Now thatThe Flashhas ended its run on The CW, the final remnants of the Arrowverse rest on the shoulders ofSuperman & Lois.Tyler HoechlinandBitsie Tullochmade their debut as the titular Kryptonian and Pulitzer award-winning journalist inSupergirl. Now, after the events ofCrisis on Infinite Earths, they have had three seasons to flesh out their own storyline about what it means to be a superhero while raising twin boys in the small town of Smallville. Because the show is largely divorced from the rest of the DC television universe,Superman & Loishas had the privilege of devoting its episodes to the show rather than sacrificing some to set up a crossover.
However, just becauseSuperman & Loisdoesn’t include Supergirl, the Flash, Firestorm, and Black Lightning (among others) doesn’t mean there aren’t any metahumans for Superman to fight. In fact, there are plenty. While the inclusion of other superpowered characters makes for great superhero action, the over-saturation of metahumans — many of whom have the same powers as Superman — has diluted much of what makes Superman “super.”
Related:What Those New Heroes in ‘The Flash’ Series Finale Could Really Mean
Thanks To X-Kryptonite, Everyone Can Be Super
In Season 1 ofSuperman & Lois, the discovery of X-Kryptonite in the Smallville mines attracts the attention of billionaire Morgan Edge (Adam Rayner). He uses the X-Kryptonite to not only use individual human bodies to house Kryptonian consciousnesses akin toInvasion of the Body Snatchers, but the X-Kryptonite also gives the human hosts uncontrollable superpowers. How does Morgan Edge know how to do all this? Well, Morgan Edge isn’t like every other billionaire like Bruce Wayne or Lex Luthor. Instead, Edge has more in common with Kal-El than the everyday person. He, too, has superpowers because he isSuperman’s half-brother, Tal-Rho. But while his true origins give Tal-Rho a reason to share in Superman’s abilities, X-Kryptonite becomes a convenient way to give other characters in the series superpowers.
X-Kryptonite gives normal people superpowers, like Tag Harris (Wern Lee), a boy who goes to high school with Jonathan and Jordan Kent. When the Kent twins find out about Tag’s powers, they call on their father and grandfather for help. With speed rivaling that of Superman’s, General Sam Lane (Dylan Walsh) takes Tag into custody, training him alongside other superpowered individuals, or “metahumans” as they are more popularly called in the world of DC Comics. But Tag isn’t the only teenager who gets superpowers from X-Kryptonite. In Season 2, X-Kryptonite becomes a kind of drug smuggled by dealers in Smallville. Wanting to improve his skills and performance on the high school football team and further fueled by jealousy of his brother who inherited their father’s powers,Jonathan Kent (Jordan Elsass) begins taking the “illicit” substance. However, when “X-K” becomes widely known to authorities, Jon stops using it. But that still wouldn’t be the end of X-Kryptonite and its convenient way of giving characters superpowers.
There Are Too Many Supermen
Tal-Rho’s relation to Kal-El was a unique twist on Superman’s family history, and it made sense that Season 1’s villain would have the same superpowers as the Last Son of Krypton. The same can be said about Jordan Kent (Alex Garfin), who is already being set up as asuperhero in his own right in Season 3. However, inSuperman & Lois, the Kent-El family doesn’t have a monopoly on super strength, speed, x-ray vision, and laser-eye beams.
In Season 2, Bizarro is introduced. As an inverse version of Superman from a parallel Earth, Bizzaro has all of Superman’s powers, but the opposite. For example, instead of cold breath, he breathes fire. And instead of heat vision, he has freeze vision. While the introduction of Bizzaro is certainly a treat for comic book fans, he is yet another superpowered character in a show full of superpowered individuals. Maybe if X-Kryptonite wasn’t as readily available as it has been, then Bizzaro’s appearance could have been more impactful. He could have proven an even greater threat to Superman. However, between Tal-Rho, Tag, and the other X-K-fueled metahumans, Superman has already beat many of his other rivals that share his power set.
Furthermore, also in Season 2, the military’s own team of metahumans is introduced. General Mitch Anderson (Ian Bohen) assembles the “Supermen of America.” Included among them is Tag Harris, one of the very first metahumans to use X-Kryptonite to manifest their powers. While Bizarro kills the other members of the Supermen of America, Tag manages to escape, albeit extremely injured. In addition, General Anderson himself would use X-Kryptonite to gain powers of his own, which enables him to fight and kill Bizzaro. So, X-Kryptonite allows normal human beings to go toe-to-toe with Kryptonians, a Bizarro version of otherwise. But there’s more to what X-K can do than what was initially thought.
Apparently, X-Kryptonite Can Bring People Back to Life?
In the third and current season, crime boss Bruno Mannheim (Chad Coleman) is able to resurrect past criminals like Henry Miller/Atom Man and give them Superman’s powers. In the past, Henry Miller was just a crazed pyromaniac who terrorized Metropolis with flamethrowers and grenades. But after Mannheim imbues Miller’s body with both X-Kryptonite and the blood from Bizarro Superman’s corpse, the Atom Man is able to hold his own against Superman, even without his trademark flamethrower. Like Tag and the other “Supermen,” Miller becomes a metahuman.
After Superman defeats Miller in a citywide battle, the mysterious villain Onomatopoeia kills Miller with her own powers of supersonic sound. Onomatopoeia is revealed to be Bruno Mannheim’s cancer-stricken wife Peia (Daya Vaidya), and together they keep Miller’s body in a tank for their other experiments in search of a cure for cancer. Later, when Mannheim tries to stop John Henry Irons (Wolé Parks) from turning him to the authorities, Mannheim resurrects Miller, only for the Atom Man to be defeated by both Irons and Superman.
IfSuperman & Loistruly takes place in aseparate universe as the Arrowverseand is without other metahuman heroes like Supergirl or the Flash, then it shouldn’t be so easy to run into other superpowered individuals, let alone individuals with the same superpowers as Superman himself. But ever since the introduction of X-Kryptonite in Season 1, one can assume that any and all characters are likely to gain some of Superman’s Kryptonian abilities at some point.
It makes sense for Superman’s family to get them, considering Tal-Rho and Jordan Kent have Kryptonian blood running through their veins. It even makes sense that a Bizarro version of Superman has similar powers since he comes from a parallel Earth. But if normal, everyday people can have super strength, speed, and flight thanks to a widely used drug like X-Kryptonite, then the powers that are meant to make Superman “super” don’t really matter as much. Moving forward, the show needs to find another, more creative way to raise the superhero stakes without having to copy and paste Superman’s power set onto other characters.
