Superhero stories have to get dark to test their protagonists. Whether our heroes are invincible, smart, or just rich, we need to thrust them into darkness to see how they might behave in the most unimaginable of circumstances. This season was always going to be an intense one, and this episode is no exception--but it also feels like kind of a cast shuffling. Spoilers follow for Superman & Lois Season 4, Episode 03, "Always My Hero."

"Always my Hero"

There's a lot going on in this episode. We catch up with the Irons family, and spend a lot of time in flashbacks to the days before Lois and Clark were husband and wife. We also spend time with the Kent boys, watching how they both struggle with grief.

We're serious about the spoilers thing.

In this episode, Jonathan gets superpowers, Lex Luthor manipulates Jordan, and Sam invites John and Natalie to join the Department of Defense officially. When Luthor sends Doomsday after Sam to extract information about his daughter's location, Sam is shot. He steps out to face Doomsday and is killed--and that was all part of the plan, because he injected himself with Superman's blood and plans to donate his heart to the suspended man of steel.

The show handles Lane's death about as well as it can at this point when we think about budget cuts, smaller cast, and the shorter season. Dylan Walsh gets some of his best moments as Lane through flashbacks to Lois and Clark's wedding and through his goodbye message to Lois, and if you're invested in these characters, it means some real tear-jerker moments. But knowing what's going on behind the scenes, it feels more like a story decision made to bring the budget down. It feels a little rushed and a little cheap.

This is also the episode where Jonathan gets his powers. It goes about like you'd expect. Where Jordan's powers took weeks to develop, Jonathan is flying to San Francisco and back to Smallville before the story is done. Even as that happens, though, Luthor is manipulating Jordan. He stomped on what we're meant to believe is Superman's heart in the last episode, and in this one he metaphorically stomps on Jordan's by playing back the phone message in which he forced Lois into a Sophie's Choice situation.

Both of these elements introduce interesting dynamics for the brothers. I get the sense that if we were going to get a season 5, this would've been the core of Season 4. Jordan struggled all through life, and because so many of those struggles were internal, powers didn't fix them. He struggled to adapt and he struggles to understand what it means to be a hero in the true meaning of the word, using his powers to seek validation and attention, trying to "play the hero" instead of being a hero.

Jonathan, meanwhile, is a more confident person. He's used to being part of a team and has leadership skills that Jordan was never able to develop through his anxiety. From Jordan's perspective, life came easily for Jonathan, and that same luck continued when he developed powers and mastered them immediately. There's a version of this story where Jordan becomes a temporary antagonist. I don't think that's going to happen here, but the pieces are certainly there.

My biggest concern with this storyline--as with all of the others--is that we won't get sufficient time to explore these two very different personalities and how they cope with having superpowers and being a son of the last son of Krypton.

With all that said, I'm hopeful that we'll see more of John and Natalie, and the show isn't going to make us wait to find out whether Sam's plan to save his son-in-law worked. Yes, from a meta-narrative perspective, we know Superman isn't going to stay dead, but the end of the episode gives us an idea of what kind of pacing we're looking at, and signs are good.