, and I think Todd agrees, And
this is why I understand. You know, budgets were with
the way that this show was ended, and I'm thankful
that this show got an ending. Some shows don't, so
I'm thankful it got an ending. But clearly there were
budgetary reasons why they couldn't get them back, even for
just a moment. They said, if we had more time
and money, we would have loved tal Row. Superman's brother
(27:29):
was a great character for us. We love him we
would have liked the opportunity to have acknowledged that. We
would have liked to have Sam Lane back, maybe see
him in Lois's final vision. Just didn't have the time
and the resources to get people back for that, so
we had to pick our shots and acknowledge it without
maybe all the bells and whistles, and tried to do
it in a satisfying way. Helping said, it would have
been nice to get Jenna Dowan back, who had played Lucy.
(27:50):
That was a struggle that we had the whole season.
So I understand, and I understand that was not within
their power. They have to work within the budget that
they're given and the constraints that they're given. And you know,
I think they had ideas for more seasons of this show,
and they had so much they wanted to fit into
this last season, and I thought they did it masterfully.
One other things some interesting stuff about what they would
have liked to have done if they had had more
(28:12):
time and more resources for it. Helping said, we tend
to end the season while we set up a new villain.
It would have been fun to explore Brainiac a little
bit more and go further with that character. I think
we would have made a hard pitch to DC to
get dark Side in there somehow. I don't know if
they would have said yes, but we're going to try
to come up with something super cool and see if
we could do that. It's hard to say now, but
dark Side it would have been like my favorite thing
to do for sure, Fletcher said, I think knowing the
(28:34):
resources and the time and everything, we knew what we
had and we were going pretty early and where we
were going pretty early, so that was just a matter
of addressing and that in a way we were satisfied with.
The other wants and dreams kind of fade out after
a time because you're so focused on delivering the road
that you've chosen. So there are some things I would
have liked to do with more seasons, but at the
end of the day, I wanted to make sure this
season I felt was something special. I think we're both
(28:55):
happy with how it turned out. So that is it.
That is the end of Superman and Lois. I wanted
to just comment real quickly too, how this is almost
even more bittersweet that this wasn't just the end of
Superman and Lois. This is the end of DC superheroes
on the CW. I was there for the beginning. When
Smallville premiered, it was October sixteenth, two thousand and one,
(29:17):
on the WB, and from two thousand and one to
two thousand and six, Smallville was on the WB, and
then from twenty six to twenty eleven it was the
as it switched over to the CW. But I have
been following these shows for nearly a quarter of a century,
which seems bizarre to say. Starting with Smallville that ran
ten seasons. There we had, gosh, what else did we have?
(29:39):
We had, Well, we had the Arrowverse shows. You had
Arrow from twenty twelve to twenty twenty. You had The
Flash from twenty fourteen to twenty twenty three. You had
Supergirl from twenty fifteen to twenty twenty one. You had
Legends of Tomorrow from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty two.
You had Black Lightning that ran for three years starting
in twenty eighteen. You had Batwoman that ran for a
couple of starting in twenty nineteen. Stargirl started in twenty
(30:03):
twenty and I think had a couple of seasons. You
had the show Naomi, I think ran for one season
Gotham Knights ran for one season. You have all these shows,
and you have a bunch of shows that were going
to get developed over these nearly twenty five years. There's
a fun pilot that it was an unaired pilot, but
you could get in on iTunes back in the day.
That was an Aquaman pilot that was supposed to have
(30:25):
Justin Hartley was going to play Aquaman in that. He
actually ended up later playing Green Arrow in Smallville and
other people may know him from He's in a show
now called Tracker. He was in This Is Us, the
TV show that ran for several years and was so popular.
But yeah, so you would have had an Aquaman. There
was one they were planning called The Graysons. It was
a prequel series about Dick Grayson before he becomes Robin.
(30:46):
Amazon was going to be about Diana's early life in
Themiscara before she becomes Wonder Woman. There was going to
be a Booster Gold series, I think in around twenty eleven.
There was a plan for it to be kind of
a comedy drama focusing on the time traveling hero Booster Gold.
Dead Man. There was going to be a dead Man series.
Hour Man member of the Golden Age Superheroes. Justice You
(31:10):
was going to be where John Diggle David Ramsey was
going to be training a new generation of young superhumans,
and that I think even got referenced earlier in this season.
Green Arrow in the Canaries was going to be a
spin off of Arrow. There was going to be a
show called Painkiller that was a spinoff of Black Lightning.
