Original Air Date: July 27, 2023
Written by: M. Willis, Cynthia Furery and Aman Adumer
Lois uncovers a secret in Metropolis and is determined to get to the truth. Meanwhile, Superman tracks down dangerous weapons in the city... and finds himself in the crosshairs of mysterious organization Task Force X!
Tropes for this episode include:
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: Slade's twin superheated katanas can not only hurt Kryptonians, but cut through a highway support beam like butter.
- Bait-and-Switch Boss: Though Task Force X lurks in the background, the episode primarily seems to focus on Superman's encounter with Heat Wave, retaining the series's Villain of the Week format... until Slade Wilson, donning his Deathstroke armor and wielding twin katanas, freezes Heat Wave solid midway through the fight.
- Barehanded Blade Block: Superman catches Slade's twin swords barehanded. While his skin is tough enough to not be cut, the blades are still hot enough to burn him.
- Both Sides Have a Point: Clark and Lois's falling out at the end of the episode. On the one hand, Clark has every right to conceal his secret identity from Lois, given they've only known each other for a short time and Lois explicitly declared her goal to publish all of Superman's secrets (while Lois claims post-reveal she wouldn't have said that if she suspected Clark was Superman at the time, Clark had no way of knowing that since she only found out recently). On the other hand, it's also understandable why Lois reacted the way she did, given it's been made clear in both this episode and the previous one that lying is Lois's Berserk Button thanks to her father hiding the truth from her about her terminally-ill mother, not to mention Clark read her the riot act for lying in Episode 1 and promised never to keep secrets from her while simultaneously lying and keeping secrets from her, resulting in a case of tunnel vision that leads her to only look at Clark's actions and not his motives. Clark had very understandable reasons for lying, but it's hard to fault Lois for feeling upset given her past trauma.
- Breaking the Fellowship: On the eve of a camping trip with Jimmy, Lois and Clark's drama over her discovering his identity cause them to both have something of a pre-emptive breakup, and to forget about going on the trip, leaving a despondent Jimmy alone to get kidnapped in the woods. The episode's Evolving Credits both omit Jimmy and have the final picture of the three torn into thirds between them.
- …But He Sounds Handsome: When Lois intercepts Superman at McGuiness Luxe Garage, she questions him if he knows Clark Kent. Superman responds "He's quiet, but thoughtful, upstanding. I like him." This convinces Lois that Clark is indeed Superman.
- Chained Heat: When she finally catches up to Superman, Lois cuffs herself to him so he can't escape so easily. Superman easily snaps the cuffs once they aren't in danger.
- Combat Parkour: Much like his comic counterpart, Slade is an acrobatic and agile combatant, nimbly vaulting off buildings and nearby structures in the midst of battle and avoiding Superman's blows and heat-vision.
- Combat Pragmatist: When their fight damages a bridge, Superman easily punches Slade aside so he can focus on saving the people trapped on the collapsing structure. Slade backs off, combines his swords into a railgun, and attempts to shoot Superman while he's stuck holding up the highway. It's only because the General insists on allowing Superman to save the endangered civilians that he doesn't take the shot.
- Cover-Blowing Superpower:
- Lois finally forces Clark to come clean by falling off a building, forcing him to fly down and save her.
- A more comedic example occurs earlier in the episode. Clark lifts a package, ignorant of the heavy dumbbell inside that Lois couldn't even move. Before casually throwing it on a filing cabinet that causes it to buckle, which confirms Lois' suspicions.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Superman vs. Task Force X is about 5 minutes of Clark getting the crap beat out of him by the more experienced and combat trained Slade Wilson. Amanda Waller even lampshades that she expected Superman to be a bigger threat.
- Curb Stomp Cushion: Though Slade is clearly the better fighter, Superman manages to get a solid punch in that sends him flying. He also has an easier time with the robots he struggled with in the series premiere, one-shotting them with his heat vision.
- Cut Himself Shaving: Played for Drama; Clark tries to use this to explain away a large visible mark across the side of his neck he got from being burned by one of Slade's katanas, but between the fact that she already knows his identity and the fact that Clark is so clearly lying, Lois doesn't buy it at all. The fact that Clark tried hiding it at all rather than coming clean makes matters even worse than they already are, as him downplaying the severity of the danger he was in heavily contributes to Lois's resulting anger at him (since it's reminiscent of Lois's father doing the same about her mother's terminal illness).
- Darkest Hour: Fitting for the midpoint of the season, this episode ends on a rather dire moment for its protagonists.
