Superman & Lois’ Doomsday Misdirect Was Great – But It Can’t Happen Again

Warning: Spoilers for the first few episodes of Superman and Lois season 2.

Superman and Lois’s Doomsday misdirect works just fine, but it can’t happen again lest it lose the trust of its audience. Season 2’s first three episodes have brought back all the elements that made the series a hit among both casual viewers and comic book fans, but it also reused a trick from the previous season. Between Captain Luthor’s true identity reveal in season 1 and the Doomsday twist, Superman and Lois has already played the same card twice.

Throughout most of Superman and Lois‘ first season, most people believed that the mysterious Captain Luthor who Superman was facing was Alexander Luthor from a parallel universe. It was not only until season 1’s finale that Superman and Lois revealed that the character was actually an alternate Earth version of John Henry Irons, who in the comics is the hero Steel. The twist surprised viewers and was one of the highlights of the series’ first year. Now back for season 2, Superman and Lois pulled yet another misdirect regarding the identity of its main villain.

Superman and Lois season 2’s premiere had audiences believing that Doomsday, one of Superman’s most iconic villains, would be a part of the series. The tease of a powerful creature in a containment suit seemed to be a good enough reason for fans to theorize about how Doomsday could fit into the show’s story. However, Superman and Lois season 2, episode 3 revealed that the mysterious creature was not Doomsday, but Bizarro. The moment in which the containment suit broke to display the face of a Superman’s doppelgänger Bizarro instead of Doomsday subverted expectations and debunked several fan theories. The show was clearly aware that audiences would think of Doomsday as being the creature teased in the premiere and decided to play with that.

While both the Captain Luthor fakeout and the Doomsday misdirect worked in the context of the series, a future third attempt in tricking the audiences over a villain’s identity could come out as an uninspired choice. Doomsday’s teasing trick managed to keep the conversations around Superman and Lois going strong during the wait in between episodes and made for a great Bizarro reveal, but it is also a twist that cannot be replicated for the third time. Should there be a behind-the-scenes villain in the rest of season 2, it would be better for the show to outright confirm it instead of trying to trick the audiences once again. Otherwise, it will start to lose the trust of audiences as well as become too repetitive predictable.

Surprises aside, all the storylines already set up in Superman and Lois are solid enough to sustain the show as one of the best Superman adaptations at the moment. As Superman and Lois‘ handling of the Clark Kent/Superman lore has been well received so far, the show does not have to rely on big or surprising moments to maintain viewer engagement. Now with Bizarro established as the new antagonist, Superman and Lois has the opportunity to dive into a character that had never been featured in live-action. Given that Bizarro is usually portrayed in the comics as being the “muscle” in another’s villain plan, there is also the possibility of another antagonist working behind the scenes. If there is, the show has to come up with a new way to reveal them.

Superman and Lois releases new episodes Tuesdays on The CW.

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Marcelo Leite
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Marcelo Leite is a senior writer for Screen Rant with years of experience in creative and academic writing. Although his chosen field was structure engineering, there is nothing he likes better than writing about the things he loves.

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