Warning! The following contains spoilers for the Superman & Lois episode "O Mother, Where Art Thou?" Read at your own risk!
Superman & Lois threw quite a curveball at viewers in its previous episode by revealing that well-known DC villain Morgan Edge wasn't a traditional take on the comic character. It turns out he's a Kryptonian within the Arrowverse, and while I'd assumed he was speaking metaphorically when he referred to Kal-El as "brother," this week's installment revealed with evidence that the two characters actually are blood-related.
Morgan Edge's real name is Tar-Ro, and he is the son of Zeta-Ro and Lara. That's right, Tar-Ro's mother is the same Kryptonian who birthed Superman, and was genetically paired with Zeta-Ro early on in a form of an arranged marriage. The couple had a son, obviously, and Lara eventually left Zeta-Ro to be with Jor-El. Obviously, Kal-El wasn't aware of this since as he was still a baby when he was sent to Earth, but Zeta-Ro was very aware of his brother from the same mother.
Like Superman, Tar-Ro was also shipped off of Earth as a young child. Unlike the future Clark Kent, though, he wound up on the British countryside and was hunted by locals until eventually being captured and contained by the government. Tar-Ro was experimented on for years in darkness before sunlight shining through a window allowed him to regain his powers and escape. His experience birthed a deep disgust for humanity and strengthened his resolve to restore Krypton and its people.
In the present, Edge was working towards that goal via a device that could transfer a Kryptonian consciousness into a non-Kryptonian host. Said device was actually invented by Lara, but it was later confirmed when her consciousness was transferred into the body of Lana Lang, her intentions for the device were not for it to be used in such nefarious ways. Lara also told Clark that the time it would take for the overall process to be completed meant there was still a chance to reverse the process and save the various infected residents of Smallville that were now part of Edge's Kryptonian army.
Superman did just that, naturally, but what's perhaps more important is that Superman & Lois fully confirmed that Morgan Edge's revamped origin story was 100% accurate within the Arrowverse. I'm typically one to doubt the stories that villains tell, especially when they fly in the face of what we know from preestablished Superman lore, but both Lara and Jor-El's AI at the Fortress of Solitude confirmed the existence of both Lara's previous marriage and of Tar-Ro.
Jor-El also specifically mentioned he didn't believe the existence of Tar-Ro would've been relevant knowledge for Superman to know as part of his Earthly upbringing, so it can be assumed that neither Jor-El nor Lara knew that Tar-Ro was sent to Earth before Krypton's destruction. Thus we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Edge is 100% Superman's half-brother, but we'll have to see whether or not that impacts how Superman deals with him going forward. I'm assuming the Man of Steel won't go all rogue as John Henry Irons predicted, but one has to wonder if Superman has what it takes to take his only known surviving biological relative down.
Superman & Lois airs on The CW on Tuesday nights at 9:00 p.m. ET. The superhero series' curveballs keep coming, and they've all been great so far. Speaking of which, I still haven't given up on my theory that Jordan doesn't actually have powers, though this theory is admittedly getting weaker with each episode that comes out.
