Krypton, Season 2
And just because I'm not jumping out of my seat in excitement doesn't mean that this series doesn't have anything good going on for it. On the surface, I am pretty game for a show about the politics of pre-explosion Krypton. It's just that between the time-travel stuff and a cast that feels pretty unfocused, I did feel like this season ends up having a bit more of a problem in juggling its cast.
And the whole time travel reveal in season one was neat for the shock value, I suppose, of having General Zod and Adam Strange showing up from our present day, but it is admittedly a bit of a plot twist that loses its edge since we're not really familiar with the lore of the Superman of this series. And you wouldn't think that it would matter, but it... kinda does? I do feel pretty detached from the future characters and the brief, vague showcases of what Adam Strange sees in the changed future;
The first couple of episodes ends up basically setting up the new status quo... and the thing is, the resistance plot isn't all that interesting. I was kinda invested, sort of, in Nyssa's story -- the Zods kidnap her child Cor-Vex and force her to essentially be a double agent, but that story is stretched for around half the season and none of the resistance members are really interesting enough to justify this. General Zod and Lyta go around brainwashing the Rankless to join their dystopian regime, while the resistance on the moon of Wegthor sort of just... exist there. We've got Real Val-El and Jax-Ur essentially being the naive/trusting ally and the rightfully-paranoid members of the resistance towards Nyssa respectively and... and this just kind of spins in the background while our 'main characters' return to Krypton.
There's some sub-plot about Lyta training people and missing Seg, Lyta being angry at being benched by General Zod, Jax and Val discussing paranoia, some subplot about Doomsday rampaging in some random moutnain just so we're not surprised when he gets relevant half a season later... honestly, I want to talk more about the resistance but the exact same story's been done so many times in other sci-fi shows and books.
Granted, Seg-El and Adam Strange takes only two episodes to return to Krypton, but let's just say that they're not the most charismatic characters in the cast and it does mean that having the two of them carry the entirety of the Colu scene is a bit too much. Something-something sci-fi explanation causes them to get teleported to Colu, and in quick succession Brainiac gets fused with Seg-El's mind -- figures that even the writers realize that Seg is kind of a very bland protagonist, and the way to make him interesting in this season is to have him do a Jekyll-and-Hyde thing with Brainiac. It does keep Brainiac in the show, which I'm all right with.
The first three episodes also guest-stars Lobo as the antagonist that Seg and Adam. And Lobo is... he sure feels out of place, and not in a good way. He's entertaining for sure, with the writing (if not the accent) straight out of a cartoon or comic-book (though the implied-rape jokes aren't funny), and I absolutely love the gags that make use of his story-breaking regeneration capability, but he does feel pretty out of place in the otherwise pretty serious show. Lobo's fun, though, and it's a shame that he kind of buggers off from the cast once Adam and Seg figure out their thingamabob plot device and teleport back to Krypton.
Also speaking of sub-plots is Jayna-Zod, a character I genuinely forgot about. She exists, and the early episodes build her and Dev-Em (I clean forgot he existed and had to look him up) up as supporting characters but I feel so detached and uninterested in their story. I guess Jayna wants to redeem herself for her mistreatment of Lyta, but there's nearly no payoff to this since mother and daughter never really interact throughout the season. The Zod that the show clearly gives all the best scenes and dialogue to is, obviously, General Zod -- who steals basically every scene he shows up in.
Episode four has Seg and Adam return to Krypton, and... and they split up to finally progress the plot. Adam just kind of blends in with the mass of kinda-generic faces in the resistance and proceeds to kind of be irrelevant while the Nyssa/Val/Jax plot takes precedence. Seg goes to sleep with Lyta, before he gets arrested by the Zods and gets horrified by the brainwashing that the Zods do. And... and I really wish I'm a bit more invested in the Seg/Lyta romance, but it's just kind of there.
At this point, the resistance-vs-Zod stuff is actually kind of interesting now that the story is allowed to progress. Thanks to the information Zod feeds the resistance via Nyssa, she ends up earning the trust of the resistance, who gets small wins... before they get trapped and have their entire ground force killed due to faulty oxygenators. Nyssa also steals the Codex, and also gets Val to use his moral righteousness to sabotage Jax-Ur's DNA cannon.
Val and Jax's dynamic is pretty fun, and it's a shame that it lasted all of two episodes -- Jax-Ur decides that Val is too soft and too trusting of people even after Nyssa has shown her treachery, and she ends up using her bionic eye to shoot lasers and kidnap Lyta in an interrogation... and in a pretty shocking moment, slices her throat in public television. With how important Lyta is to Zod and Seg, it's actually shocking that they'd do this relatively early in the season. Kind of a bummer that Lyta's essentially reduced to a bit of an accessory to drive these two men, though. I would be more upset, except Lyta's been particularly dry and boring this season.
