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My Adventures With Superman, S3 Ep 8 Review

So, the second we saw what the future looked like in “The Death of Superman,” we knew we were in for more time-travel shenanigans. Cyborg Superman may have been stopped, but that only led to an even worse future where Lex Luthor ruins everything. Granted, Lex Luthor tends to do that a lot, but this future is even more messed up. Not only does another version of Jon come back to the past with a sister, but they were there to basically…pull a Terminator. And…I think it may have cost everyone everything.

There’s two of them now?

Picking up right where we left off, Clark and Lois are stunned, not only by the apparent return of their son, Jon, but the fact that he is not alone. He now has a sister. In most iterations where Clark and Lois marry, they tend to only have the one son, so having a daughter is a big surprise. At any rate, her name is Lara Lane, emphasis on Lane being her and Jonathan’s last name.

The Kids were asked to Re-enact Terminator?

Right off the bat, the show confirms what many of us were afraid of: that by stopping Hank Henshaw and altering the future, Clark and the others overwrote it with an entirely different future. And, depending on whether multiverse theory is in effect for time travel here, that means the Jon Kent we came to know no longer exists. That alone is enough to scare Clark and Lois, but it’s nothing compared to how their kids are. Firstly, this other Jon goes by Jonathan and acts like he’s a 90s anti-hero, abrasive attitude and all. Even worse, though, is why they came back in time in the first place: to kill Lex Luthor. They were ordered by General Lane to go back and pull a Terminator on Lex Luthor. The scariest part, though, is that the “General Lane” in question is future Lois. She sent her own kids back in time to go Terminator on Luthor.

This revelation naturally has Lois shaken. She had just learned that she could turn out like her dad in the last episode. Now, a future version of her did turn out like that. For someone who’s just come to terms with the future, that is a scary prospect. And that’s not including the fact that her future self sent them back in time to kill Luthor.

The reason why Luthor is now marked for death is simple: he didn’t learn his lesson with Cyborg Superman. Instead, he’s decided to double-down on creating a Superman clone by creating an even bigger, badder, and meaner one called the Eradicator. In this bad future, he uses them to conquer the world. However, in an ironic twist, the siblings mission may not have even been necessary. In strolls Amanda Waller, who’s apparently no longer a fugitive and working for the Government again. Except this time, she’s actually learned her lesson about Superman being a good guy. Thus, she tells Luthor she’s shutting his project down, as well as Lexcorp.

Part of me wants to feel sorry for Lex in this scenario. All he wants to do is prove himself to the world, but he keeps being the worst version of himself. He’s the architect of his own undoing, hence why it’s ironic future Lois sent her kids back in time to kill him. All that manages to do is make Lex panic and wake up the first Eradicator before he can establish control over it.

What happens next feels like a nightmare.

Is this DOOMSDAY?!?

In keeping with MAWS Dragon Ball inspiration, this version of the Eradicator feels like an expy of Cell mixed with Doomsday. He’s smart, can regenerate at an alarming rate, and is just plain stronger than the Kryptonians. Lara and Jonathan are barely able to hang on in their fight against it, forcing Kara to step in. But not even she, a full-blooded Kryptonian with years of combat experience, is able to put a dent in the Eradicator. And then we get that moment where she recreates that iconic scene where Piccolo takes a ki blast to protect Gohan!

She doesn’t wake up after that. There is the very real chance that Kara may have just been killed, and that almost left me in tears! She and Jimmy were starting to patch things up, with Kara reiterating how she wanted to be more than friends. I haven’t liked how the show has handled their relationship this season, but now? Now it may never happen since Kara might be dead. And to make matters worse, the Eradicator steal’s Jonathan’s Time-Band thing and escapes into the timestream. In other words, there is a monster capable of causing castrophic damage to history loose in the space-time continuum! All because future Lois wanted her kids to pull a Terminator!

Ultimately, seeing what happens to his family proves to be the last straw. Clark needs to get his powers back to stop this madness! Which means he has to return to the Fortress of Solitude to do so.

No Terminator, You Guys! It Never Works!

This was a very dark episode, you guys. Brainiac invading the Earth was one thing, but now we have someone who could destroy history altogether on the loose. Which means that Clark is going to have to become Superman ASAP to stop this. That, and he needs to make sure his future kids don’t turn out like what they are now. No Terminator!

I Give “It’s Reigning (Super)Men!” a 4.5/5

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