Official Trailer Released for Final Season of Superman & Lois

Days after the CW Network inadvertently released a 77-second teaser for Superman & Lois on its app, Warner Bros. Television officially unveiled the trailer today at the Superman & Lois panel at San Diego Comic Con. This marks the beloved series’ first SDCC panel since its debut in early 2021, as it usually films during the summer when Comic Con occurs. With the series now wrapped and its final season set to debut in October, the cast and crew are finally free to promote Superman & Lois at the world’s biggest pop culture festival.

The fourth and final season of Superman & Lois will loosely adapt the best-selling 1990s event story “The Death of Superman,” where Superman and Doomsday perish at each other’s hands, or more precisely, “Funeral For a Friend,” the tale that follows Superman’s demise. The teaser art poses the question of what happens in a world without Superman, paralleling the tagline of “Funeral For a Friend.”

The trailer hints at a grim fate for Sam Lane (Dylan Walsh), along with other heart-wrenching moments. Without Superman’s intervention, one might wonder how these events will unfold, especially in a season limited to just ten episodes. The reduced season comes with several cast members either exiting or scaling back from series regulars to recurring guest stars. Walsh is among them, along with Emmanuelle Chriqui (Lana Lang), Erik Valdez (Kyle Cushing), Inde Navarrette (Sarah Cushing), Wole Parks (John Henry Irons), Tayler Buck (Natalie Irons), and Sofia Hasmik (Chrissy Beppo).

The “Death of Superman” storyline has been adapted a few times, first in DC’s initial DC Universe-branded animated movie, Superman: Doomsday. Although not closely following the comics, it introduced the concept of Lex Luthor’s connection to Doomsday’s creation. This theme was revisited in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which also concluded with Superman’s death, and later in a two-part animated movie The Death and Return of Superman. In Superman & Lois, Doomsday is a mutated version of Bizarro, sent by Lex Luthor to battle Superman.

Superman was resurrected in Reign of the Supermen!, a narrative where four other characters attempt to replace the deceased Man of Steel. These “Supermen” included John Henry Irons/Steel, a genetically-engineered Superboy, The Eradicator, and Hank Henshaw, a Cyborg Superman who ultimately turned out to be the story’s villain.

Versions of Eradicator, Steel, and Superboy have appeared in Superman & Lois, likely setting up some rendition of Reign of the Supermen! in the fourth season. The show also featured Superman’s black “recovery suit,” from Reign of the Supermen!, as the attire for an evil Superman who murdered Lois on John Henry Irons’s Earth. It’s challenging to envision much of the season progressing without Clark or lead actor Tyler Hoechlin, making it improbable to be a direct adaptation of the story.

Superman & Lois will launch its fourth and final season on Thursday, October 17th. The series will return from its extended hiatus with a 2-hour premiere from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET. Starting the following week, Superman & Lois will air on Thursday nights at 8 p.m., followed by new episodes of the adventure series The Librarians: The Next Chapter, produced by Leverage executive producer Dean Devlin. The series will feature a ten-episode order, and with likely breaks for sports and the holidays, it’s difficult to predict the finale’s air date.

Source: Comic Book