My Thoughts on Superman & Lois: Season 4 (Final Season)

Where to watch: The CW (U.S.)/CTV Sci-Fi Channel (Canada)

(NOTE: This review may contain some spoilers for the fourth and final season of Superman & Lois, but I'll try to avoid them.)

It's truly hard to believe that The CW's once-titanic Arrowverse is now fully concluded. Sure, this longstanding DC TV franchise TECHNICALLY ended in mid-2023, with the ninth and final season of The Flash, but Superman & Lois was something of a 'spiritual extension', as it were. This is because the show was orignally conceived as yet another Arrowverse series, specifically a spin-off to the CW Supergirl series, and even had a crossover event planned with another Arrowverse series, Batwoman, before this plan was scrapped during the COVID-19 pandemic.

After this, Superman & Lois was eventually retconned to take place within its own separate, self-contained universe, following its Season 2 finale (despite still sharing several of its main and guest actors with Supergirl), though its ties to the Arrowverse's fate are still very apparent. Not only was Superman & Lois The CW's last ongoing superhero series (possibly forever), but it also represents the apparent last DC series developed by uber-producer, Greg Berlanti, the original architect of the Arrowverse, and most of DC's live-action TV shows made during the 2010's in general. For DC fans, the end of Superman & Lois marks another end of an era, as Warner Bros. Discovery continues to lay the groundwork for the rebooted and freshly-launched 'DCU' franchise.

Superman & Lois is also one of the most frustrating casualties resulting from the heavy brand consolidation under the new DCU, right up there with Titans and Stargirl. DCU godfather, James Gunn originally pledged to keep Superman & Lois going for, "Another season or two" when he was hired as co-head of DC Studios, initially planning for Superman & Lois to be adopted under the 'DC Elseworlds' banner for ongoing DC movie and TV projects that don't take place within the DCU, though The CW's new management firmly wanted out of the superhero TV business. Thus, despite Gunn's pledge, it was nonetheless announced that Superman & Lois' previously-ordered fourth season would be its last. Oh, and the show would be receiving a heavy budget reduction, most of its main actors would be downgraded to recurring status, and its episode count would be further reduced from 13 to 10.

Well, that was harsh.

What hurts most about The CW openly self-sabotaging its own (excellent) show however is that Superman & Lois' notably-compromised fourth and final season still manages to be overall fantastic. It somehow defies its many obstacles to become a genuinely engaging, poignant and fully satisfying farewell to both its own storylines, and the Arrowverse's lingering ghost. The showrunners have since confirmed that they did have plans for at least three additional seasons before Superman & Lois got the axe too, and that's pretty noticeable during its final bow. The series foreshadows major Superman Family baddies like Brainiac, Metallo and Darkseid during its final episodes, and we won't get to see how this show would have portrayed any of them now. That's very disappointing.

Despite this unrealized potential, Superman & Lois still manages to deliver a wholly fitting and emotional farewell, while also using its final ten episodes as a backbone for a worthy conflict with Superman Family arch-nemesis, Lex Luthor. Now free of prison, and beginning a long revenge campaign against Lois Lane and her family, Superman & Lois' Luthor immediately makes a strong impression with his unleashed debut, played in a wonderfully scary turn by The Walking Dead's Michael Cudlitz. This climactic season even begins with Luthor's monster, Doomsday battling Superman to the death, and prevailing, thus leaving this show's universe without its resident superhero, if temporarily.

Yes, this signifies yet another adaptation of famous comic book storyline, "The Death of Superman", which has seen several re-tellings across the big and small screens over the past eight years or so. Regardless, Superman & Lois easily marks the best interpretation of this iconic 1992/93 DC Comics event to date, as Lois and her two sons are left to pick up the pieces from Superman's demise, all while Luthor continues to ramp up his retribution against them. Desperate and ill-equipped to face their mounting new threats, the Kent family truly faces their ultimate test during Superman & Lois' final season, even when it's not exactly a spoiler to reveal that Superman's death doesn't ultimately stick. He is still one of this show's title characters, after all. Even then though, Superman's brush with death comes with its own consequences, levelling the playing field in a surprising, yet effective way during the climactic battle against Lex Luthor and Doomsday.

It's also fortunate that the Superman Family has always had a human archenemy in Lex Luthor to begin with. This is a very convenient way to get around The CW's infuriating budget slashing for Superman & Lois' final episodes. Luthor can function very well as an earthbound threat, as he often has throughout decades of DC Comics storylines, even while Superman & Lois' budget is carefully allotted for a couple of big Doomsday confrontations. John Henry Irons and his daughter, Natalie also pick up some of the slack as the Steel team to boot, so you still get some okay action during Superman & Lois' final episodes, even while Superman himself is out of commission. The CGI quality nonetheless suffers in some places though. Still, I can't blame the showrunners, especially after they already set a remarkably high bar during the series' surprisingly stylish earlier seasons.

