Superman & Lois Season 3, Episode 1, "Closer" (2023) TV Show Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm here to talk about the season premiere of Superman & Lois season 3, "Closer". Not alot happened in the episode but there's still some things for me to talk about and it will be spoiler free, for the most part. Any spoilers I do give will be for things established last season. And that ended a year ago. So let's get into it.

Unlike previous season premieres of this show, this episode focused more on the more intimate character stuff than the larger action sequences, Superman stuff, and potentially larger DC Universe stuff. There's still a Superman fight in the episode, but unlike previous season premieres, it happens at the end of the episode, not closer to the beginning. So I appreciated that.

The reason I appreciated a quiet episode is because, we haven't seen these characters in a year, and it's nice to get a reminder of who they are, and what their relationships are with one another. Which most superhero shows don't do these days. I mean we got to see where Lois, Clark, Jonathan, Jordan, Sarah, Lana, Kyle, Chrissy, John Henry, and Sam Lane are following the events of season 2. It was also a reintroduction to Jonathan Kent though, since the original actor left the show at the end of last season and got replaced this season. I'm just glad they didn't try to come up with a lame explanation as to why he looks completely different, because nine times out of ten it doesn't make any sense.

I'm very glad that Lana was written better in this episode than she had been for most of season 2. The way she reacted to Clark revealing to her that he's Superman, while realistic, isn't the way this Lana would react to something like that. It's how Lana would've reacted on Smallville, 20 years ago, but not the way she'd react on this show. She's great as the mayor of Smallville though. 

Most of the episode is taken up by Jordan and Jonathan's birthday party, which was fun to see. I still love seeing Jordan and Sarah interacting with each other. I'm also glad the writers are backing off on the romance between them, because, they work much better as friends. I mean their romantic relationship was fine in the first season, but once Jordan's secret starts interfering in his relationship with Sarah, it kinda just stopped working altogether. So I'm glad they didn't run it into the ground like they did with Clark and Lana's relationship in the first eight seasons of Smallville. Of course there's always the possibility that they'll get back together by the end of the season, but I kinda hope that Jordan meets someone new, the way Jonathan did after he and Tegan broke up between seasons 1 and 2.

So far the villain for the season, Bruno Mannheim, the supposed leader of Intergang, isn't exactly interesting me the way Morgan Edge/Tal-Rho did in season 1, and Ally Allston did in season 2. Mainly because we've had him so many times on these shows between Superman: The Animated Series, Smallville, and Young Justice, plus Intergang's involvement in things happening on Supergirl, plus we're getting a new Lex Luthor at some point this season too, and Lex is almost always a far more interesting villain in any DC Comics based TV show or movie than any other villain the show could throw at us. Though I do like that Mannheim is played Chad L. Coleman, who showed up as Tobias Church in season 5 of Arrow, and has played Bortus's mate, Klyden, on The Orville for all three seasons of that show. He's always a good casting choice so I'm at least interested to see what he does with the character, since he was only introduced at the end of the episode, so we didn't get to spend any real time with him in this episode. So we'll see how that works out, but I'm not expecting anything from this character, whom I have no experience with in the comics. But at least the actor playing him is always fun to watch on screen.

There's more I could talk about, but at this point we don't really have much of a plot for the season yet, so I can't really talk about much outside of saying, "We'll have to see what the season brings us". Because that's really all I can say right now. Particularly when it comes to the bad guys for this season. Regardless, this was a pretty good start to the season. I've been waiting for Superman & Lois to return since season 2 ended last year. I hope it gets renewed for a fourth season, but between James Gunn working on a new Superman movie that's due to come out in 2025 and the fact that Warner Bros. Discovery has been cancelling all of the DC Comics based shows on both The CW and HBO Max, I don't expect it to be renewed.

And that my friends is going to be it for me for today. I might be back tomorrow with another blog post, but I don't know for sure. And I do post something tomorrow, I don't know what it's going to be yet. So we'll see what happens. But until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.