Tyler Hoechlin and Bitsie Tulloch Explain if ‘Superman & Lois’ Final Season Will Tie Up All Storylines

The Big Picture

• Collider’s Meredith Loftus sat with
  Superman & Lois
  ‘ cast and crew at the 2024 San Diego Comic-Con.
• Season 4 will wrap up all storylines as everyone grapples with Superman’s death and tries to fill in his shoes.
• The crew reminisces on their favorite scenes and hope their show resonates and inspires people for years to come.

Superman & Lois joins Comic-Con for the first and final time as the series wraps up with its fourth season in October. Hoping to make a meaningful impact on the colossal legacy left by a moonlighting journalist, the live-action series will also mark the close of the Arrowverse, as it’s final surviving show.

To celebrate this hopeful series, Collider’s Meredith Loftus sat down with the cast who play the titular characters, Tyler Hoechlin and Bitsie Tulloch, as well as executive producers Brent Fletcher and Todd Helbing, during the 2024 San Diego Comic-Con. The crew reminisces on their run on the show, recalling their favorite scenes and reassuring us that Season 4 will offer closure to all storylines. They also finish on a heartfelt and bittersweet note, hoping that Superman & Lois has impacted us just as much as it has impacted them. You can hear this straight from the crew in the video above or read the transcript below.

Superman Begins and Ends at Comic-Con Hall H

COLLIDER: What did it mean for you to be at Hall H to be able to celebrate this series?

TYLER HOECHLIN: It’s kind of great, the fact that this is the first time we’ve been here as a team to represent the show. Personally, for me, it’s weirdly being bookended. I first did this for Superman eight years ago, when it was announced that I was cast for Supergirl. I hadn’t shot a single frame as Superman, and now, coming back and doing it again being completely finished with a project, it’s a very strange feeling. But to do it in Hall H and to give the fans a proper send-off for the show—we shared a really fun, exciting clip with them—I think it was a nice way to just kind of cap this whole thing off.

TODD HELBING: I totally agree. We had such a unique start with COVID and masks. It was just bonkers. We finished shooting a couple of months ago, and we’ve had a few goodbyes, so to have a celebration of it is really nice.

BRENT FLETCHER: Just an opportunity to see the fans and see how excited they were, it was amazing. Special.

‘Superman and Lois’ Crew Share Their Favorite Scenes

I think Superman & Lois, as you said in the panel earlier today, is such a unique telling of the Superman story because it’s so grounded and based on the relationship between Clark and Lois. So, for the two of you, what have been your favorite scenes between this couple across the series?

BITSIE TULLOCH: I always love the flashbacks. They’re just fun. There’s a lot of levity to them. I love the scene in Season 3, Episode 3, where we’re sitting down in the kitchen, and I tell you why I hadn’t told you yet about the cancer. That was a very, very moving scene. That was one of my favorites.

HOECHLIN: Flashbacks are always really fun. I think the flashbacks are always the most fun. But honestly, for me, it was always the thing that we could do, where it’s like, this is not a traditional blocking. It’s not really what you would do, but it’s like, “Let’s just make it feel very lived in.” So we would do things where we’d be having a scene in the living room and on the couch talking, but instead of just having us sit across from each other, one would lie in the other one’s lap. We’re just trying to make things feel very lived in, and like this was a relationship that’s been going on for such a long time. It was just very natural. I always like that. It was the silly stuff of just sticking our tongues out at each other for absolutely no reason or playing rock paper scissors to see who’s going to go talk to the kids. Just little things like that. It was always really fun to let people feel like they were really getting a glimpse into this very real relationship.

HELBING: Everything that these guys have said. It was so fun to watch dailies when you would see scenes like that, and these guys screwed around. It plays so awesome. Then there’s Bizarro World. One of my favorite shots is the first time we’re in Bizarro World, and you’re in the suit, and you huff the kryptonite. It’s an oner through the whole house and then you go out. I love that shot. It was great.