General Zod goes super-ballistic, and this in turn causes Jax-Ur to give the wishy-washy Val-El a bit of an ultimatum in doing the hard choice... and despite his moralizing throughout the past couple of episodes, Val ends up blowing up a space station to deny Zod's Sagittari troops from arriving to Wegthor. There's also a four-way fight on Krypton itself, between Zod and Seg; Brainiac trying to take over Seg's mind; and the timely arrival of Jayna and Dev (they never really grow beyond this 'hey, we guess Seg can't do this alone' sidekick, and get shelved after episode 5) who help Seg escape... and in all this, Team Seg ends up helping Nyssa do a plan to get her son back. Nyssa's little spotlight moment is actually quite cool, having a huge bluffing-negotiation bit with General Zod before jumping off of a window with her child to escape from Zod.
Episode 7 is an interesting one. Zod tries to weaponize Doomsday (who he captures with the Codex Cannon) and we get a sudden flashback episode to how Doomsday was weaponized by a scientist group from the houses of Zod and El a couple hundred years ago, and... and it's neat to have this backstory, I guess?
Meanwhile, Seg finally decides that having Brainiac stick around in his consciousness like a ghost and keep giving him temptations to be super-efficient and stuff is too much, and tries to purge Brainiac from his brain-stem with Nyssa's help. Unfortunately, their attempt to do so causes Brainiac to gain a new body by possessing the A.I. Val-El in the Fortress, and he proceeds to activate his ship and kidnap baby Cor-Vex (a.k.a. Jor-El, a revelation that also feels kind of detached). With Doomsday and Brainiac both 'active', this leads us to the final three episodes.
Episode 8, meanwhile, throws us another twist -- that the original Lyta is living in a fantasy created by the Black Mercy, another pretty popular part of the Superman mythos. This just gives the episode an excuse to cut back and forth to the 'what if' realm where Lyta is living a happy life. Zod, meanwhile, needs the Black Mercy to control Doomsday in the real world, which ends up having the side-effect of waking up the real Lyta. It's... it's kind of a plot twist that comes out of nowhere, and if not for how off-handed they dispatched of Clone Lyta a couple episodes back, it'd be even more annoying. Not the biggest fan of this plot twist for sure.
And then we have the two final episodes. Zod sics Doomsday on Wegthor, having made him compliant with Black Mercy. There's an almost laughable love triangle plot between Seg, Lyta and Nyssa; a rather bland sub-plot with Lyta getting a bunch of random Sagittari to follow her; and the rather... questionable romance between Dev-Em and Jayna-Zod... yeah, that last one is the weirdest.
But then it's all hands on deck as Seg and Nyssa fly off to Wegthor to help the resistance... well, basically just survive Doomsday. I really don't care about any of the characters involved, but I do very much enjoy the story trope of an unstoppable monster breaking the resistance. Kem, one of the more underutilized actors and characters in the show, get a badass way to go out, detonating the charges that cause the moon itself to erupt but, of course, it doesn't take out Doomsday. Kem dies, and Adam gets crippled, most of the other characters escape the destruction of Wegthor and resolve to hunt down Zod. And... and I don't know. I guess it's just an expected sci-fi climax? The rebellion fight the Sagittari, Seg and Lyta fight General Zod after giving a speech about free will... it's all so expected. And then they stick Zod in the Black Mercy dream, and that's one threat dealt with.
There's a B-plot in episode 10 about Adam Strange gives a rather truncated exposition information-dump about his comic-book backstory, which causes Nyssa to teleport to Rann to get a way to teleport to where Brainiac has stolen Jor-El and lands in the middle of the Rann/Thanagar war... like the Black Mercy, it is a plot point that makes sense to me, someone familiar with the comics, but I do feel like this bit kind of comes out of nowhere in the show.
Other stuff they tossed at us in the final episode involves Adam getting his comic-book super-suit so he's no longer crippled (after all of like, 15 minutes), there also being some hints of Apokolips in Rann, and Doomsday surviving the moon exploding. Lobo shows up and Seg-El makes a deal with him to hunt down Brainiac.
And... again, ultimately, the show did let me stick around long enough to see it to its conclusion. And I can't fault the final episode for building up to a third season since it thinks it's getting one. But ultimately I can kind of see why the show ended up being cancelled. It's... a weird way to say it is that it's not comic-book-y enough. Most of the show just feels like it's a generic sci-fi planetary rebellion stuff with some DC characters thrown in, and even compared to the first season, it feels so... so generic. The first season at least had all the storylines about houses and the culture of Krypton and everything. Colin Salmon was very fun as General Zod, and I think Nyssa, Jax-Ur, Brainiac and Kem are all right, but I genuinely really can't bring myself to feel much more than apathy for the rest of the cast. Those two, I feel, are the biggest weaknesses why this show doesn't really feel as strong as its other superhero show brethren. And with the sheer saturation of superhero shows out there and the subsequent cutbacks during the COVID-19 pandemic, I can definitely see why this show ends up being basically cut short and truncated. It's a shame, but at least we got some pretty nice visuals out of the show.
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