Superman & Lois faced their greatest crisis (with a lowercase “c”) yet in Tuesday’s season finale, which saw multiple families unite to stop Ally Allston from merging the two worlds.
Here’s a quick recap: Following several failed attempts at defeating Ally, including one that required Jordan to swoop into the void and save Tal-Rho, Clark resorted to desperate measures, asking his brother to throw him directly into the sun in the hopes of supercharging his powers. (Fingers crossed!) And wouldn’t you know it, Clark’s plan worked, giving him enough juice to split the parasite back into two powerless halves.
Of course, none of this would be possible if John Henry and Natalie (the real heroes around here!) hadn’t already sacrificed the power in their suits to blast Ally and stop the merge in the first place.
The finale also gave us plenty of post-battle twists: Lois told Chrissy that Clark is Superman; Jordan and Sarah got back together; Tal crossed over to the other world, where he inquired about his Bizarro wife; Clark erected a new Fortress of Solitude in the middle of the ocean, one that’s now “for the family”; and John received a visit from Arrow’s Diggle, who recruited him to investigate why Bruno Manheim and Intergang killed the John Henry of this Earth.
(Speaking of earths, click here for a breakdown of what the finale revealed about Superman & Lois‘ connection to the Arrowverse. It’s… probably not what you expected!)
Below, showrunner Todd Helbing tackles our burning questions about the finale:
TVLINE | Chrissy was one of the last people I expected to learn Clark’s secret. What brought that about?
Lois has had to withhold a lot of information from Chrissy. We really put her in an interesting-slash complicated-scenario at work with her partner. We wanted to get Clark working at the Smallville Gazette this season, but once all the Bizarro stuff started happening, that became harder to do. So we’re going to try to do that next season, and it felt like they couldn’t really work together in earnest and have a good working relationship if Clark was doing what he did at the Daily Planet all the time. Leaving to go save the world would be really hard.
TVLINE | Three whole employees next season? The Smallville Gazette is blowing up!
[Laughs] It is blowing up! We’ve joked since Day 1 that we should just have a bunch of people who never say anything in the background.
TVLINE | Are there debates in the writers’ room over which characters should find out when?
I don’t know if I’d call them debates. The secret [identity] thing is such a trope, and part of us wants to never have to deal with it. You want to do some of it, like the Lana stuff — her being his best friend, that felt interesting. But the overall feeling was to just do it this season, get it out of the way and move forward.
TVLINE | Intergang has been referenced a few times in the Arrowverse, including on this show. Why jump into it now, and how deep will we go?
We knew we wanted to have our version of Intergang in this show, and we originally thought it would happen sooner than Season 3. But we had some cool preliminary thoughts, which we’re going to start diving into in a couple of weeks. Like all of the villains in the Superman mythos, we want to keep doing what we’ve been doing, which is to take a classic villain and reinvent them as best we can, to make them compelling and grounded and tie them into Superman & Lois. (Click here for more intel on Diggle’s visit.)
TVLINE | I love seeing Jordan have so much control over his powers. Feels like it might be time for a name. Maybe even a suit?
Eventually, yes, I think you’ll get the Superboy name. I don’t know how soon that’s going to be, but I think Alex Garfin is looking forward to cutting his hair, something a little more like his haircut in the comics. But what we really find interesting about Jordan is that it’s such a different time and age than when Clark was saving people as a teenager. We’re in such a different era with cell phones everybody taking pictures. That’s the complicated stuff we want to get into.
TVLINE | I also appreciated Clark telling Jonathan about the Kryptonian technology in the new fortress. Any chance he’ll get to join the fight in a more concrete way?
In Episode 3 of Season 1, there’s the beat where Clark shows up at Jonathan’s practice. Originally, he was holding a jacket. The implication was that he was going to take him to the fortress, but it didn’t play that way. It’s like what they say on the boat: “This is a family thing.” The fortress should be for the family. So Jonathan’s definitely going to be brought into the fold in that respect. We’ll see if he gets his own suit, if he follows Nat’s lead, and how it all unfolds. We definitely want to bring Jonathan into that superhero life more than he has been.
TVLINE | And I’m very curious about Tal. Between Lana telling Kyle she still needs time, then Tal investigating his marriage to Lana-Rho, I feel like something might happen there?
[Laughs] I will say that Tal’s going to be disappointed when he finds out the scenario with his doppelganger’s wife. I can’t say this enough — Adam Rayner is an amazing guy, an amazing actor, and we don’t want to lose him. As much as we can bring him back, we’re going to try to do. We haven’t figured out exactly how he’s going to return, but I would bet that he does.
Which of the finale’s many twist and turns surprised you most? What are your hopes for next season? Weigh in via our polls below, then drop a comment with your thoughts below.