Warning: Although not discussed in this review, if you’ve been affected by the loss of a child, this episode may hit close to home,

As more is revealed about John Henry Irons and his life on a parallel Earth, old wounds are re-opened for the Kent family, causing some out of character behaviour and some big risks.

Superman & Lois has been full of surprises since its opening episode, but last time we got a real humdinger – not only is ‘Captain Luthor’ not really a Luthor at all, but in actual fact he’s John Henry Irons, aka Steel in the Superman comics, a character who, among other things, briefly took over from Superman when the Big Blue Boy Scout (briefly) died.

But now we know who he is, and why he’s so intent on getting rid of Supes, and that he used to be married to Lois back on his own Earth, what more could the writers possibly have left to engage us further with the character? Turns out, quite a lot.

The framing device of the episode – that Lois is sat talking to a therapist about having lost it at someone and not knowing whether they will be able to forgive her, between shots of events running up to that incident  – clues us in early that this is going to be an episode following the usual pattern. When you’re a Super Family, life gets complicated, and the show always revels in delving into the crunchiness of those struggles, as much as it enjoys showing us the mirrored challenges faced by the ordinary families around them.

Jonathan is feeling increasingly isolated and like a spare part in his own family, between his super-powered father and brother and his go-getting mother, and that’s a feeling that can fester in even the best of people. Being Jonathan Kent, it’s good to see that he doesn’t allow this to manifest in toxic feelings towards anyone, but the fear he feels compels him to do something very stupid indeed, and when the reason for that is revealed, it’s really shocking to those around him, although perhaps understandable to the audience who have seen what he has.

Back at the DOD, Superman confronts Irons to try to find out exactly what he wants, why he is here and why he is so fixated on Superman being an existential threat to humanity. The way these parts of the show go really emphasise how perfectly cast Tyler Hoechlin is in this role. He’s good at the bright-eyed, optimistic stuff, but he’s really good at the complex other stuff as well. A man who’s acutely aware he could destroy every man around him and desperate not only to never do so, but to assure them he won’t either, but always with that little spark of anger at the injustice of people’s lack of faith in him after he’s proved himself time and again.

On that note, there’s a particular event here which recalls an earlier episode’s lessons about broken trust. Sam Lane and his DOD paymasters haven’t been terribly straight with Supes, and it wounds him both literally and metaphorically to discover it. Here too, we get to see the nuance of the show at work – Sam could easily be a bombastic two-dimensional asshole who hates his daughter’s husband, but instead he’s a genuinely decent man who isn’t always good at expressing his feelings. His rendition of ‘hope for the best, prepare for the worst’ here reinforces that side of his character, making him human if not entirely likeable yet.

And the same applies to Irons himself – now we know who he is, what he lost and what is driving him, it’s clear he isn’t the villain of the piece. That doesn’t mean he’s likeable per se – there’s a little too much stubbornness in his refusal to trust even when given reason to do so – but he’s clearly also an honourable man with a code of his own.

But aside from all these things, the main thrust of the episode is grief. Grief that unites the Kents with Irons on a level hitherto unrealised, and grief which manifests itself sometimes in destructive ways. The episode has a lot to say on some tricky subjects and for my money it does an excellent job of it. I’m sure that the idea of a Superhuman Alien dealing with the fact he can’t save everyone would be a fascinating character study in and of itself, but the show elects to focus on a more human dimension to the emotion, and how even the very strongest of people can’t just bluster their way through these emotions by ignoring them.

What reinforces that central message is how it ripples out to be manifested in so many other characters, whether it’s Irons and his driven, bitter crusade, Lana juggling her secret ‘mission’ with her husband’s feelings or Kyle himself processing what he sees as a rejection in a way which undoes progress he’d been making with his own daughter. It really feels like the intent of the show is to use Superman as a mirror for humanity, instead of just a flashy character in a red cape to save us from crashing planes and other cinematic disasters. The focus of the show is very much on the people affected by Superman, family and otherwise, with the man himself along with the rest of us for the journey, especially when you consider the nature of the main ‘villain’ plot and how it is playing out.

Verdict: An emotional, powerful and beautiful hour of television.10/10

Greg D. Smith