FLETCHER: Flashbacks for me, obviously. The first time that they were starting to fall in love with each other, and they’re investigating, and they’re talking about Seinfeld, and he’s maybe missing cues, and he goes home to make pizza rolls. Bitsie’s expression when he left was so real because it was like, “I like this guy. He’s so wonderful.” That’s what we were always hoping for as a real couple, and they gave it to us every time.

HOECHLIN: Speaking of, that actually does remind me of one of my favorite scenes. We were always very strict on Lois and Clark being a team. They’re always a team, they always support each other. So, the scene in Bizarro World where we got to just absolutely go at it with each other. It’s the only scene we had in the whole series like that. It was so much fun.

FLETCHER: Then she pulls away, and you light up the barn.

HELBING: “I’m a superhero!”

Season 4 Will Wrap Up Stories for Smallville Characters

What also makes Superman & Lois so great is that it’s not just the relationship. You’ve really built out a lot, not just the Kent sons but also Superman and Lois’s team in Smallville. What can you tease about Lana, Kyle, John Henry, and the rest of the Smallville gang?

FLETCHER: There’s so much. We wrap up everyone’s story, so don’t feel like you’re not going to see it. With Kyle and Chrissy, they’re pregnant—what happens next? That was a big move. He proposed. So, we’re going to pay that off. With John Henry and Lana, they just hooked up for the first time, so we got to chase that ball down the field a little bit and throw some trouble at it. With the kids, Sarah goes off and has her own adventures. Nat is working with John Henry and maybe working a little too hard. That turns into a pretty interesting story.

HELBING: All the cast members from Vancouver who are the townsfolk get more than they ever had this season. There’s really this side story going on the whole season about Smallville and how Smallville comes together, particularly after Clark dies, Superman dies. So, it’s very fun to watch them all come to the forefront.

HOECHLIN: I got to say a big pat on the back to these guys because I know when we had the news that we were coming back, but some of the cast regulars were not going to be back as regulars, and the budget cuts, I think some of the news was skewing negative. I think people were questioning what the season was going to be. These guys did such a good job, as well as the rest of the writers’ room, of really taking that and using it to their advantage. I feel like all those characters, in some episodes, were getting a little snack. Now everybody gets a meal every time they’re on-screen. It really plays with some of these other team-ups that are going to happen in the season. So, kudos to them because they really did that. If anything, people are going to be extremely pleasantly surprised to find this season is maybe our strongest season, even with all of those kinds of restrictions going in.

I just want this season tomorrow, honestly.

Season 4 Sees Tension in Jordan and Johnathan’s Relationship

As you were developing Superman & Lois, you talked about how the more you built out the world, the less organic it became to incorporate more of the Arrowverse characters for the final season. If you could have brought anybody back from Arrowverse, who would it have been and why?

HELBING: There’s a long list. I think Grant [Gustin] would have been super fun.

TULLOCH: Melissa [Benoist] would have been really fun

HELBING: I think Candice [Patton] as Iris would have been a great team-up. Those are the first three that just pop out. David Ramsey directed a bunch of episodes. He would have been awesome to bring back again.

TULLOCH: Although he was in it.

I was so excited to see him. I was like, “Diggle, you’re back!”

FLETCHER: I would say Grant in The Flash. I was a big Flash fan growing up.

TULLOCH: Also, Grant’s a huge Superman fan, so he would have wanted to do that. We do have Tom Cavanagh.

FLETCHER: But not as you know him. As we know him and as a new character. It’s very fun. He steals the show when he’s in it. So, watch out.

He did that on The Flash, so I’m excited to see him do it again. I’d love to hear more about Jonathan and Jordan this season. They’re practically almost seniors. They have lost their dad. What is it going to look like for them to find their footing navigating this time of their life?

HELBING: Jordan’s had a shaky go at it and when Superman dies, he tries to really step in his dad’s shoes, and nobody can really step in Superman’s shoes. He sort of fumbles a little bit, I would say, and it causes a little friction between him and Jonathan. Jonathan has his own path, trying to figure out his version of how to help. The two of them and what happens in the parallel stories that they have are a big part of the season this year.