As per usual for Superman & Lois though, the show's real star quality is its surprisingly grounded family drama, and that remains top-tier during the series' final episodes. Even as key characters like Lana Lang, John Henry Irons and General Lane are now restricted from appearing in every episode, the show makes the most of its remaining narrative real estate to provide some last-minute tugs at the heartstrings through these characters, while also giving them at least one cool moment to make their mark against Lex Luthor's plotting. It's genuinely amazing that the show was able to get around not being able to lean on most of its main cast without missing a beat during these final episodes, even if a lot of that also comes down to how brilliantly realized its Lex Luthor storyline is.

If there is a downside to Superman & Lois' largely superb final season, it's merely the fact that the network is seemingly trying to smother it with a pillow, even while it's trying to spin its final yarn. On top of this inexplicable network contempt affecting the budget and cast options, it's also evident that The CW either couldn't or wouldn't do the legwork to get ahold of more DC character licenses, so it didn't have to rely on stand-ins for well-established characters from the Superman mythology, especially when it comes to Lex Luthor's circles. For example, Kung Fu's Yvonne Chapman plays Lex Luthor's main assistant and fixer, Amanda McCoy in Superman & Lois, an extremely obscure name plucked from DC Comics lore, who is Lex's usual main henchwoman, Mercy Graves in all but name. Likewise, General Lane's duplicitous date, Cheryl Kimble is also clearly supposed to be Lex's reluctant moll, Eve Tessmacher in all but name. Lex's preferred bruiser, Otis is at least identified properly, though this is no doubt because The CW already had a license to use Otis from the previous season.

Still, everything manages to come together in a bittersweet, but ultimately uplifting series finale, one that presents a very different conclusion than you would expect for a Superman story. Even so, the show's ending fits perfectly with Superman & Lois' more mature, adult-oriented tone, tying up this excellent CW gem with a heartfelt wrap-up that feels like a 'true' ending for the Arrowverse, despite Superman & Lois no longer properly being part of the Arrowverse. Like I said though, Superman & Lois is still clearly tied to the fate of The CW's all-star DC TV franchise of yesteryear, and this particular ending is the perfect way to close out the longstanding, CW-dominated era of DC TV.

Superman & Lois will be missed, and for those who experienced it, it will no doubt go down in history as one of the best Superman TV shows ever made, even rivalling enduring classics like Smallville. Its particular take on the Man of Steel is certainly a byproduct of the 'Snyderverse' flavour of Superman from the 2010's though, whereupon Warner Bros. tried to make the character darker, more tortured, and more targeted explicitly toward adults. Seeing as James Gunn and the rest of DC Studios now want to return Superman to his more colourful, optimistic and family-friendly roots, starting with this year's upcoming big screen reboot however (A mission also shared by Adult Swim's standout, proudly chipper animated series, My Adventures with Superman), I must nonetheless concede a variant of what I also conceded during my final write-up for Titans; Superman & Lois' older, more adult-skewing version of Superman no longer fits with the dawning new era of DC, which seems to be more about bright, comic-faithful fun, rather than darker, heavier and more commentary-driven epics that often experiment wildly with their DC Comics foundations. Ironically, the exception to this former rule was usually, funny enough, the Arrowverse, which Superman & Lois ultimately decided to vacate during its narrative progression.

It's funny to see DC kind of coming full circle under the new tenure of DC Studios, ironically marking the end of Superman & Lois' more adult tone for Superman, after the series moved away from a lighter continuity styling that DC Studios now seems to want to embrace across movies, television AND video games. If you don't speak nerd, that basically means that what's old is new again, and DC Studios essentially wants to go back to how Warner Bros.' TV division once ran the Arrowverse, specifically as a more tightly-connected, vibrant and fun-loving shared universe that doesn't really care about being perceived as 'cool'. Superman & Lois, excellent as it is, no longer fits that mission, even if it still deserved to get at least a few more seasons under the DC Elseworlds banner. The show may feel like a noticeable outlier while DC prepares to lighten up most of its franchises, Superman in particular, but the fact that Superman & Lois constantly prevailed against its numerous creative and budgetary challenges, right up to its hard-earned ending, is a feat worthy of Superman himself.

I'm definitely ready for a livelier, happier, more colourful Superman in the DCU to come, but I still immensely respect the many accomplishments of Superman & Lois, and now consider it one of my all-time favourite DC shows. We may be saying goodbye to The CW's long run of DC adaptations at this point (again, possibly forever), but despite the network's numerous missteps over the years, at least it definitely got to send off its DC shows with one of its finest achievements, even while the CW's executives seemingly did everything they could to ruin it.

IF I HAD TO SCORE IT: 9/10