The Superman & Lois series premiere on Tuesday night saw a lot of changes for Superman/Clark Kent (Tyler Hoechlin) and Lois Lane (Elizabeth Tulloch) including the loss of a job, a sudden death in the family, and a decision to move from Metropolis back to Smallville. The biggest change, however, was the revelation that one of their twin sons, Jordan (Alexander Garfin) has inherited his father’s powers while Jonathan (Jordan Elsass) has not. It’s a revelation that changes everything for the whole Kent family, but especially for Clark. According to series showrunner Todd Helbing, it creates a new dynamic and challenge for Clark.
“What Clark realizes coming out of the pilot is [that] he was raised in this idyllic town where, not that it was easy for his parents to raise a kid who had superpowers, because superpowers hadn’t existed when Clark was a kid like they do now, but they could do it sort of off the grid, right?” Helbing told Entertainment Weekly. “Now, all the lessons that Clark learned from Jonathan and Martha Kent, in the retelling of those or trying to teach Jordan these lessons that he learned in the way that he did, it’s like any parent who finds themselves out of touch with their kids. How do you teach a new generation something when you were raised a certain way? How do you influence them during a time when they’re influenced by an insane amount of information — their phones, the internet?”
He continued, “My mom once told me when I became a parent: The hardest thing about being a parent is the way that other parents are parents. Now it’s like that to the nth degree. You don’t know who is influencing your kid or what is or where it’s coming from. So to have a kid like Jordan have powers, I think presents challenges for them that moving back to Smallville is not necessarily going to fix. But what’s really fun is to see Superman teaching these lessons that a lot have seen before in a new way.”
Superman & Lois airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on The CW. The series premiere will be re-broadcast on TNT on Saturday, February 27th at 9/8c, following a marathon of DC films, including Suicide Squad, Man of Steel, and the theatrical release of Justice League.