Superman and Lois – Season 1 Episode 2 Recap & Review

Heritage

Episode 2 of Superman and Lois begins with the family officially moving to Smallville. With Clark intent on teaching Jordan how to control his powers, he’s keeping the super-kid off school for the time being. This inevitably doesn’t go down well with him and Jonathan is obviously still annoyed about being away from Metropolis.

Things are ultimately made worse the following day when Jordan stays with Clark and practices using his powers. Jonathan meanwhile immediately faces hostility from Sean and his buddies, who confront him at school. This causes Jonathan to have a pretty bad day, by contrast to Jordan who starts to open up with his Father. He’s shown the history of Superman and his people.

General Sam Lane shows up though with his game face on, prompting Lois to take the kids away so they can talk in private. The kids are taken to the Mayor’s meeting, where Lois meets fellow journalist Chrissy Beppo. She’s thrilled to meet Lois but they’re both interrupted by the arrival of Morgan Edge.

After showing how many jobs will be opened up with his business venture, Lois confronts him about missed targets and paying below living wage in the past. Those in the community aren’t happy with her outburst and decide to stick by hope rather than seeing a possible horrifying truth.

Matching up with an earlier scene in the episode, Sam tells Clark that Luthor has hit a black market weapons site in Moldova, hunting for kryptonite. They have tabs on his ship though and will know when it’s airborne.

When Sam finds out about the kids, he’s not happy and tells him about the toll this truth has had on Lois. He worries the same thing is going to happen to the kids. However, a call comes in from Mongolia regarding Luthor on the move again.

Clark Kent races off, fighting with the masked man until he finds out there’s a bomb in his ship. Clark flies off and grabs the vessel pushing it into space and saving a lot of people from certain doom.

Back home Clark catches up with Lois, who’s fully invested in this Morgan Edge story and remains determined to try and stop him from tearing this small town apart. Jonathan fails to impress at football, which prompts him to tear away from the family more. Lois understands how he feels though, especially given her life is in Metropolis too.

Back home everything blows up, especially when Jordan learns he may not be the chosen one after all. However, the family all band together and put on a brave face for the evening as they’re introduced to the Cushing house for dinner.

Clark is interrupted by news of Luthor showing up at the Department of Defense. The masked man is hit with a barrage of bullets, which strobe across the parking lot. It’s no good. Their play to buy time doesn’t last long as Luthor hits the facility and confronts General Sam Lane.

He asks Lois’ Father to help but just like that, Superman shows up and blasts him to the ground. Removing his helmet, it’s revealed that this is just a robotic decoy.

On the back of this, Clark sits the boys down and talks to them both. He apologizes for leaving them and allows Jordan to go to school too. It’s certainly a step forward, while Lois Lane returns and confronts Morgan Edge, handing in her notice at work over her rewritten article.

As the episode closes out, we catch a glimpse of what happened to Luthor in the past, including a pretty damning attack that took the lives of his comrades.

The Episode Review

Superman and Lois returns for an episode that deepens the family ties while allowing for more drama to seep in too. The issues at school with Jonathan are perhaps obvious and I’d imagine going forward we’ll see more of that play out.

Thankfully though the focus remains on Clark and Lois, with Clark forced to juggle his family responsibilities with saving the world. It’s actually a really good balance here and feels quite reminiscent of the early Spider-Man series in the 90’s where Peter Parker constantly found himself torn between these two states.

It helps that most of the characters are well written and there’s some great background given for Luthor, giving some incentive and reasoning for doing what he’s doing wirthout resorting to tired clichés and tropes. The result is a show that has a fair amount of depth and lots of promise for the future.

It’s still early days of course but this is definitely shaping up to be one of the more promising shows of the year and it’ll be interesting to see what direction this one goes next.