So a lot of different things, ones that got made,
ones that never got made. But it has been an
amazing run of superhero shows for the last nearly twenty
(31:33):
five years on the WB ANDCW. Some of my final
thoughts here, I just wanted to share that this is
I thought this was such a well done ending to
the Superman story. Very rarely do you ever get to
see the end of a Superman story and for it
to be done in a hopeful and optimistic way. Sure,
he died in the end, but he died after he
(31:56):
and Lois got to live long and fruitful lives. It
makes me think of two of my other favorite kind
of farewell stories to Superman, What Happened Whatever Happened to
the Man of Tomorrow. It is kind of a goodbye
to the classic era of Superman after years of peace,
Superman's enemy's resurface and Brainiac. Brainiac is controlling Lex Luthor's
(32:18):
body and You've got mister Mix's Pitlock, And in a
climactic battle where they reveal his secret identity as well,
they lose Jimmy Olsen, Lana Lang Crypto dies, I believe,
and they ultimately He ultimately defeats Missus Pitlock with the
Phantom his Oonne projector, but he is now torn that
(32:39):
he's broken his no kill rule and he exposes himself
to gold kryptonite, stripping him of his powers permanently, and
he disappears. And years later, Lois Lane is married to
a man named Jordan Elliott, who is implied to be
the powerless Superman, now living out a quiet, happy life
with Lois and their son. One of the other stories
I really love All Star Superman, and in that one,
(33:02):
after rescuing a scientist from a sabotage mission to the Sun,
Superman learns that Lex Luthor has poisoned him with an
overdose of solar radiation, which enhances his powers but leaves
him with only a year left to live. Keeping his
fate a secret, he reveals his identity to Lois gives
her temporary superpowers so they can spend some time together,
in which she becomes Superwoman for a day. As the
(33:22):
end approaches, he completes the twelve Labors of Superman to
benefit humanity. Meanwhile, Luther escapes execution by getting superpowers of
his own, and with the help of Solaris, attacks Metropolis
and corrupts the Sun. In the final confrontation, Superman defeats Luthor,
sacrifices himself to restore the Sun, becoming a being of
pure solar energy, and lives within it in order to
(33:45):
keep it running. A year later, Lois believes that Superman
is still alive inside the Sun and may return someday,
and the scientist that he saved in the beginning hints
at somehow being able to create a new Superman to
keep the legacy going. Those are some great if you
want to find some great Superman stories where the end
is told so well and in a very inspirational way,
(34:05):
in a hopeful way. Those are a couple of other
great examples of Superman stories. Guys, this is it. This
is the end of the show. I have had so
much fun doing this podcast with d and with Jason
Tristan has been on a few times as well as
thank you to those guys for talking Superman with me
for three seasons. Had to go solo for this season
(34:27):
just because of all our timing and apparently we all
have different projects we're working on and I don't know
somehow we got busy, but it has been so much
fun to cover this show and talk about this show,
and it is it is my plan. I might have
to take a little bit of time off from this
as we're working on some things over at the thirty
something podcast, but I have full intention so keep this
(34:49):
in your podcast feed because I have full intentions of
keeping the podcast Full of Kryptonite going. I have been
wanting for some time to go back and do a rewatch,
and I mean, there's so many other Superman shows. I'd
love to go through, all the different Superman TV shows,
the different animated series that he's appeared in from time
to time, maybe covering some of the comics things like that.
(35:09):
But there is plenty of Superman still out there, so
I have full intentions of keeping the podcast going. So
if you want to come back here and get some
more and we'll have you know, some guests come in
and co host from time to time depending on what
the project might be, but looking forward to keeping it going.
Thank you so much for all the listeners who have
(35:30):
enjoyed this show and just supported it by sharing with
other people. It's just it was a fun little side
project to start off with with Dean Jason, and it
is kind of become its own thing and something that
I'm always a big Superman fan, have been since Childhood's,
will continue to be. We've got a new movie coming
out next year, so looking forward to that too. There's
gonna be plenty of Superman stuff. It is not going
(35:52):
away anytime soon. So with that, thank you for being
here with us. We'll be back soon with more Superman
stuff for you. But in the meantime, everybody, as Clark
said in the end of this one, we came to
this world alone. When we left it, we had so much.
It's the same with this TV show. We came in
not really knowing what this is going to be, but
(36:14):
we left it we got so much. We got so
much out of this show. Thank you to all the
people who made it. Thank you to all the actors
who are in it. Just thank you. We appreciate it.
Everybody up up in a way, We'll see you back
here soon
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