Superman & Lois Season 3 Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing okay. It's been a quiet week for me so far, but that could change at anytime. Today I'm here to talk about season 3 of Superman & Lois as the season finale aired last night. I will be talking spoilers a little bit because I'll be talking about the cliffhanger that last night's episode had, so if you're watching the show and aren't caught up on the season yet, please be aware that there will be spoilers. With that out of the way, let's get into it.

This season is really weird. Aside from it being only 13 episodes instead of 15 like previous seasons had been, I think the current state of Warner Bros. Discovery and The CW had a huge impact on how the writers went about the show. It was still pretty good, mostly, but I did find the latter half of the season to be lacking in comparison to the first half. Some episodes were very difficult to watch for me, but let me put a pin in that for now because there are other things that I'd like to talk about first.

The first thing that I'd like to talk about is Michael Bishop, who replaced Jordan Elsass as Jonathan Kent. It can be really hard for a TV show to recast a character when their actor leave the show. Especially after they've played the character for two or three seasons. In fact, these days, their character is simply written off the show in that situation. Unfortunately, because Jonathan is a member of the Kent family, and is one of the main characters, you can't just write him out of the show without damaging the dynamics of the show. And in this case, the only way to write him off the show is to kill off the character.

I'll admit that I was nervous when they announced that Jordan Elsass was leaving the show and that Michael Bishop was replacing him in the role. Honestly though, I think he did a really good job. I didn't notice anything that Bishop did in portraying the character that was inconsistent from what Elsass had done in the first two seasons, which is something that you don't want to see in a recasting situation like this since they're supposed to be playing the same character as the actor they've replaced. I also appreciate that they didn't try to contrive a reason for the actor change in show like they did 25 years ago on Big Bad Beetleborgs with one of their main characters, Jo. 

In my review of the season premiere, "Closer", I talked about how Bruno Mannheim hadn't grabbed onto me as a villain the way Tal-Rho and Ally Allston did in the first two seasons. That's because he wasn't supposed to be a major threat the way Tal-Rho and Allston were. In fact, this season was meant to be smaller, more intimate than previous seasons. Which is why there wasn't as much Superman stuff in the season. It worked for the most part, but there are a few things that didn't work for me quite as much as I'd hoped they would.

The first is the teenage drama between Jordan and Sarah. This show has handled the teen stuff a lot better in the first two seasons than it did in this one. Most of it felt completely unnecessary. Especially because they broke up during season 2. I get they were trying to do, since alot of it is very remiscient of interactions between Clark and Lana on Smallville. It just doesn't work quite as well here. Not that it worked well on that show, but it's even worse here.

The second thing that didn't work for me is Lois and Peia's cancer storyline. It wasn't bad, it was just incredibly difficult for me to watch due to the fact that both of grandmothers fought cancer and they both passed away while the show was airing. So it felt a bit too personal and close to home for me. At any other point I would've loved this storyline, but due to its personal nature for me, it ended up being the most difficult part of the season for me to watch. 

The third and final thing that didn't work for me, isn't something that didn't work for me, it just caused me some confusion. The Bruno stuff ended with episode 11, and that would've been the perfect place to end the season. Instead, we got episodes 12 and 13, which introduced Lex Luthor, played my Michael Cudlitz. He's an okay Lex, but he's my least favourite version next to Jesse Eisenberg. Even Jon Cryer was better in Crisis on Infinite Earths, and presumably season 4 of Supergirl, but I don't know because I didn't watch that season. Because Luthor was introduced so late in the season, his creation of Doomsday doesn't feel earned. Neither does the fight between Superman and Doomsday which ended up being the cliffhanger at the end of last night's season finale. It felt rushed, and might've been better if the Luthor stuff was moved completely into season 4 with that season leading up to the fight with Doomsday. Instead it was shoehorned into the season finale, despite the fact that the show didn't get renewed until a couple of weeks ago, long after production had been finished on season 3. Which would've been REALLY stupid if the show had been cancelled instead of renewed for a fourth season.

What did work for me was pretty much everything else. I wish Jonathan's girlfriend, Candice, had stuck around because I really liked her, plus of all the teen relationships on the show, theirs was probably the most solid, given that Jordan and Sarah were at odds almost all season, and Nat and Matteo had their own issues to deal with. Not to mention that Jonathan and Candice were the only teen couple on the show to cross over from season 2 Speaking of Nat and Matteo, I also loved their storyline and how it intersected with the stuff going on between John Henry Irons and Bruno Mannheim. I liked how the Kyle/Chrissy relationship was handled, and I loved the relationship that developed over the course of the season between Lana and John Henry.

Overall, this was a fairly disjointed season of the show, but, honestly, I still enjoyed it. I think it was disjointed because of the sale of The CW, as well as the fact that James Gunn has started working on a new Superman movie, Superman: Legacy, which isn't due to come out until the summer of 2025, which is still two years away from now. So that limits what the creative team working on the show can do with the characters, though new characters like Jordan, Sarah, Chrissy, and Kyle have a bit more leeway, as do legacy characters like Sam Lane, Lex Luthor, and John Henry Irons. It's going to be a while until season 4 comes out just because the writer's strike is still going on so they can't work on anything until that's over.

That's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back on Friday for this week's SNW episode review. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.