Superman Returns: Is Jason Really Clark Kent’s Son?

Superman Returns introduced Jason White (Tristan Lake Leabu) to the mythos and the five-year-old boy really is Superman’s (Brandon Routh) son. Jason is an all-new character created for Bryan Singer’s 2006 continuation of the Christopher Reeve Superman movie saga, with Routh, Kate Bosworth, and Kevin Spacey taking over the roles of Superman, Lois Lane, and Lex Luthor from Reeve, Margot Kidder, and Gene Hackman. Superman Returns first introduced Jason as the son of Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) and she says the father is her fiance Richard White (James Marsden). However, by the end of the film, it’s evident Superman is Jason’s true father.

In Superman Returns, the Man of Steel returned after having abandoned Earth for five years and he found Metropolis very different from how he left it. Most distressing to Clark is that Lois has moved on; not only did she write a Pulitzer Prize-winning rebuke of Superman, but she is now engaged to Perry White’s (Frank Langella) nephew Richard – and she has a sweet young son, although Jason is sickly and asthmatic. Later in the film, Lois and Jason are kidnapped by Lex Luthor, who pointedly asks Ms. Lane “Who is his father?” when the master criminal notices Jason behaving uncomfortably in the presence of Kryptonite. Jason then exhibits a startling feat of super strength. By the end of the film, Superman visits Jason in his bedroom as he sleeps and the Kryptonian shares the words his father Jor-El (Marlon Brando) said to him before his father rocketed him to Earth as an infant.

Superman Returns is strangely coy about the fact that Clark is Jason’s father, treating it as a mystery that it never definitely resolves, which left some audience members questioning whether or not it was indeed true. Not helping matters was Bryan Singer’s odd choice to set Superman Returns as a direct sequel to Superman: The Movie and Superman II, vaguely set “five years later”, while the film ignores Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. To understand how Clark can be Jason’s father, audiences were required to remember that in Superman II, the superhero gave up his powers to become an ordinary man. Clark and Lois, who finally discovered his true identity, consummated their relationship at the Fortress of Solitude. But when Kent learned that three Kryptonian villains arrived on Earth, he became Superman once again to defeat them – and then he wiped away Lois’ memory that Clark Kent is Superman with a kiss. Inexplicably, Superman Returns didn’t remind audiences any of that happened and left fans to piece it all together.

Jason’s age roughly lines up with Superman leaving Earth for five years to search for the remains of his doomed planet Krypton, as the opening crawl establishes. But the fans are left to do the math and the mental gymnastics about how Jason came to be without a clear explanation provided by the movie. Superman’s repeating Jor-El’s fatherly words to a sleeping Jason at the end of the film, “You will be different. Sometimes, you will feel like an outcast, but you will never be alone. You will make my strength your own. You will see my life through your eyes, as your life will be seen through mine,” was the film’s confirmation that Jason is Superman’s son. It also shifts the theme between Jor-El and Kal-El, “The son becomes the father, and the father becomes the son”, that is woven through Superman: The Movie and Superman II, to Clark and Jason.

Superman Returns doesn’t give a satisfying resolution to Clark and Jason’s relationship or how Lois really feels about it all. Making matters worse, Superman Returns never got a sequel that would have presumably defined Jason further and answered the pertinent questions about Superman’s son. However, Jason does remain canon in the Christopher Reeve/Brandon Routh Superman movie universe, which officially became part of the Arrowverse’s Multiverse on The CW during the Crisis On Infinite Earths crossover.

In Crisis, Routh reprised his Superman Returns role as Superman (of Earth-96) and the Man of Steel explained that he has a son named Jason who is still alive, although a gas attack on the Daily Planet tragically killed Lois. Routh’s Kent also noted that the Superman of Earth-38 (Tyler Hoechlin) looked like his son, which at least gives fans a helpful mental image of what Superman’s fully grown son Jason now looks like.

About The Author