Superman & Lois is really, really good. It's a step above almost everything in the Arrowverse, and really belongs somewhere where it can have a higher profile. If it wasn't enough that we love the show, here's a testimony from a guy who knows a thing or two about writing Superman:

Superman and Lois has been incredible. Some of the best Superman storytelling ever.

— Marv Wolfman (@marvwolfman) November 12, 2024

If that's not enough cred for you, I don't know what is.

And what Superman & Lois is doing right now isn't just proving that Superman can work on television, it's also suggesting that it might be the ideal place for the character.

Why Movies Don't Work

Let me get this out of the way: I love Christopher Reeve and Henry Cavill as Superman. Both actors brought different things to the character, and both had movies with some stellar moments. This isn't a dunk on either of those actors, their versions of the character, the movies they were in, or the directors of those movies.

Previously, comic books and animation were the only places capable of containing someone as powerful as Superman in his wholeness.

What movies had going for them was bombast. They had the budget and star power to make us "believe a man can fly." They didn't have to work with the same limitations as television, which involved lots of shots of actors like George Reeves, Dean Cain, and Tom Welling leaping off-screen to simulate flight, and his stories were limited to the kind of weekly fodder that was on television at the time. You could show Superman doing truly incredible things--catching a helicopter, carrying a lake-sized block of ice, or whatever--and know that people were going to flock to theaters to see it.

What they lacked, though, was the space do so much of anything interesting with the character beyond his origin story. I talked in a recent Superman & Lois review, and also in some reviews of Supergirl, how hard it is to write for Kryptonians because of their capacity to punch or outrun virtually any problem you confront them with. The bombast doesn't work as well for questions like "what does it mean to be immortal" as it does for "what happens if another guy can punch really hard, but is mean."

TV Caught Up

It's not just about VFX, but it is, at least in part. CW visual effects have been spotty. Sometimes they were so impressive that you wondered how they managed it on a network TV budget and schedule--some King Shark and Gorilla Grodd appearances stand out as examples of this. Other moments made the 1994 animated series Reboot look advanced (I'm looking at you, Supergirl Season 5).

The VFX for Superman & Lois have been almost universally excellent. The latest example of this was the Doomsday fight that opened this final season. After 10 years of superpowers, the crew behind these shows knows how to make us suspend our disbelief, using detailed VFX sparingly in crucial moments and filtering others through a lower-resolution option like a shot of a television broadcast. Superman made a new Fortress of Solitude in Season 1, he stopped us from finding out what it's like when worlds collide in Season 2, and it's all looked great.

There was something else missing, though: giving the writers and showrunners enough trust and space to explore the character in meaningful ways. When Bizarro Superman showed up in Season 2, it gave us this fascinating window into what it would be like if Superman had a good heart but gave in to temptation, making himself and his family the center of attention. Season 3 humanized Superman by putting Lois in the kind of danger he can't get in front of--cancer.

Shows nowadays put an emphasis on serial storytelling. That isn't a perfect answer for every show, and I often find myself missing the days when we could have just a half an hour of fun sitcom with a cast of characters we love. The Arrowverse was, really, one of the last vestiges of that kind of television. Rest in Peace, broadcast television. But in this case it works, because it lets the writers present Superman with problems that are complex without making them complicated. Things don't have to be resolved in a single episode, we don't need to have filler episodes in the middle to space things out, and seasons are given clear arcs.

Endings Matter

Television gives us much more narrative space to explore a character, but it's not unlimited, either, and that's another advantage. Television is the goldilocks zone for storylines like these.

When Superman died in the comics, it was a big deal that made the cover of news magazines. But it was also a cash grab. DC Comics has built its business around a cast of narratively immortal characters that they can tell stories about and have been doing so for eighty-five years. While we want to believe that art and story are the main drivers behind our favorite comic books, DC Comics is running a business, and it would be truly bonkers to go to your CEO and say "let's cut off one of the main pillars of our business because it'll make a fun story." Superman was never going to stay dead.

While they absolutely got some great storytelling out of it, the aftermath of his death was the silliest comic book trash you can imagine. Cyborg Superman and Future Cool Glasses Superman (aka the Eradicator) showed up to take his place, along with Superboy and Steel. The Death of Superman was a ploy to sell comics, yes, but it was just one ploy that would be followed by others. Comics were, in  all the ways that mattered back then, endless.

Of course, there have been one-shot Elseworld comics and the like where Superman is allowed to age, such as with the Kingdom Come series. But we always know there will be another Superman comic in those cases.

Television shows are bigger productions than comics, and they require bigger and consequentially less dedicated, less engaged audiences. Television shows have endings because they have to have endings, unless it's One Piece. One Piece will never end, and we all know it.

While Superman & Lois is ending sooner than I would've liked, the network gave the show's crew the courtesy of telling them they were getting one last season, and so we get to have this mainstream, popular, and accessible version of Superman that has an ending.

And that's given us a very different Superman. From the beginning, it always felt like this Superman--the character, not the show--couldn't go on forever. He wasn't an eternally 30-year-old man in an eternally modern Metropolis where, for some reason, news reporters are still considered important. Time flows for this Superman. Since we met him, his sons have aged, his wife had a life-altering health scare, his father-in-law died, and each of the major events he's fought have drained him he never quite recovers from.

That has opened up all kinds of questions that we don't usually get to ask of our mainstream Superman. What does it mean to have children that you aren't fully present for? What does it mean to maintain a secret identity? How does Superman cope with resurrection and aging? How does 20 years change your relationship with your greatest adversaries? How does the world cope with the death of its lone metahuman superhero?

While we've focused on Superman & Lois here, it's also worth mentioning My Adventures with Superman as another example of a television show that's doing interesting, compelling things with Superman, putting him at the beginning of his career and remixing his origin story in new ways. Superman: The Animated Series is a design icon, but is still subject to many of the constraints of the older Superman shows.

But Wolfman is right--Superman & Lois is some of the best Superman storytelling ever. The showrunners found the right time to put the character on television, gave him the right size of story, and were allowed to give him an ending. We don't know quite yet if Superman & Lois will stick the landing, but it doesn't matter, because we're still going to have episodes like "Tried and True" and "A Regular Guy" to remind us of what a television show can do with the character that movies and comics can't.