Recap of Superman & Lois
Season 2, Episode 15
Waiting for Superman
With Ally close to fusing Earth and Bizarro-Earth, Superman makes a desperate attempt to return to full power with an unexpected assist from Tal-Rho. John Henry and Natalie work to find a way to close the portal between the worlds. The townspeople struggle to find safety of the inhabitants of the two worlds are blipped back and forth between realities as the merge of the two worlds comes closer to completion.Tropes involved in this Episode:
- Alternate Continuity: After two seasons of fans wondering why there were no mentions of other Arrowverse heroes besides John Diggle and one reference last season to the late Oliver Queen, this episode reveals Superman & Lois is set on another Earth.
- And the Adventure Continues: The Season ends with Clark building a new Fortress of Solitude for himself and his family, this time in the sea.
- Attack Backfire: Ally tries to absorb Superman's energy after his sun bath, but there's so much of it that not only can she not meaningfully affect him, it actually destabilizes her merger and allows Superman to literally punch her into her individual selves.
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: Superman can do so even without his powers, apparently. He is also able to speak to Tal and survive in close proximity to the solar corona. Jordan also manages to fly into space and shows no signs that it inconveniences him in any way. Thus checking off another item on the list of Kryptonian superpowers.
- Big Damn Heroes:
- Jordan tackles Ally away and saves his uncle from falling to his death.
- Superman arrives just in time to save John Henry and Natalie, luring a very angry Ally out of the Void Between the Worlds and back into space.
- Brought Down to Normal: Superman defuses the merged Ally into her two original counterparts by overloading her.
- Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario:
- Sarah and Jordan decide to start over.
- Averted with Lana and Kyle. She's simply not ready and perhaps not capable of forgetting or forgiving.
- Call-Back: Tal-Rho goes to Bizarro-Earth and is looking for his counterpart's wife, Lana-Rho.
- Cool Uncle: Before departing to Bizarro-Earth, Tal sends his nephews two really expensive trucks as a parting gift. Clark is annoyed, shouting into the sky that it's a somewhat misguided way to apologize.
- Crazy-Prepared: Bizarro-Chrissy obtained an audio translator device after her office's strange encounter with backwards-talking Lt. Gen. Anderson earlier in the season. The device allows her to converse briefly with Lois and Sam before the planetary merger effect whisks her to the other Earth.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Ally easily defeats Tal when the latter attempts to stop her.
- Didn't Think This Through: Tal-Rho decides to try his hand at stopping Ally, since Superman can't and something needs to be done. If not for Jordan, it would have gone just as badly for him as it did for Superman. He lampshades after the fact that it was a terrible idea.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After an entire season of being weakened by red sun radiation in captivity, taking a bullet for his brother, and nearly getting killed by Ally, Tal-Rho earns his freedom and uses the opportunity to have a fresh start on Bizarro Earth.
- Easily Forgiven: Lucy and her family are apparently on good terms again.
- Flashback:
- When Nat laments about not being able to say goodbye to her dad like she couldn't to her mom, we see a Flashback of the latter's death.
- Clark has one to numerous moments with his family when he is recharging inside the sun.
- Friendship Moment: Or rather family moment, when Jordan and Jonathan tell Nat that she is part of the family too when she departs, and Nat in turn tells them that she was glad to have had brothers.
- Godzilla Threshold: Obviously, everybody points out how risky it is for Clark to let himself be thrown into the sun with his powers gone, but the alternative is letting Ally win.
- Guilt Complex: While being on Bizarro-Earth with Lois, Kyle contemplates that maybe he deserves to die without his family, after what he put them through.
- Heroic Sacrifice: John and Nat use the last of their suit power to complete the plan to destroy the portals, because they can't escape anyway and at least their sacrifice will prevent the merger. Luckily, Superman regains his powers and rescues them.
- He's Back!: After absorbing enough solar energy, Superman roars back into action, his powers stronger than ever.
- Hurl It into the Sun: The other plan to heal and repower Clark by sending him into the sun with Tal-Rho's help. Thankfully, it works just in time.
- Internal Reveal:
- Lois tells Chrissy that Clark is Superman.
- Sarah figured out that Clark is Superman as well, given the obvious similarities between Jordan's powers and Superman's.
- Irony: Clark notes this about Tal helping to save the world, when one year ago he was the one to try and destroy it. Tal corrects him by saying that he is not doing this for the world, but for Clark and his family.
- I've Come Too Far: When she's interrogating the two Allys after they've been defeated, they reveal to Lois that they never felt as complete as they hoped they'd feel after merging, but carried on with their plan regardless because they didn't want to be alone.
