Superman and Lois season 3, episode 1 review: Closer

Superman and Lois season 3 premieres with a family-focused debut that sets up this season’s new villains.

27 days after the end of season 2, Superman and the rest of the world have continued on with their lives, with a new appreciation for what they have.

But as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Here’s everything that happened from Superman and Lois season 3, episode 1, “Closer”.

Superman and Lois season 3 episode 1 review

Family matters

This season starts out with an instant reminder of everything we love about the show, while building on the aftermath of the events from the finale of season 2. We immediately jump into voiceover narration from Lois discussing how everyone has grown closer after that, leading into Clark and Jordan racing to the Fortress, which is just so much fun and perfectly encapsulates why this show enamored viewers from the very beginning. It continues to be the drama that it was always meant to be, while also being unafraid of adding moments of levity and joy within it.

But that joy quickly turns serious when Jordan tries to stop a construction collapse without his dad’s help, only to cause more damage. Which is what this show has always done well, the family drama of it all. Clark’s frustration with his son is warranted, while Jordan feels like he didn’t necessarily do anything wrong. It’s a nice learning moment for him.

This isn’t the only learning moment in this episode either, as Sam also learns how to deal with people better and the mistakes he made with Nat in this episode. Like, really, why did he think it was a good idea to bring up trying to recruit Nat when making it seem like he wanted to get to know her? And John Henry Irons was absolutely right to get angry about him trying to do this. But it’s always nice that, unlike the comics version of Sam, this version always tries to at least be better when confronted with his faults, so seeing him apologize and ask for forgiveness from Nat was a really nice scene.

New faces

As for the elephant in the room, recasts are always difficult, but the Superman & Lois team managed to do so well with recasting Jonathan Kent. Michael Bishop is a really great recast as the show doesn’t feel like it’s missed a beat between the brotherly relationship between Jonathan and Jordan. That was probably the most worrying thing coming into this season, but it’s nice to see that the recast didn’t really affect the chemistry between the two characters.

But that doesn’t mean some old faces don’t reappear either, as Atom-Man makes his way back to Metropolis for Superman to fight. He’s not like how he was when he appeared in the flashbacks of season 1 though. No, he’s now powered enough to at least push Superman onto his backfoot. So, after a pretty fun fight that led its way through downtown Metropolis to Suicide Slums, a new villain emerges. Said villain being much more horrific version of Onomatopoeia.

Normally a Green Arrow villain in the comics, this version seems like they are going to be a metahuman, or at least someone who was given powers in the way that Bruno Mannheim gave powers to Atom Man, which are experiments with what looks to be Yellow Kryptonite.

Intergang

After several seasons of knowing that Earth-Prime’s John Henry is dead though, we finally dive into why he was killed and it is actually very much like his comic origin. But whereas he eventually becomes the character that now exists in the show in the comics, he was killed before he ever got to that point.

He was providing weapons to several organizations, which include the seeming big bad of this season, Bruno Mannheim and Intergang. But he more than likely stopped and was killed for it. And by the end of the episode, it’s clear that Intergang didn’t stop with the weapons he was building, but have started with building their own human weapons to take on Superman.

Superman and Lois season 3 begins without missing a beat, expertly mixing the family drama and superhero story in the same way that the series has done effortlessly so many times before.

What did you think of Superman and Lois season 3, episode 1? Let us know in the comments below!