The Arrowverse has existed for close to a decade now, and in order to stop itself from going stale, the roster of shows and costumed crimefighters need to refreshed, reinvented and updated on a regular basis.
The flagship may no longer be on the air after Stephen Amell stepped down as Oliver Queen, while Supergirl will also end after its upcoming sixth season and Black Lightning will bow out after the fourth run of episodes, but there’s more than enough content to keep fans of The CW’s lineup more than happy.
Batwoman’s sophomore season recently debuted, and the Man of Steel himself has returned to episodic television for the first time in decades with Superman & Lois. The show was first announced in October 2019 and ordered straight to series, with Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch in the lead roles.
The premise follows Clark Kent and Lois Lane as they return to Smallville to raise their sons Jonathan and Jordan, before their idyllic small-town lives are inevitably interrupted by the arrival of a mysterious villain known as The Stranger.
Like the rest of the Arrowverse, there’s plenty of connective tissue threaded throughout Superman & Lois to tie it to the rest of the network’s output, which will no doubt come in handy when the next crossover event is officially revealed.
Superman & Lois premiered on February 23rd with a 90-minute introductory episode, which drew in over 1.75 million viewers to give The CW its best primetime rating in over two years, as well as generating the biggest day one streaming audience for any new series in the channel’s history.
Reviews were also hugely enthusiastic, with the performances and production values winning widespread praise, although many critics were surprised at how grounded a Superman-centric project set in the heightened reality of the Arrowverse turned out to be, although there was still plenty of superhero action to be found.
In almost record time, the show was renewed for a second season on the very same day the second episode aired, which is a huge vote of confidence from the top brass. Clearly, the higher-ups are convinced that Superman & Lois will avoid the ratings slump that’s plagued much of the Arrowverse recently, and it helps that the Big Blue Boy Scout endures as one of the most instantly recognizable figures in all of pop culture.