Warning! The following contains spoilers for the Superman & Lois Season 3 episode "Closer." Read at your own risk!
Superman & Lois kicked off Season 3 with a surprising scene in which audiences witnessed Lois and Clark getting intimate at his brother Tal's private villa. It was a mild shock for reasons I couldn't immediately understand, but after seeing co-showrunners Todd Helbing and Brent Fletcher explain why it happened, it made sense.
Lois and Clark are a married couple with two teenage sons, so it shouldn't be jarring to see them have a sex scene. As Todd Helbing mentioned to TVLine, however, intimacy was not something Superman & Lois had focused on in its first two seasons. Helbing expressed it was a "goal' to change that in Season 3 and explained why:
It was a goal to get them more intimate and to show them more as a couple. The boys are also getting older, so we’re getting back to Clark and Lois as just two people who are in love and married.
Lois and Clark's intimate scene paved the way for another big surprise of the episode: a doctor telling Lois she might be pregnant. In true television fashion, however, Lois received word she was not pregnant just when she and Clark decided they truly wanted another child. Lois also received some concerning news that the symptoms she showed might be a sign of something serious, but Superman & Lois left us hanging on where that's headed.
Brent Fletcher added some behind-the-scenes context to Lois and Clark in the Season 3 premiere. Fletcher spoke about Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch, and the need to take advantage of their on-screen chemistry as a couple:
This is a show that has joy and hope, and we’re fortunate to have Tyler [Hoechlin] and Bitsie [Tulloch], who have such real on-screen chemistry. It’s an engine for a show, and we think we’ve got one of the best — if not the best — married couples on television.
I completely agree with that statement. Lois and Clark, without a doubt, are my favorite couple from the Arrowverse, with all due respect to Barry and Iris from The Flash. It was cool to see them operating more like an actual married couple and some of the hijinks of trying to navigate a potential unplanned pregnancy.
Speaking of which, I was also really happy to see that when John Henry Irons spotted Clark getting a pregnancy test at the pharmacy, he wasn't weird about it. The John in Seasons 1 and 2 would've had some complicated feelings related to the fact that Lois was his wife back on his Earth, but that attitude is seemingly absent in Season 3. Perhaps he'll finally move on to Lana Lang, as we've been teased with previously.
This episode also featured an unexpected romantic encounter between Kyle and Chrissy. As Chrissy mentioned, them being together might be messy, considering that Lana and Kyle only just got divorced. Smallville is also, as the name implies, a small town. It'll only be a matter of time before folks find out should they continue.
Overall, this episode felt like a departure from typical Superman & Lois, though not an entirely unwelcome one. Plus, we have a whole season to get more screen time for Bruno Mannheim and Lex Luthor. This was some much-needed character development that should help propel the personal stories throughout the season.
Superman & Lois is back on The CW on Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET. It's one of many shows returning on the 2023 TV schedule, so be sure to give it a look to see what other shows are coming back.
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