Superman: The Animated Series, Season 2, Episode 12: Brave New Metropolis
One of my favourite things about this episode isn't actually the evil black-suited Superman, or the alternate-universe plot, it's that this is the first episode to not use the same two or three variations of the opening theme as a music. That soundtrack music that builds up during the big panning shot of evil-world Metropolis? It's pretty awesome, incorporating some ominous choir chanting. Compared to the other entries of the DCAU, Superman: TAS rightfully gets some rap for having a very repetitive soundtrack... but 'Brave New Metropolis manages to buckle that trend.My opinion is honestly probably discoloured by remembering 'A Better World' from Justice League, which put far more emphasis on Superman actually being a Knight Templar as opposed to 'whoops he got duped by Luthor', and it's a far superior alternate-universe-where-our-heroes-are-evil episode. Of course, but that was created several years after Brave New Metropolis, so it's not exactly a fair comparison. In comics and cartoons, there have been many, many examples where our heroes, or part of the supporting cast, go into an alternate dimension where things are reversed. Sometimes it's a 'for wont of a nail' situation (as in this case, Lois's death causes Superman to ally himself with Luthor) or a straight-up Mirrorverse Earth thing.
To note is that for the majority of the episode, our protagonist is actually Lois Lane (and metal resistance member Jimmy with a mullet), with 'our' Superman barely amounting to more than a cameo, and the overlord Superman not really being a character until the second half of the episode. It's a pretty neat adventure for Lois in that regard. Sure, it's a bit throwaway when I first watched it, but it's one of those few rare episodes in Superman that allowed a lasting moral to, well, persist after the end of the episode. Superman: TAS doesn't operate on negative continuity, but it's very much episodic as opposed to serialized.
The evil world is okay enough. We get to see characters like Jimmy, Turpin and Angela Chen be, well, basically twisted as they adapt to this new world where Superman runs the secret police alongside LexCorp, and it's one of the few episodes where Mercy Graves -- albeit an alternate-universe version -- is allowed to do more beyond just glower. We also probably get some of the darker moments in the series as alternate!Mercy is knocked down and swarmed over by the resistancce members, and we never actually see her fate. She does go out with a comical yelp, instead of a horrifying scream, but I'm pretty sure she just got lynched by the mob.
The big takeaway is that Lois finally realizes her feelings for Superman and that the reverse situation is also true, causing her to basically try and make her relationship with her own Superman a bit deeper. It's nothing much beyond the basics of such a story, and a very predictable one, but while the scripting isn't anything to write home about, Tim Daly and Dana Delany's performances are pretty stand-out. Neither character have been given too much of a chance to act, with Superman being written as a generic smiling hero most of the time and Lois being a snarky damsel, but Lois's confusion and independence really shines here, and Tim Daly gets to show off his acting skills playing a version of Superman who trades in the bright blues and reds for a black suit and convinces himself that all this is for the sake of peace. Of course, the whole moral debate is kind of ruined by having Superman just be... well, duped, but more than anything, the episode works so much better when you realize the endgame of the episode is that it's a Lois-centric episode, not a Superman-centric episode, and thus it actually reduces Evil!Superman to a simple plot device for Lois to redeem.
Yeah, I remembered this episode as pretty throwaway as a kid, but watching it just now I realized that while the plot was still filler-y, I really liked this episode a lot more than I remembered doing.
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