SPOILER WARNING: Do not read this article if you have not yet seen Superman & Lois Episode #4.3 “Always My Hero” which aired October 14 on The CW.

After more than three seasons, it’s finally happened: Jonathan Kent (Michael Bishop) has powers!

In the lead-up to Superman & Lois Season 4, KryptonSite spoke with showrunners Todd Helbing and Brent Fletcher about the new season (full interview here), but some things had to be held for spoilers, and this is one of those things.

“We thought it was kind of an interesting paradox,” Brent Fletcher said about the decision to finally give Jonathan Kent powers. “He’s been a kid without them for so long, and he’s been looking through the looking glass at his brother, especially at a point where things were sour. To let a kid that really wanted this thing finally get the Corvette and be able to be able to take it out of the garage was a joy for us to talk about. We thought it would be fun on screen and then we talked about it forward for the season. There are some interesting stories that come with it. We think it brings a new dynamic to that brother relationship, which we’re always interested in exploring,” he continued.

Todd Helbing stressed that even with powers, the dynamic with Jonathan and his brother Jordan (Alex Garfin) won’t completely change. “They’re still brothers. They still have these differences in what they can and can’t do. We just wanted to take that idea and explore it at the next level, so you’re going to see Jonathan exploring this newfound ability, and Jordan trying to figure out how now he fits into this dynamic,” he added.

Unfortunately, this change will make Jordan feel “less than” for the first time in a while. He was unsuccessful against Lex, his brother has powers, and he’s heard about his mother’s choice when picking one son to save. “It just hasn’t been a good run for him and then to see his twin brother on the up is an interesting place to put somebody, and we felt like that was going to be good terrain to explore,” Fletcher teased.

KryptonSite has learned that “comic book fans will be very happy” with Jonathan’s trajectory — what that will ultimately mean, we don’t know. A costume? Maybe. Jay? Probably not. In any event, new episodes of Superman & Lois air Mondays at 8PM ET/PT on The CW.

WARNING: Spoilery events from the October 14 episode of Superman & Lois titled “Always My Hero” are being discussed in this article. If you haven’t watched yet, bookmark this page, wait until you’ve seen it, and come read after you’ve screened the episode!

It went by so fast… and with those words, we say goodbye to General Sam Lane (Dylan Walsh) who sacrificed himself to Doomsday with a final plan to save the life of Superman. He literally gave his heart for the man whose heart is shared with Sam’s daughter — Lois’ husband, Superman, who appears to be able to recover in the Fortress of Solitude.

Leading into the fourth season, KryptonSite spoke with Showrunners Brent Fletcher and Todd Helbing about what Dylan Walsh brought to General Lane over these four seasons of Superman & Lois. [According to a social media post by his wife, Dylan Walsh only appears in two episodes for this final season, so this is it.]

“Dylan brought everything, ” Brent Fletcher said. “He’s such an incredible actor, and couldn’t have knocked it out of the park more than he did with his performance in Episode 3.”

“Just the idea of Sam making the ultimate sacrifice to bring Superman back, we felt, was really the only way to do it and justify him coming back, because it’s such a big thing. When you kill Superman, you have to live with it for a while, and if you’re going to bring him back, it needs to have consequences and stakes. It shouldn’t just be something simple and easy and everybody lives happily thereafter. We wanted everything to feel real and lived in,” he continued. “Death is a big thing, and we didn’t want our audience to think that we were playing lightly with it just because it had been done in comics before. We felt having Sam make that sacrifice was a way to earn it, because people love him so much, and we love him so much.”

The characters of the show recently went through losing Superman, and now, they will be saying goodbye to a father figure and grandfather who touched them all. Only seven episodes of Superman & Lois remain, but Sam Lane’s impact and sacrifice will surely reverberate for weeks to come.

Superman & Lois airs Mondays at 8PM ET/PT on The CW.

If you think killing off Superman in Superman & Lois Season 4 was already emotional, you need to prepare for more challenges for the Lane-Kent family with the October 14 episode of the series which is titled “Always My Hero.” There are some surely unexpected turns and choices made that will reverberate for the rest of the series leading to its conclusion at the end of the fourth season. To preview this episode and beyond, KryptonSite’s Craig Byrne had the opportunity to interview Elizabeth “Bitsie” Tulloch, a.k.a. Lois Lane, who was directed in the third episode this season by a very familiar face — her husband and Grimm co-star David Giuntoli. Note: This interview has been slightly edited to remove big spoilers!

KRYPTONSITE’S CRAIG BYRNE: Right off the bat: Can you talk about what it was like having your husband David Giuntoli directing the third episode of the season?

BITSIE TULLOCH: One thing that I think he had going for him is that the cast obviously already knew him really well, because we would have Superman & Lois cast parties at our house. So they had met him a bunch of times already and felt really comfortable with him. One thing he had that was extraordinarily tough was that we dropped from shooting 10 to 11 shooting days, which was quite a lot, to basically eight shooting days, which is a big cut. The crew can really feel it, and there’s just such added pressure. And David only had seven days to shoot! Not only did he only have seven days to shoot, he had such an emotionally impactful episode, and the stakes were so high.

