Why Superman and Lois was cancelled (why season 5 isn't happening)

It feels like just yesterday that The CW's Superman and Lois exploded onto the scene with a hugely successful series premiere that saw it snag a season 2 renewal within a week. It was a huge streaming hit for The CW too and it quickly became a huge international hit for Warner Bros., and it is pretty easy to see why.

Originally spun out of Supergirl, Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth "Bitsie" Tulloch reprised their roles as Clark Kent / Superman and Lois Lane from the Arrowverse series in what was a very different kind of project. Focused on the Kents' struggles and successes as a family, the super-powered stuff shared the spotlight with the heartfelt, compelling family dynamic at the center of it. And it thrived as a result of that, earning consistently high viewership for the network and acclaim from both fans and critics.

Its fourth season, however, is the show's final bow as there are no plans for a fifth season. Yes, there should be, because the show has so much more to give, but its premature ending was down to something outside of the show's control. And no, it had nothing to do with ratings.

DC Studios didn't want Superman and Lois competing with the DCU's Superman movie

Over the course of the past two years, Superman and Lois' fate has been up in the air more times than a show that successful should have been. It was a continued success for The CW, remaining its joint-most-watched show throughout its run and it continued to pick up attention for Warner Bros. around the world. But new leadership at both Warner Bros. Discovery and The CW Network meant that it had to deal with both its production studio and its network going in very different directions.

Nexstar's purchase of The CW resulted in the cancellation of the vast majority of superhero shows on the network due to the new owners' vision of making it a more profitable network compiled of cheap programming but they were reportedly open to keeping Superman and Lois around for a transitional period. Meanwhile, the Warner Bros. / Discovery merger resulted in David Zaslav taking over with a desire to launch a brand new DC Universe; to do that, he hired James Gunn and Peter Safran as the new heads of DC Studios. Gunn and Safran were tasked with launching a brand new single cohesive shared DC Universe across film and TV. But while they were doing that, they were open to having Superman and Lois continue on for "one or two" more seasons.

The show was renewed for a fourth season but it was subsequently revealed that it would be its last. Due to both the creative changes at the network and the studio, fans had been curious as to who was responsible for the ultimate decision to end the show. According to CW President Brad Schwartz, DC Studios were the ones who made the decision to conclude the series as they didn't want a competing Superman project in the marketplace when Gunn's Superman movie arrives in theaters in 2025. He said: “They don’t want a competing Superman product in the marketplace.”

Superman (originally titled Superman: Legacy) stars David Corenswet as the Man of Steel, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, and Nicolas Hoult as Lex Luthor, and it is designed to act as the first movie in the new DC Universe, launching the new franchise on a global scale and hopefully setting the stage for future movies to come (a Supergirl movie is also in development). While fans are no doubt excited for it, the lack of consideration for the story that Superman and Lois was telling has understandably left them feeling angry and confused about the show's premature ending.

The truth is that two different properties focused on the same character can coexist. The new DCU franchise will introduce its own Batman, while Matt Reeves' The Batman films are allowed to carry on as initially planned by the previous leadership, so the reasoning here is a little spotty at best. It's never going to be a justified excuse when Batman will have multiple properties ongoing at the same time, but it is what it is.

It's also worth bearing in mind that Superman and Lois wouldn't have been able to last much longer anyway due to the way that things are at The CW.

It wouldn't have lasted much longer on The CW anyway

Even though The CW has revealed that Warner Bros. made the call to end Superman and Lois, there is a reason why so many people thought the network might have been responsible for it. Nexstar's new vision for The CW meant that its superhero era was essentially over as soon as they took over; the success of Superman and Lois (and the broader audience it reached) meant that it got to stick around for a bit longer.

When James Gunn and Peter Safran first took over at DC Studios, they told the world that Superman and Lois would continue for "one or two" seasons. It only got one (and that may or may not have been down to the delays of the WGA and SAG strikes at the time) but Warner was eager for it to get that to keep the Superman and Lois Lane names in the minds of TV audiences. That said, it wasn't easy getting the show renewed, as The CW had some requirements in order to make that fourth season possible.

Nexstar wanted to invest in cheaper programming, which meant that the show took a huge budget cut, resulting in only 10 episodes for season 4 as well as a major cast cut. All of the show's series regulars outside of the core four Kent-Lane family members were cut (while Michael Cudlitz was promoted to series regular due to his role as Lex Luthor) and deals were subsequently reached that would allow all of them to return in guest or recurring roles. All appeared for between 2 - 4 episodes, but that obviously impacted the storytelling as time jumps were necessary to explain why certain characters didn't react to certain developments on-screen.

Yes, the show had reached a stage where The CW might have been willing to renew it for another season if Warner Bros. hadn't opted to end it, but some of the former series regulars likely wouldn't have been able to sustain the recurring guest roles for multiple seasons and that would understandably create storytelling problems. And as the Langs, the Irons, Chrissy Beppo, and others are important parts of the show, it would be hard to imagine it without them.

With The CW's push towards cheaper programming and the hoops that the show had to jump through to get that season 4 renewal, Superman and Lois' days on the network were always going to be numbered simply due to its huge budget. If the network was given the chance to renew it for another season, more budget slashes could have been on the horizon. And even if there weren't, the network has slowly been finding some hits of its own in the likes of Wild Cards, so it may have cut its run short four or five seasons in anyway.

Needless to say, Superman and Lois deserved a far longer run. But it's equally as important to say that it did so much across its four seasons, delivering an epic run that will make it difficult for any subsequent Superman property (or CW show) to ever live up to those incredible heights. Now that's a legacy.