Warning! The following contains spoilers for the Superman & Lois episode “The Inverse Method.” Read at your own risk!
Superman & Lois blew some minds when its Doomsday reveal turned out to be iconic supervillain Bizarro. Bizarro made a big splash in this episode, though there’s still a lot we don’t know about this latest incarnation of the superhero. Like, I thought I knew where Bizarro came from, but the latest episode just hurt my prevailing theory that Bizarro is the result of testing by Lieutenant Mitchell Anderson (who replaced Lois’ occasionally shady father) and the United States military.
Lieutenant Anderson checked off all the red flags of a Superman & Lois baddie from the jump. To start, he had a big problem that Superman didn’t work solely in American interests, and he even recruited crystal-exposed humans to make a superhero team of his own. It seemed obvious that he and the U.S. military wanted a Superman of their own and would do whatever it took to make it happen.
“The Inverse Method,” however, shot my theory to pieces. Anderson decided to send his superhero team after Bizarro, and I’m assuming if he created Bizarro, he would’ve known they were no match for him. Bizarro almost immediately killed two of the three supers and would’ve easily killed Tag (the fast teen from Smallville first introduced in Season 1) had Superman not intervened at the last moment.
If that wasn't enough evidence Lieutenant Anderson likely has nothing to do with Bizarro, the upcoming promo for Superman & Lois’ return episode “Girl…You’ll Be A Woman Soon” really drove it home. Check out the first couple seconds of the trailer below, in which Anderson seems completely in the dark on what Bizarro actually is.
The evidence that Lieutenant Anderson knows nothing about Bizarro makes his mystery a lot more interesting because the character’s origin typically states that he’s a man-made creation. It’s likely that someone on Earth created Bizarro, and DC Comics give us some clues as to who that creator might be.
In some tellings of Bizarro, he’s created via duplicate ray or even cloned. In early incarnations, he’s the work of an unnamed scientist, but in later tellings, he’s made by someone much more well known to Superman fans. There’s a possibility that Bizarro is a creation by none other than Lex Luthor (hopefully played by Jon Cryer if so), which would be an absolute mic drop reveal for Season 2 of Superman & Lois.
Superman & Lois teased the Luthor family in Season 1, but as this show likes to do, revealed that the mysterious “Luthor” was actually John Henry Irons. Obviously, what we know so far hasn’t given any indication that Lex Luthor is behind this plot, and it’s possible that The CW series takes Bizarro’s origin in another direction. That said, we’ve now potentially ruled out someone with the most motivation to create Bizarro currently in the story, which means there could be another character on the way we haven’t met yet. Whatever’s coming next on Superman & Lois, they definitely have my attention!
Superman & Lois is going on a brief break but will return to The CW with new episodes Tuesday, February 22. Those who need to catch up to Season 2 can watch all of Season 1 with an HBO Max subscription and learn why this is one of the best Arrowverse shows on television right now.
