Spoilers "Superman & Lois" Season 1 spoiler discussion!

[Guy Gardener]

Maybe or Superman & Lois is a different continuity.

Earth One was destroyed in the Crisis 16 Billion Years ago by the Antimonitor. Tal-Roh killed Earth Prime's Edge and supplanted him, or Edge died as a baby for ancillary reasons and Tal just picked a birth certificate for a dead baby at random.

Although the couple of bumpkins who found and shot him, one of them yelled "Morgan".

Morgan and Jacob.

He took the woman's name?

 

[Mudd]

Okay, so if the Eradicator took away their Kryptonian powers and personalities while they were high up in the air, how the heck did they land safely? Did it take time for the powers to wear off? For that matter, how does implanting Kryptonian consciousnesses give them Kryptonian powers -- and vulnerability to kryptonite, as with Kyle?

It's a comic book show.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Maybe or Superman & Lois is a different continuity.

Years ago during the Bruce Timm DC animated shows, I developed the idea that each show was a continuity of its own even if Justice League referenced Batman TAS or Superman TAS. I'm taking the same approach here to S&L.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Years ago during the Bruce Timm DC animated shows, I developed that each show was a continuity of its own even if Justice League referenced Batman TAS or Superman TAS. I'm taking the same approach here to S&L.

Quitter.

 

[Jayson1]

Maybe or Superman & Lois is a different continuity.

This would make sense but the creators keep insisting this is in the Arrowverse.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Maybe or Superman & Lois is a different continuity.

Nah, Flash saved those falling people.

 

[Christopher]

Nah, Flash saved those falling people.

There was a moment when I was hoping Supergirl would suddenly swoop in to save them. Or Martian Manhunter, though I don't know why I thought of him.

 

[The Realist]

The writer of the episode, Adam Mallinger, said on Twitter that Lara's line, "The Kryptonian consciousness will remain in the Eradicator, and their powers will dissipate over time," was meant to explain how the Smallville residents survived the fall. To me, it's not communicated well (the line seems almost like a non sequitur where it's placed in Lara's dialogue), but apparently they retained their invulnerability long enough to be unharmed. It also takes care of the question of whether they'll keep their X-K induced Kryptonian physical abilities (they won't).

 

[Mr. Adventure]

^ I seriously was going to post that theory and then totally forgot I came up with it.

 

[dupersuper]

Wow, a live action Dabney Donovan and live action Eradicator.

I have to wonder at it's name here though...
"Jor-El: Your mother never intended the eradicator for this, it was meant to preserve our memory and culture.
Superman: ...Then...why did she name it 'the eradicator'?"

I love how much it feels like MoS. Snyder could direct an episode and you wouldn’t notice

Please no!!!! Despite some cinematographic similarities, I really like this show. Hasn't Snyder pissed on Superman enough?

Plus Dabney Donovan, who in the comics is the founder of Cadmus, the organization that created the clone Superboy.

Didn't the adult Newsboy Legion found Cadmus? Donovan was just their mad scientist who went nuts and joined up with The Evil Factory...but at least he gave us Angry Charlie...and saved Luthor's brain...

 

[Skipper]

That Edge got lost in Crisis.

It's like in the comics. Every inconsistency is because Crisis . (Well, in the comics after a while so many inconsistencies piled up that they needed another Crisis event, and another, and another...)

 

[The Realist]

Wow, a live action Dabney Donovan and live action Eradicator.

I have to wonder at it's name here though...
"Jor-El: Your mother never intended the eradicator for this, it was meant to preserve our memory and culture.
Superman: ...Then...why did she name it 'the eradicator'?"

A lot of the exposition in this episode was a little murky, and I had the same question on my initial viewing. On rewatch, though, I concluded that the Eradicator was the name given to Zeta-Rho and Edge's perversion of Lara's benign technology. Nobody directly says that Lara named it that.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The writer of the episode, Adam Mallinger, said on Twitter that Lara's line, "The Kryptonian consciousness will remain in the Eradicator, and their powers will dissipate over time," was meant to explain how the Smallville residents survived the fall. To me, it's not communicated well (the line seems almost like a non sequitur where it's placed in Lara's dialogue), but apparently they retained their invulnerability long enough to be unharmed. It also takes care of the question of whether they'll keep their X-K induced Kryptonian physical abilities (they won't).

It's weird that the X-Kryptonite did two very different things.

1. Gave Kryptonian powers.

2. Allowed for the transfer of consciousness.

But what if it didn't?

