"Last Son" Re-Watch: "Solar Power" & "Brave New Metropolis"

 Superman The Animated Series

The past few episodes of "Superman: The Animated Series" have been kind of lackluster to the point where I wasn't necessarily super excited to watch. Will things turn around with these two episodes? Let's find out.

Clark Kent: "Check the trades, SEC reports. See if Luthor's recently unloaded any satellite control equipment."

Lois Lane: "If Lex is behind Lytener, he'll have covered his tracks. Put the hardware under any other name."

Clark Kent: [seeing a Bat-Signal-ish "S" in the sky outside] "And, uh, while you guys are on that, I'm gonna check if there's anything down in microfilm."

Lois' stalker, Edward Lytener, is back again. He breaks out of prison, but this time he's not after Lois, he's after the Man of Steel. Using LexCorp satellites, he turns the suns rays red, which de-powers Superman. Lytener, now calling himself Luminous, kidnaps Jimmy & Lois and Superman goes after them. But does a powerless Man of Steel stand a chance?

Famous Superman villain... Luminous?

After bringing back Livewire after a too short absence, the show brings back another lackluster villain that it feels like we just said good-bye to: Edward Lytener. Was anyone really jonesing for the return of this guy? Anyone? Bueller? And if they were going to bring him back, did they really need to bring him back so soon? There were no other villains that they could have used? 

A lot of things aren't clear in this episode. What was the depth of Lex's involvement in what Lyetner was doing? Did he provide Lytener the technology to become Luminous and use the satellites or was this just stuff that Lytener did after he had been given access by LexCorp to help with certain projects. Why would Lex work with this guy at all after everything that happened before? He treats Lois like she's dumb for even accusing him, but isn't him working with Lytener in any capacity dumb? Was he using Lytener to take a shot at Superman on Lex's behalf? Do I care at all? I do not.

Luminous is a crappy villain. The whole time I was hoping that Lex would be more involved. Luminous was giving me big Arcade vibes. Are you familiar with Arcade? He's a Marvel villain that I associate with the X-Men, but he's tangled with lots of different Marvel villains. Arcade creates like death amusement parks and traps heroes in them and that is kind of what I'm getting from Luminous the entire episode. He's just not interesting or original at all.

Superman doesn't come out looking super great in this episode either. It starts out when Clark lifts his desk over his head to retrieve a pen in the Daily Planet bullpen. Is that smart? Yes, he looks around, but come on. I doubt you made sure that everyone wasn't looking. I'll admit this is pretty minor, but it gets worse when Luminous makes the scene.

I like the idea of red rays taking away Superman's powers. It's a classic part of the lore and we really haven't seen it in the animated series so far. But it feels like Superman's brains are directly linked to his powers? When he goes after Luminous, he just goes full out. He doesn't like check things he out, he just barrels in like freight train, that doesn't have powers. It is not something that Superman usually does and he just keeps doing it. It's really annoying and I feel like whoever wrote this episode doesn't even know who Superman is. 

Ugh, I don't even want to talk about this episode anymore. Let's hope that we don't see Luminous ever again.

Grade: D

Superman: "A holding cell."

Lois Lane: "there are others. The jail cells are below."

Superman: "I swear, all I ever wanted for them was peace, order, tranquility."

At a visit to S.T.A.R. Labs, while examining modified Phantom Zone projector, Lois ends up in an alternate reality. In this version of Metropolis, Lois has died and it has made Superman more militant. He has teamed up with Lex and they are rounding up any citizens who violate the duos strict laws. Will the return of Lois Lane cause a change in this world's Man of Steel?

Fainting.

"Superman: The Animated Series" has really been letting me down these last few episodes, but based on this episode, I'm hoping we are heading for a positive turnaround in the back half of season two. 

Much like Marvel's "What If...?," DC has its own alternate universe stories that they refer to as "Elseworld's" and they have a lot of stories that involve Superman going bad. There is the famous "Red Son" story where instead of being found and raised by the kindly Kents, Superman's rockets instead lands on a Ukrainian collective. You can imagine how that worked out. There is Ultraman who is an evil Superman who leads the Crime Syndicate of America on Earth-3. This is a classic scenario. I mean, evil Superman is the main antagonist in the "Injustice" series of video games. After this episode aired, there was an Elseword's mini called "Superman: The Dark Side" which I've never read but the uniform Superman wears in that is very similar to what he wears here. I love that they decided to do an episode like this because it feels like it's giving the show a little bit of a refresh.

This episode really gives Lois Lane a chance to shine. She's had a few other episodes, but this is really all her. Superman doesn't show up until past the halfway mark and all the things that make Lois such an amazing character are really on full display here. Lois is fearless. When she gets to this new Metropolis, she immediately begins investigating. She doesn't back down. She throws herself right into the thick of danger. Look at her climbing when she's being pursued by Lex's forces led by Mercy Graves. She doesn't hesitate, she just keeps moving. She's not going to back down. But it's also a lot, so I will forgive her for fainting when Superman finally does show up.

My favorite part of the episode is when Superman is explaining to Lois how the world got to be the way it is. After this Superman lost his Lois, he realized that his heroic efforts were futile if he couldn't keep the woman he loved alive so that is why he joined up with Luthor and created this military state. Lois has the perfect reaction when she slaps him across the face. She's upset because he didn't admit his feeling. She's upset with him for teaming up with Luthor. She's absolutely right. She won't have her death be used as an excuse for Superman's fall and I respect her for that.

Superman is maybe the weak link in this episode. I get that Superman is so far removed from the runnings of the city, but do you really want me to believe that he had no idea that Luthor was rounding up people and putting them in underground prisons? Tearing their children away from them. Let's say that Luthor had coated the prison walls in lead so Superman couldn't use his X-Ray vision on them. Superman is consistently monitoring the entire world with his super hearing and he would have definitely picked up on people talking about this. 

The other complaint that I have about this episode is I don't like how they pull back on Superman as the villain. I really would have liked it if Superman and Luthor really were in league together. But instead as soon as Lois is back, the "old" Superman is back and we are just having a standard Superman vs Lex fight complete with Kryptonite. 

Grade: B+

Next up, Superman deals with monkey business, Brainiac's return and a Father's Day visit from Kalibak.

What did you all think of these episodes? Have I been too hard on S: TAS recently? Let me know in the comments.