'Superman & Lois' Collects Final Shed Regular And A Fully-Formed Doomsday Headed Into Series Finale
This will all be over soon enough Monday. Whats that supposed to mean?
Monday’s penultimate episode of Superman & Lois "To Live and Die Again" did a lot to set up the series finale, which airs this coming Monday, teeing up the final battle between Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman and Michael Cudlitz’s Lex Luthor. Just when you thought every series regular lost to budget cuts had come back, the show throws in one more surprise, though actually two, revealing quite the spanner in Doomsday’s story.
To kick things off, Lex has, after already seizing control of the Steel suit, informed the world of Superman’s failing heart through Godfrey’s website. Clark confront: Lex with plenty of smack talk. Amanda McCoy has set up Clark and Lois with a defamation suit, as Lois tracks Cheryl Kimble and Otis’s deaths. All of Luthor’s cohorts are dropping like flies. Amanda is soon informed she is LuthorCorp’s second-largest shareholder (after him). Following the confrontation, Clark is driven to train sons Jordan and Jonathan against a Steel hologram, which does not go well at all. He frustratedly sends them home. A later talk with Lois affirms that despite them not being ready, he cannot give up. And when he tries again, he’s satisfied with what he sees.
Lois’s investigation brings her to Stryker’s Prison to visit last season’s main villain, Bruno Mannheim, played by former series regular Chad L. Coleman. This was easily the first unexpected surprise, though it’s likely he would’ve been in this guest role regardless of the budget cuts that forced the demotions of all of last season’s non-Kent family series regulars. He very kindly congratulates Lois on her being basically cancer-free, and together they mourn his wife, but scolds her on letting Lex free and everything that’s happened since. She understands, but still needs his help to put him away with the truths of his terror. He’s rather surprised that Cheryl, who he called “funny” and “sharp”, has also been killed. Her contacts became Lex’s and helped him build his empire. They were a romantic item back in the day too. Later, Lois catches up to Amanda and lays down just how little Lex cares about her and uses Cheryl as an example.
Milton Fine’s Steel suit updates are explored, including Kryptonite infusions, an interface overhaul and a system upgrade. There are Kryptonite-laced screws he’s hoping will be used to dig through Superman’s chest to explode his heart. He even found John Henry Irons’s file from when he went by Captain Luthor back in season 1. Biggest of all, he finds Doomsday retreated to Smallville’s mines, so Lex heads there, without telling Amanda. And when she confronts him, she realizes just how petty and unending the vengeance he seeks is. Not only does he unload angrily to Amanda about doing what he wants, he unloads explosives on Doomsday using the weaponry of Steel’s suit. One more death that powers him up into his final form, and it is extremely comics-accurate. Here, his humanity is completely gone, unanchored without the thought of Lois.
Amanda comes to her, understanding that Lex just wants to destroy Smallville, unleashing Doomsday to do so. The episode ends with Superman stopping to remind his family how much they mean to him, even as their worry grows. He mouths “I love you,” to Lois, but that’s all he can get out before Doomsday delivered another crushing blow in the middle of “I always will”. Writer and director Jai Jamison, who apologized to his mother for the cliffhanger, explained “I wanted it to be an emotional hit and to end it on an unresolved note,” that it was a nod to Superman and Doomsday’s first showdown last season. Of course, this confrontation is a rematch of last season’s end and the beginning of this one, in which Superman died, and his family knows that. “We’re just really playing on the stakes of that moment. And it’s a testament to Tyler, Bitsie, Michael and Alex. They all brought it.”
Addressing Amanda and Lex’s growing rift, Jamison says “One of the things I love about Yvonne [Chapman] in that scene was when Lex turns on her and blows his lid, she doesn’t back down. Yes, maybe her feelings for Lex clouded certain aspects of her judgment, but she’s also a formidable person in her own right.” Jamison adds that his “little fun” of Clark playing with the boys served to “get a taste of what could be lost”.
“Putting this episode together was daunting,” he elaborated. “Going into the season, I knew I would be writing and directing an episode, but I thought it would be earlier. Then the assignment came through and I saw that it was the penultimate episode. Once I processed the shock, I was like, ‘Alright, let’s dial in. Let’s do it right.’”
The CW released a rather retrospective final trailer which did feature footage of Luthor and Superman’s final battle, with Luthor threatening Jordan and Lois, while Irons (played by Wole Parks) and Lana Lang (Emmanuelle Chriqui) are ready to take him on. Frankly we should expect Kyle, Chrissy, Sarah, and Natalie back too for the series finale. Departed series regulars tend to do that. Jennifer Morrison did it twice! Jamison describes the series finale as so, “Our characters are at their wits’ end. They’re at their breaking point. Superman is trying his best to hold his own against Doomsday, but Lex still hasn’t played his final card. Dealing with this monster is going to take everyone coming together to make it through.”
The Superman & Lois series finale, “It Went By So Fast” will end 28 years of Superman and broader DC Comics series on The WB and The CW this Monday, December 2 at 8 PM.
Sources: TVLine (1, 2), ScreenRant