I find it more believable that the rare and dangerous X-Kryptonite did only one of those things (above), and the other thing just "happened" because of other alien tech, or the nature of a kryptonian consciousness.

Considering we saw that kid get powers at the kegger, and it had nothing to do with alien tech or Kryptonian consciousnesses, I think X-Kryptonite is about the powers.

Which means...

The eradicator can put a Kryptonian soul into any one on the planet, effortlessly, but it's just a person from Krypton, who has no special abilities.

Who the hell needs that?

Pishaw.

Tal-RoH wanted an army of gods.

Even if that god body became so unstable, that it couldn't safely maintain a transferred consciousness for long.

Was he losing Kryptonian souls every time he put souls (digital patterns, whatever) into a failed transfer, and the soldier didn't become superkryptonian? Or was he willing to let the weak die? Or was he actively killing his brothers and sisters he did not live up to expectations? I gotta assume that there was still original templates inside the eradicator, no matter how many copies he made of every Kryptonian, and cocked up the imprint? So he could run though a few copies of the same dude before he got something useful?

Same science that made Doomsday.

 

[Christopher]

Didn't the adult Newsboy Legion found Cadmus? Donovan was just their mad scientist who went nuts and joined up with The Evil Factory...but at least he gave us Angry Charlie...and saved Luthor's brain...

The wikis say that Donovan co-founded Cadmus with Tommy Tompkins of the Newsboy Legion and a Dr. Reginald Augustine.

A lot of the exposition in this episode was a little murky, and I had the same question on my initial viewing. On rewatch, though, I concluded that the Eradicator was the name given to Zeta-Rho and Edge's perversion of Lara's benign technology. Nobody directly says that Lara named it that.

Sounds reasonable.

 

[Skipper]

I concluded that the Eradicator was the name given to Zeta-Rho and Edge's perversion of Lara's benign technology. Nobody directly says that Lara named it that.

Or it was a simple mistranslation. You know, Kryptonian language is rich of nounces that sometime are lost.

 

[Mudd]

This would make sense but the creators keep insisting this is in the Arrowverse.

Keeps people off their backs.

Sometimes.

 

[Christopher]

Or it was a simple mistranslation.

Well, "eradicate" is literally the Latin word for "uproot." It's in the sense of pulling out a plant at the roots to ensure it never grows back, but I suppose Kryptonian could use the same word to mean uprooting a plant in order to replant it elsewhere, which would fit Lara's intention of using the device to preserve Kryptonian minds for later resettlement (though what bodies she intended them to reside in is unclear).

 

[David cgc]

Well, "eradicate" is literally the Latin word for "uproot." It's in the sense of pulling out a plant at the roots to ensure it never grows back, but I suppose Kryptonian could use the same word to mean uprooting a plant in order to replant it elsewhere, which would fit Lara's intention of using the device to preserve Kryptonian minds for later resettlement (though what bodies she intended them to reside in is unclear).

I got the impression that it was just meant to be an archive, a whole planet's worth of Jor-El Fortress of Solitude holograms (which I presume is also what Superman was trying to do by taking the Eradicator to the Fortress at the end of this episode).

 

[Enterprise is Great]

I found the end of the episode rather odd -- the camera tilting up to focus on that cliff/mesa as if it were significant, even though I couldn't see anything notable about it. It was pretty anticlimactic.

I wonder if Edge has his own Fortress of Solitude there. The cliff/mesa sort of looked like the outside of Superman’s FoS.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I have been wondering about the Eradicator name in the context of this show too. I would be to first to admit that this show is often better written than most of the other Arrowverse shows. But this is is a rare exception that fits with a Arrowverse pattern of carrying over comic specific names so they are an identifiable Brand. But do not fit the on screen version at all. Reminds of when Hank Henshaw on Supergirl declared himself “Cyborg Superman”.

This tends to happen with the Eradicator outside of comics. In the first comic origin it was created by one of Joe-El ancestors to eliminate any alien influences on Krypton. Or to Eradicate. In the animated Death and Return of Superman movies the Eradicator is an A.I. guardian program sent in his rocket to protect Kal-El on Earth. The name does not fit there either.

Another question - Lara’s “spirit” seems to have memories right until her death. But the Eradicator was stolen from her before Krypton was destroyed. She seemed to be omniscient about events she would not be aware of. Including a name for her invention that was clearly not of her choosing.

I also suspect Edge has his own Kryptonian Fortress. Might explain some of these questions. Does he have an A.I. of his own father? Is he planning to revive him in a human body?