- Lois and Clark have an argument over Clark keeping his Superman identity a secret from Lois, with Clark's paranoia over being exposed leading to him trying to downplay the injuries Slade inflicted, poking at Lois's past trauma and leading her to be unable to recognize Clark's otherwise-reasonable motives for lying. When their argument reaches a boiling point, Lois declares that whatever they had is over, devastating Clark (who'd planned all day to confess his feelings to her).
- Jimmy begins to doubt his friendship with Clark and Lois, and when both keep ignoring his calls he (unaware of everything happening on their end) decides he doesn't need them. Going off on his planned group outing alone, he soon gets kidnapped by a gorilla in the woods. Oh, and Steve Lombard has been trolling his videos.
- Even the Superman side of things doesn't end well; Slade overpowers Superman in combat and only doesn't kill him because he's ordered to let Superman save civilians endangered by the fight, dealing Superman his first outright defeat and leaving Task Force X free to kidnap more tech-wielding criminals for their own mysterious goals.
- Downer Ending: The episode ends on a negative note. Superman learns that he's being hunted down by the government since he's considered a threat, and finds out Lois deduced he's Superman. When Lois calls out Clark for keeping such a big secret from her, he responds that it's because she made it a point to publicly reveal his secret to the world, and she snaps back that she hates people keeping secrets from her, and wouldn't specifically reveal that he's Superman, and subtly declares that she no longer has romantic feelings towards him. Meanwhile, Jimmy who had been looking towards a camping trip to look for evidence of Bigfoot, realizes that Steve, whose more popular social media pages debunking Jimmy's conspiracy theory videos, had a point about how people drift apart from their close friends since Clark and Lois were too busy dealing their drama, and Clark fighting off Task Force-X, to notice Jimmy had been calling to get him away from Steve and to remind them of their trip. After Jimmy goes off into the woods alone, he gets captured by a gorilla, and the credits roll on a somber version of the theme, and the final shot shows a picture of Clark, Lois, and Jimmy being ripped apart.
- The Dreaded: Lois and Superman discover that the criminals of Metropolis believe that Superman is kidnapping the crooks he's defeated in past episodes which leads them on a direct collision course with Task Force X. It's to the point that Heat Wave immediately surrenders once she thinks she has no chance of taking on Superman.
- Everyone Has Standards: When a highway is damaged during Superman's fight with Slade, Superman attempts to save the civilians trapped on it. Although Slade has a clean shot on him and Waller even encourages him to take it, the General refuses to let innocent lives be endangered and overrides Waller, ordering Slade to retreat to allow Superman to work in peace.
- Failure Montage: Lois tries to catch up to Superman using the police radio but is always late to catch him after each crime is resolved.
- Foreshadowing: In one of Superman's visions, there's a clip of a soldier looking in fear at something. It's later revealed to be the same General who witnessed Zero Day in person.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The brief shot of Jimmy scrolling through Steve's Flamebird-debunking videos reveals that they have hundreds of thousands of views, in sharp contrast to Jimmy's single-digit subscriber count.
- Frustrating Lie: Lois has been trying to have Clark admit his secret to no success. She ends up frustrated with his lying, but when she sees a nasty laser injury on his neck and he tells her he got it while shaving, at that point, she gets fed up with Clark's lies and finally forces him to come clean by purposely falling off a building, forcing him to fly down and save her.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: Superman and Lois, respectively, during their interrogation of Heat Wave.
- Gray Rain of Depression: Rain starts falling while Clark and Lois have their argument at the Daily Planet, and while Jimmy is at the bus stop all alone.
- Heroic Resolve: Superman and Slade's fight damages a highway, endangering hundreds of lives. When Slade continues to attack, impeding Superman's attempts to save them, Superman's refusal to let people get hurt allows him to land the first solid hit on Slade he's gotten the entire fight, giving him time to start saving the day.Superman: No... You need to stop. People... need... help! (punches Slade and sends him flying)
- Hidden Depths: Steve sympathizes with Jimmy and reveals that no matter how close friends may seem, eventually they drift apart, something he's personally had to go through. For the first time in the entire series he (mostly) drops the Jerkass attitude, appearing to be genuinely trying to give Jimmy advice rather than force a schism between him and his friends.
- Hot Blade: Slade's swords have superheated edges that scorch even Superman's flesh during their battle.
