Spoilers "Superman & Lois" Season 2

Interesting idea. Some fans might like that, since they are still upset Cryer will not reprise his version of Luthor.

 

It was announced, but I heard from a guy who worked on that series last year, and he said that it was known the show wasn't going to be renewed while it was in production and the people in charge of that last season were not giving it their all because the show wasn't being renewed.

I doubt this would be the case because they've already bluffed Luthor once.

 

And that only happened because they teased Luthor in the pilot and then changed their minds and decided to make it Steel instead. So essentially they've only done an intentional misdirect once, with Bizarro. No reason to expect them to do it again.

Also, IIRC, there was never a formal announcement that Wole Parks would be playing Luthor. Rather, he was announced as "the Stranger" and the "Colonel Luthor" thing was something that leaked out. Here, they've come right out and announced that Cudlitz is playing Luthor, no ambiguity.

 

He's gonna introduce himself as John Henry Irons but turn out to be Lex Luthor. No one will see it coming.

 

And they still put in that cliffhanger?

 

I didn't ask that as I was pretending not to know anything about the show. I wasn't sure how much of his story I believed to be honest--but his main complaint was how little they seemed to care about the production itself. He had some kind of axe to grind.

 

The third twist is he is Batman who killed Luthor while he was gone missing and assumed his identity to kill Superman because Superman will reveal himself to have been Joker and Lois all this time has been Harley Quinn in disguise. Joker using magic to give him Superman powers. The whole time this Superman show was a Joker show in reality.

 

It wasn't much of a cliffhanger, really. The finale resolved all the season's outstanding story arcs and left the characters in a pretty good place. The tag at the end was just a potential hook for a new villain, just in case the unexpected happened and they got picked up after all. So Batwoman had much better closure than Legends of Tomorrow, which gambled on a huge cliffhanger and lost.

Shows have been unexpectedly uncancelled before, like the sitcom Sledge Hammer, whose first season ended with the characters and their city all being blown up in a nuclear explosion because the producers assumed they were cancelled, and then they got renewed and had to scramble to undo that decisive ending. They opened season 2 with a disclaimer that it took place 5 years before that season finale, thereby giving themselves room for 5 more seasons -- only to get cancelled halfway through season 2.

Nothing is absolutely certain in this game, so it's usually a good idea to allow for more than one possibility when making future plans. Rather than assuming for certain that your show will or won't be renewed, it's better to make plans that allow for both possibilities, just in case. Joss Whedon always tried to end seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel with episodes that would work as series finales if the show was cancelled, without closing the door for a continuation if it was renewed. I've always thought that was the wisest approach.

 

My most painful "cliffhanger cancellation" in recent years was Krypton.

 

I think mine might have been the Evil Dead tv series.

 

For a long time it was Angel for me, now that I am older I think it was an appropriate end. Still I wish it had gotten another season.

 

I think it ended where they wanted it to. Sometimes the heroes rushing into certain doom is the ending, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Although there were comics that picked up the story after the finale. I don't remember if they were considered as canonical as the Buffy comics continuation.

 

One of my favorite last lines ever:
"Well, personally, I kinda wanna slay the dragon. Let's go to work."

 

Yeah, Angel's ending was perfect.

 

I agree about Angel's ending. And to clarify, it wasn't a cliffhanger--it was the way Wheadon chose to end the series.

EDIT: I think Christopher is right here--I've always believed the ending was supposed to be reminiscent of Buth Cassiday and the Sundance Kid.

 

It was basically restating the point the show had been making for most of its run -- that there is no ultimate victory over evil, there's just the constant struggle against the everyday evils of the world. So the real victory is the choice to keep fighting the good fight, even knowing it will never have a decisive outcome. "If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do."

 

I'd like to see the reference, because in the trades, there were no confirmed announcements that Batwoman was on the chopping block--at least not more than the other, now-cancelled DC/CW series. Additionally, the third season finale teasing both a new Big Bad and arc indicated the series would continue.

Sure, but that was as you call it a bluff, not the actual Luthor, which left the door open for a real Luthor to show up, and Cryer fans still salty over an eventual Luthor addition--his Luthor--not being brought over to S&L.

 

Angel's epiphany has gotten me through many a bad day.

 

One of the big cliffhangers for me was the one for the single season series, Invasion.
For people who never saw it, the show followed the residents of a small town in Florida, and after a bunch of strange lights fell from the sky during a hurricane, some of the people there started acting weird. I never revealed exactly what the lights were, but there were implications that it was more than just an Invasion of the Body Snatchers sitation. The season ended with a second hurrican hitting the town, with a ton more lights falling from the sky.

 

That was the year of three big sci fi series, only one of which made (barely) past the first season.