- Karma Houdini: Lucy's only consequence for drugging her father, stealing his military credentials, sneaking into a classified DOD facility, breaking out a high target prisoner who almost destroys the universe, and luring Superman into an ambush that nearly killed him is... being sent to live in Metropolis, the in-universe equivalent of New York.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: Bizarro-Chrissy disappears right when she is about to say that she doesn't want to die. Kyle does the same while talking to Lois on Bizarro-Earth, then finds himself back on their Earth. So people are not actually dying but being shifted back and forth between the two Earths.
- Lost in Transmission: Nat gets a garbled transmission from her father asking for her escape pod in-between the static, which she reasons is because he can't fly back under his own power. When she brings it to him personally, he reveals the part she missed: the intent was to have her load it with X-Kryptonite and turn it into an improvised bomb. Now both of them are stranded in the void and their only choice is to use the last of their suit power to give the pod the necessary juice to complete the plan.
- My God, You Are Serious!: Chrissy first laughs about Lois telling her the truth about her husband, until she realizes she is serious.
- Mythology Gag:
- Superman rapidly flying around the Earths to stop the merging process is clearly a reference to the famous Superman: The Movie scene where he flies around the Earth to go back in time.
- Miracle Monday is a fictional holiday in the DC Universe (often depicted in its future) that commemorates Superman and other heroic figures. It was originated by the writer Elliot S! Maggin in his eponymous novel.
- Superman glowing yellow as he leaves the Sun is reminiscent of DC One Million, where his future self is a glowing, golden figure who lives in the Sun.
- Never Tell Me the Odds!: When Nat's A.I. warns about the odds of the mission to rescue her father succeeding, a clearly irritated Nat orders a halt to such talk and tells the A.I. to focus only on the rescue plan.
- No Ontological Inertia: After Bizarro-Earth is sent back to its universe and the reality shifts end, all people (with the exception of Bizarro-Ally and Tal-Rho) and everything else are back on their worlds, and any debris and damage seem to have completely vanished.
- Phlebotinum Overload: Superman absorbs so much energy from the sun that he's able to forcibly break Ally's fusion, and follows it up by splitting the two Earths moments before they can fuse.
- Plot-Driven Breakdown: The reality merger causes people to be displaced between the two worlds, which for some reason means Lois is sent to Bizarro-Earth and remains there until the crisis ends, while every other Earth individual only pops over briefly and the Bizarro-Earth population is sent to Earth, leaving Lois in a ghost town. In a positive application, both Allys are left on Earth in DOD custody, sparing both worlds her toxic ideology.
- Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: "Take some more."
- Ramming Always Works: John Henry and Natalie send her escape pod at the portals and detonate it, destroying both to stop Ally from fusing the worlds. It works, but she's pissed.
- The Reveal: As Jonathan and Jordan despair over their father's apparent fate, Sam calms them down by explaining that he's seen glimpses of amazing heroes on other Earths, and Superman is better than any of them. This explains why the other Arrowverse heroes have never shown up to help: they don't exist on this Earth, because it's not Earth-Prime.
- Rousing Speech: Sam gives a short one to his grandkids after they get into a fight over being worried about their dad.
- Save the Villain: After defusing them, Superman saves the two Allys from falling to their deaths.
- Sequel Hook: John Diggle approaches John Henry Irons with information concerning Bruno Mannheim, leader of Intergang and the murderer of this Earth's Irons, hoping to get his help in finding out why he wanted Irons dead.
- Shout-Out:
- Some of the views of the other Earth(s) in the sky(s) appear to take visual inspiration from the 1985 film The Quiet Earth.
- Tal compares Bizarro-Lois to Corpse Bride.
- A submarine falling out of sky and landing someplace far away from any ocean is like a gag found in Looney Tunes and MGM cartoons.
- Skewed Priorities: Clark scolds his brother for commenting on Bizarro-Lois's clothing style with the catastrophe around them going on.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- After the crisis is over and averted, Lana still isn't able to just forgive Kyle, and she makes it clear that things might never be the same as they were before.
- Given that Sarah now knows about Jordan's superpowers, it's not exactly difficult for her to figure out that his dad is Superman.
- Since Clark's only work experience is at the Daily Planet, Chrissy is rather hesitant at first to hire him.
- This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Nat insists on going to save her father alone, against the Kent brothers' protests.
- Translation Convention: During the final scene on Bizarro-Earth with Tal now there, the episode doesn't bother with having him or the bartender doing Sdrawkcab Speech, Tal seemingly having adapted just like his brother offscreen.
- Villainous Breakdown: Ally, after Nat and John Henry overload and explode the portals.
- Was It All a Lie?: At the end, Lois visits the two Allys to ask if there was ever any truth to her claims of "becoming whole". They concede that, at best, the merger brought a fleeting moment of joy (not the same thing, as Lois brusquely notes) before more loneliness, and they carried on because they didn't want to be alone.
- Wham Line: As described above, John Diggle mentions Bruno Mannheim and Intergang.