I find a lot of actors really love the actors-turned-directors. There’s sort of an unspoken understanding of what you go through, and his episode was just so extremely emotional. There’s so much going on. She’s a mom, and her priority is the mental health of her boys, taking care of her boys, finding her dad, Lex Luthor’s still out there, and wants to kill her, and Doomsday still out there and is a massive threat.

You’ve had several seasons now where you had to carry a lot of dramatic weight. Is there ever a time that you wish you had the kinds of storylines that, say, Chrissy has?

Yeah. Tyler and I talk a lot about how our favorite stuff to shoot, honestly, is the flashback stuff, because it’s so much more lighthearted. It’s kind of fun, and goofy, and playful. It’s them at the Daily Planet, and it’s pre-kids, so the stakes aren’t quite as high.

Season 1 Episode 8 was the first time I really had quite heavy stuff to do. It was when Lois is talking about the late term miscarriage that she had had. I felt like, after that, Todd and Brent were like, “oh, great, she can bring it! All right! Here we go, every episode!” And then I’m like, “oh, man, should I not have gone there quite as much, because now I’m doing this a lot!” It’s exhausting, but I’m a professional, and that is my job. My job is to show up and do the very best job I can do as an actor.

The writers do a fantastic job, and even with the cancer storyline, Tyler and I both had some reservations about it, like “wait a minute, are we going too dark?” This is a superhero show, after all. And the fans loved it, for the most part. They really did. Cancer is, unfortunately, such a pervasive disease in people’s lives. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know someone who’s had it, whether it’s a friend, or a colleague or [anything else]. When Tyler and I are doing Comic Cons, meeting fans and having so many people come up to me and often literally weeping, “thank you for that. My mom died of breast cancer.” Or “thank you for that, my my wife is fighting breast cancer right now.” Or “my aunt had ovarian cancer, and it was so great to see a really accurate portrayal on screen.” The reality is Todd Helbing and Brent Fletcher were were right to do that.

This is the final seasons, and we had fewer episodes to wrap it up, so I understand why they had to give me such emotional scenes where the stakes were just so incredibly high. Episode three in particular is going to be something that people are talking about, and you can’t raise the stakes that high without having to ask someone to really go there… and again, that’s my job.

I asked Erica Durance this same question last week: Does your daughter realize that her Mommy is Lois Lane, and what does she think of that?

She does, and it’s cute… there’s a bookstore near our house, and she’s understood from a very young age that that’s a character that I play, and David had taken her down to this bookstore, and there were Lois Lane comics. I think she was, like, two and a half… she was really young, and to the person who worked at the bookstore, she pointed at the comic and said, “that’s my mommy! That’s my mommy!” They probably were thinking “this two year old is nuts.”

It was a bummer that we started shooting at the height of COVID and and we were all in Canada… we weren’t able to leave because of the strict quarantine and whatnot, so I didn’t see a lot of my kid the first few seasons. And in fact, the first time she actually came onto set was Season 4, Episode 3, when David was directing, because it wasn’t until Season 4 where some of the COVID protocols were relaxed. Even in Season 3, she was able to finally come visit me at base camp and be in my trailer. David was shooting on A Million Little Things, so it was usually our nanny who would bring her to set to visit me, but it was a lot of being away from her.

When I was shooting on Arrow with Stephen Amell, his daughter Mavi was apparently there quite often, and I would be a little envious of that while I was shooting, like “oh, it would have been so fun for Vivian to yell out ‘action’ and ‘cut’ like Mavi did on Arrow the day I was shooting on Arrow!”

She definitely gets that her mama’s Lois Lane. I get gifted comics a lot, and one day, one of the writers on a show gave me a Lois Lane street sign that is now in my daughter’s playroom. Also, when I first booked the role, one of my managers had one of the older comics framed. That was really cool, and that’s also on the wall in her playroom. So she kind of gets that I play a fun character that’s also in comic books and also live action.

There was a scene the day she was on set with me and Tyler where we’re explaining the situation to General Lane of [Clark being Superan], and Vivian’s just kind of used to it. It didn’t really seem to throw her that David was directing, and then I was holding hands with Tyler in a scene. She’s just kind of rolled with it.

If someone, someday comes to you and asks you to play Lois Lane again, would you do it?

Of course I would. It’s been such an honor. It really has been, and I hope I’ve made the fans proud. I think the level of respect I have for the character… I pointedly sought out [information] for myself, because I understood getting into this that this isn’t just a character on a TV show that’s going to go a few seasons; this is a very beloved, iconic character for a reason, and I have to do some research into understanding why. What are the qualities about Lois Lane? The grit, the determination, the fierceness, the pursuit of truth at all costs, the the work ethic… and then to bring that to my performance and on some level, it felt like a bit of a love letter to the character and also a love letter to genres.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: After this interview was conducted, Bitsie expressed gratitude to S&L writer Adam Mallinger who was frequently available to share Superman and Lois Lane lore!]

You can see some photos including some previously-unreleased stills from “Always My Hero” below. Look for the episode to air October 14 on The CW.

Superman & Lois

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Superman & Lois -- “Always My Hero” -- Image Number: SML403a_0790r -- Pictured (L-R): Alexander Garfin as Jordan Kent -- Photo: Colin Bentley/The CW -- © 2024 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved.