Superman’s journey through the portal leads him to a world where precious little makes sense, and things only get stranger the longer he’s there.

So having done a whole episode in the last instalment which had virtually no Clark/Kal-El at all, here the show reverts to what’s going on on the other side of that portal, and it’s by turns even weirder than you might imagine and also genuinely affecting.

Straight off as Clark makes it to the other side, he discovers the remains of Anderson, and then heads out into a world which is strangely like his own but so very different as well. As the episode proceeds, we get filled in by way of various flashbacks focusing on the Bizarro versions of various characters in between the actual plot advancing, and the writers make some bold choices as ever.

Jonathan, who appeared in the final seconds of the previous episode, is not quite all that he might seem, and the way that his story gets told here also explains a lot about Superman’s alternate version, and the family dynamic which unfolded in this reality. Here, Superman identifies openly as Kal-El, with no apparent alter ego, and Lois and his sons are known to the world as his family. Here we have a Superman who is much more focused on his image, sponsorships and other ‘responsibilities’ than the Clark we know and love, and that means he ends up treading an altogether different path. We find here that the mirror Supes isn’t exactly a bad guy per se, but he definitely makes mistakes which alter the trajectory of both his own life and the lives of those around him.

Anderson here gets some welcome character development as well, though it’s hard to quite engage with the twists the plot gives us in the amount of time it allocates them. It’s always been clear that Anderson was more weak and frightened than genuinely bad, and the character gets some redemption on both fronts here – I just wish we’d had more time to get there.

Other characters show us what could have been with just minor differences and it genuinely hurts to see some of them. Lois is a very different person in this version of reality and that’s not particularly a good thing. Meanwhile, Tal-Rho – well, I’ll let the viewer find that one out for themselves. Suffice to say, Adam Rayner continues to deliver with the various layers available to a character as rich and deep as Superman’s own half-brother.

Of course the main issue here is Ally Alston and her continuing plot to unite the pendants and fuse the two realities together. Clark might have stood a chance against Alston in his world, but here in Bizarro World, she’s got more than a few backups to help her out, and that leaves Clark constantly fighting on the back foot in a way he’s not used to. While we may have seen Supes on the small and big screen confronted by enemies who are his physical match before, I think this is genuinely the first screen incarnation that’s approached this in its totality. It’s not just that he’s facing off against other super-powered beings, but that he’s in a reality where the important things to Kal-El – his family, his heritage, his very identity – are all sorely tested by what he sees and experiences. Tyler Hoechlin has been an absolute gem in this show from day one, and playing that range of emotions, as well as the performance he has to turn in for the flashback scenes as his alternate self, is deserving of every bit of praise and more. Everyone is having fun here, getting to do different versions of their various characters, but I don’t think anyone is working as hard as Hoechlin from the first frame to the last.

As things wrap up for the credits, we end up back where we started, seeing an alternate Jonathan approach Lois and Jordan, but with a very different perspective on it all…

Verdict: Takes a well-worn concept of both the character in particular and the genre in general and does some truly interesting things with it all. 9/10

Greg D. Smith