“Superman is dead. Can we please just enjoy the moment?”
The CW era of DC television is officially coming to an end this year with the final season of Superman & Lois. The first trailer for the fourth season dropped yesterday and teases an emotional finale drawing from one of the most iconic Superman stories of all time.
Season three ended with an epic battle flying all the way to the moon between Superman and Doomsday, not long after the introduction of this universe’s Lex Luthor (played by Michael Cudlitz, The Walking Dead). The bombastic finale felt like a preview for this fourth season after Luthor’s introduction in its last few episodes—with dramatically raising scale. Season four looks to bring the scale back to the ground level, focusing on how each character will deal with the loss of Clark Kent. Family drama is taking center stage, which has always been one of this show’s greatest strengths. We see Lois mourning with her two sons, John and Jordan, and hear many of the other residents of Smallville express their concern for the Kent family.
Of course, attention is still given to the repercussions of a world without Superman. We hear Wolé Parks’ (The Vampire Diaries) John Henry Irons remark that the “world has lost its protector,” teeing up young Jordan to become his father’s successor. Something we’ve seen before in previous seasons but with very limited success. Now that he must face off against Superman’s greatest enemy, the young Superboy will have to step, or float, up to the task like he never has before.
This season and the end of the previous are borrowing heavily from the Death of Superman story arc from the comics, which ran from, 1992-1993. The story has previously been adapted to the screen in the animated films Superman: Doomsday in 2017, the two-part The Death of Superman and Reign of the Supermen, in 2018 and 2019, respectively, and in live action in Zack Snyder’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, in 2016. We suggest stocking up on the collected editions of the story, as well as other classic Superman stories, as the next year looks to be big for the Man of Steel with the ending of Superman & Lois and the launch of a new iteration in James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy film in 2025.