- I Need to Go Iron My Dog: While listening to a police scanner with Lois, Clark hears multiple reports of emergencies throughout Metropolis, making a hasty exit and return for each one. This only compounds evidence for Lois that he's Superman.
- Internal Reveal:
- Clark discovers the existence of Task Force X and how they had been apprehending the tech-criminals that Superman had presumably been leaving in the care of the police.
- Though the episode's plotline stems from her first catching on in the previous episode, this episode does no fake-outs and definitively confirms to Lois that Clark is Superman.
- "It" Is Dehumanizing: The General, aware that Superman is an alien, refers to him as "it" during their first encounter.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Steve Lombard not only correctly notes how Jimmy's relation with Clark and Lois is fracturing, but his flat dismissals of Jimmy's Flamebird videos have some merit; Jimmy isn't even giving arguments that can be engaged with, just wild assertions based on scattered bits of often dubious "evidence".
- Liar Revealed: Lois gets extremely angry that Clark lied to her by keeping his identity a secret.
- The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: Clark trying to keep up his secret identity even after Lois was worried about him, plus her past with being hurt by her father keeping it a secret her mother was dying, causes Lois to declare that whatever they had going is over now.
- Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title: To the iconic tagline of the 1978 Superman: The Movie starring Christopher Reeve, "You'll believe a man can fly."
- Powered Armor: Slade's armor uses Kryptonian tech that makes him more than a match for Superman, at least in his normal state without full access to his powers.
- Rage Breaking Point: After spending the day trying to get Clark to admit he's Superman to no avail, Lois becomes frustrated. By the time Clark returns to the Daily Planet (At which point Lois was extremely worried for Clark's safety as he as Superman was flying off to a fight of unknown danger) with cuts on his neck and tries to make an excuse that he Cut Himself Shaving, Lois gets pissed off and steps off the building so he can save her and finally reveal he's Superman. Once he catches her, this only adds more fuel to her anger and they get into a shouting match.
- The Reveal:
- In Episode 2, Slade interrogated Livewire about her knowledge of (among other things) something called Zero Day and Nemesis Omega. Nemesis Omega is revealed here to be Superman, while Zero Day is implied to be the day alien tech (possibly including Superman's ship) fell to Earth.
- Though it was heavily implied in previous episodes, Clark remarking on the familiarity of the alien tech used by past villains appears to confirm that the tech is related to Krypton in some way.
- Say My Name: After dropping Lois off at the Daily Planet roof, Superman flies off to a fight that Lois is quite worried about, as she's fearful that he might be walking into something well beyond what he could handle. And as she's trying to call to Superman, she desperately cries out Clark's name.
- Shout-Out: The little boy Superman saves from being run down by a subway train resembles A.C. Aychvak.
- Special Edition Title: Reflecting the trio's split and Jimmy's kidnapping, the end credits don't feature Jimmy walking and play some somber music instead of the usual cheery upbeat tone.
- Swiss-Army Weapon: Slade can merge his two katanas together to form what appears to be a railgun, which he uses to take aim at Superman while he's holding up the collapsed highway.
- Taken During the Ending: After four hours of waiting for Clark and Lois to show up, Jimmy decides to go on the trip alone, but he soon gets kidnapped by a gorilla in the woods.
- Troll: Steve Lombard does this to Jimmy's Flamebird stream, posting replies to nearly every video that simply state "Nahh!"
- Unwanted Assistance: Steve tries to take Jimmy under his wing by pointing out how his friends are drifting from him and how he can handle the situation. But Jimmy refuses to play second banana to a man who constantly trolls his videos and criticizes his friendships.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: When Slade Wilson finally enters the fray against Superman, he proves to be a far tougher opponent than Livewire, Intergang, Parasite, or Heat Wave, lacking any exploitable weaknesses or faulty tech and forcing Superman to rely solely on his combat skill. It takes until the end of the fight for Supes to land a solid hit on Slade, and even then Slade basically has him at his mercy.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Waller is willing to endanger hundreds of civilians for a shot at killing Superman, believing their deaths would be nothing compared to the casualties on the next hypothetical "Zero Day". The General has to talk her down from this.
- Worf Had the Flu: Slade in Powered Armor is the first opponent to get the better of Superman, slicing up his neck and ultimately only backing off when ordered to. However, he also has two giant robots running interference and splitting Superman's focus, and at the end of the fight Superman is more concerned about saving the people on the bridge than fighting Slade. The one time Superman seriously wants Slade to back off, he punches him in the middle of a charge, showing Superman can at least keep up with the suit if he puts his mind to it.
