Warning! The following contains spoilers for the Superman & Lois Season 2 finale, “Waiting For Superman.” Read at your own risk!
Superman & Lois finally returned the Man of Steel's powers and allowed him to successfully thwart Ally Allston’s plan to merge Earth and Bizarro World. Before that, though, The CW series dropped a huge reveal about the series’ status in the Arrowverse during a conversation between Sam Lane and the Kent boys. Lane revealed that Clark Kent is the only hero on their Earth, essentially stating the show doesn't take place on Earth-Prime. Following the finale, Todd Helbing explained why the season finale featured the reveal that Superman & Lois takes place on its own Earth.
Arrowverse fans wondered for some time whether or not Superman & Lois would include references to other shows like The Flash or incorporate Clark’s cousin Kara into the mix in future episodes. Now, with the cat finally out of the bag, showrunner Todd Helbing told Den of Geek that the original pilot for Superman & Lois did feature lots of Arrowverse references, but those references were detrimental to launching the series. He said:
[In the original pilot script] there were a lot of references to Crisis on Infinite Earths, with the boys going from infants to teenagers and how Clark was disconnected from them because of that. But when…we’re trying to just launch a show, and cast the widest net we can, some of this stuff is so esoteric that it might confuse people more than help them.
For that reason, Superman & Lois went with few Arrowverse references in Season 1. Still, without making an official announcement, fans continued to question how the rest of the Arrowverse was involved and when they might see their favorite heroes in action.
It turns out that there is a reason why Todd Helbing and the Superman & Lois team didn't reveal the big secret sooner than the end of Season 2. He explained why they had to hold on to that reveal and ultimately put Superman & Lois in a separate world (that also has Seinfeld, apparently):
I think because of the pandemic, and just our want to really just be our own show, and really put our own stamp on the Superman mythos, all those references got stripped out. I had a conversation with DC, in season one about us not being on the same planet, as the rest of the Arrowverse, but I couldn’t tell that to anybody, because I was asked [to hold it] until the finale. DC is unbelievably awesome to work with, but they’re a big corporation with a lot of balls in the air….but certainly, the fans over the seasons had a lot of questions [and] they were becoming frustrated. I wish we could have told everybody sooner, but we just couldn’t.
Now it’s official that Superman & Lois doesn’t take place on the same Earth as The Flash and other previous shows it once had crossovers planned with, but there are still some questions to address. For example, the series welcomed David Ramsey’s John Diggle on as part of an arc that recently came to a disappointing end on The Flash. Helbing suggested in the interview that their Diggle might just be a different version of the character, but ultimately, it's up for the fans to decide if they buy that.
It’s a helluva reveal for Superman & Lois to drop at the end of Season 2, and one that might unburden future storytelling now that fans are no longer worried about whether or not they’ll see Kara or Jon Cryer’s Lex Luthor. Of course, there’s always a chance for crossovers to happen, provided Arrowverse heroes have the means to travel between worlds, so we shouldn’t rule it out completely.
The wait is officially on for Superman & Lois Season 3, which won’t premiere on The CW until 2023 at the earliest. There are plenty of new shows to check out in the meantime, and hopefully, more details to come on what’s ahead for Superman and his family as well.