FLETCHER: It’s meant to give you an idea of who they’re going to be as adults. It’s not only Jordan that’s had a pretty rough go of it. Jonathan can’t make a right decision to save his life. He’s having struggles too. By the end of the season, you get an idea of who they’re going to be as men, and it’s a pretty compelling story.

Lois Steps Into Superman’s Shoes in Season 4

Bitsie, how is Lois going to find her footing right now? She’s still recovering from cancer, and she just lost Clark. How is she going to find some sense of stability?

TULLOCH: I think that Lois is one of the strongest women we have portrayed on screen and in the comics, and so as devastating as it is to lose her husband, she immediately jumps into the heroine’s role. She’s now having to fight Lex Luthor and dealing with Doomsday, and, more importantly, being an emblem of strength for her sons and keeping her sons together. Under the veneer, there’s obviously a lot of pain, but you’ll see a strength come out of her because she has no other choice.

HOECHLIN: I can’t wait for the fans to watch Bitsie’s performance

TULLOCH: It’s just a lot of emotional stuff this season. Big shock, surprising, that never happens on the show. But no, she steps into your shoes? Except, I can’t fly and I don’t have powers.

It would have been fun to see you fly just once.

HOECHLIN: What I really wanted as our series-wrap prank, I was going to beg the guys to send a script that went out and had Lois flying in, like, a dream sequence and actually get her set up and put it up on the wires. And then, as they called action, have everybody walk away, and just leave her there for a few minutes. [Laughs] We ran out of time.

What Do the Cast Hope for the Legacy of ‘Superman & Lois?’

So, to wrap things up, what do you hope fans will take away from your version of Superman & Lois? And what do you think your part of the legacy of Superman is?

HOECHLIN: I hope they feel inspired. I think that was one of the things that drew me to this character in the very beginning when there was first a conversation for those guest stars when I sat down with Greg Berlanti. At that time, it felt like in the zeitgeist, there was a lot of very heavy stuff coming out and a lot of negatively focused things. Those things are great, and especially some of those stories are very important to tell, but I just felt like there was something missing about this eternally optimistic and hopeful point of view. And I thought what Melissa was doing on the show was so great, and I thought being able to come in and contribute to that was something really fun and really cool.

So, I hope that. I think there’s always evil in the world, there’s always things that we’re going to be fighting against. I went through a cynical phase in life. It wasn’t for me. I realized I can look at these things through that lens, or I can try to look at it through another one, and I feel more inspired to help, make a change, make a difference when I’m looking through that lens. I was really appreciative to be a part of something that committed to that and stayed true to that and really represented that through the characters. I hope that’s what people take.

TULLOCH: I just hope, and I do believe, that the fans of the show know the amount of love and respect Tyler and I have for these characters and that we both really felt it was an honor to be playing such iconic characters. This was Superman, and Clark Kent and Lois Lane as parents, which we hadn’t seen in live-action. At the end of the day, I think part of the reason people love the show is that it’s a show about family. It was so grounded, and the writing was so good and so real, and that’s what will last. I wish we’d gone longer and everything, but we had a wonderful 53 episodes. I think that people who haven’t seen the show are going to discover it and fall in love with it for years to come.

HELBING: Very similar to what Bitsie and Tyler were saying, I think when we started, it was very difficult. Everybody on the crew, the writers, all the cast went through hell, honestly. It was the height of COVID and everybody just rose to the occasion and buckled up, and we’re like, “We’re still going to make a show.” You can’t see any COVID anywhere in the show. That was because we all wanted to make the best version of it. So, I hope 10 years from now when people watch it, they see all the work that went into it. And Bitsie and Tyler, I could talk for hours about how awesome they are as these characters. It was a lot of fun. We all just felt tremendously lucky to be able to do it.

FLETCHER: We got to tell the full story of Superman & Lois. We knew we were ending it. It’s an honor to have people’s time, and we did 53 episodes. I really hope that after that 53rd one, they think this was something special that they spent their time on.

The final season of Superman & Lois premieres on October 17. Meanwhile, the first three seasons are available to stream now on Max in the U.S.

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