Superman Lois Season 4
Overview
The final season opens with the most famous death in comics, and this show earns it. Doomsday kills Superman in the premiere — properly, brutally, heart torn out — and for a stretch the series becomes about a Smallville, and a family, trying to function without him while Lex Luthor (Michael Cudlitz) circles like he planned the whole thing. Cudlitz's Lex is the version fans waited years for: patient, folksy, absolutely rotten underneath. Clark does come back — this is still Superman — but weaker, mortal in a brand-new way, and the season turns that into a story about limits: what a hero owes the world versus what he owes his sons. Ten episodes is short, and you can feel the tighter budget in places, but the finale is one of the most moving hours superhero television has ever produced. Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch bow out as, arguably, the definitive live-action Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Not a bad legacy.
