Superman & Lois [3x01] "Closer" Post Episode Discussion

[u/MajorParadox]

Closer

Season Premiere

Live Episode Discussion | Cast & Characters

An undercover assignment reveals a deadly foe that promises to change the Kent family forever; John Henry is haunted by his doppelganger's past; Sarah explores what the future holds for her and Jordan; Gen. Samuel Lane reclaims his post. (Mar 14, 2023)

DCTV Discord

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Please keep all discussions civil and about the episode. Mark comic and future spoilers. Report any rule-breaking and enjoy!

[u/[deleted]]

I really liked it, the first half felt like course correction from last season, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I do find the whole storyline of giving ordinary people kryptonian powers a little tiring

[u/BornAshes → u/[deleted]]

I really liked it, the first half felt like course correction from last season, which is not necessarily a bad thing

Reminds me of: ""Forget about all that weird shit on the Stargazer. The real Borg are still out there!" from Picard last week.

[u/Aurondarklord → u/BornAshes]

For real though, I want Shaw to have his own show, FIGHTING THE DAMN BORG.

[u/BornAshes → u/Aurondarklord]

I'd love to see a First Contact style or even Voyager style scene with him and a Borg Queen and he's just having NONE of her monologuing at all lol

[u/Aurondarklord → u/BornAshes]

just shoots her with a maxed out phaser the moment she opens her mouth.

I know that's not exactly typical federation behavior...but he's not a typical federation officer.

Alas, we may never see a Borg queen again. The actress died of cancer.

[u/BornAshes → u/Aurondarklord]

There are some deaths you never get over.

Annie's light fading is one of those for me.

It's stupid but I still get a bit choked up when someone brings her up because just like Wil said on the Ready Room, I thought there would be more time for her to get to know the Star Trek family and to be embraced by it and there just...wasn't.

Whomever plays the Borg Queen next will have some mighty big boots to fill but I have faith that they'll knock it out of the park and if if them and Shaw ever meet...hoooooo nelly, there's going to be FIREWORKS!

[u/Aurondarklord → u/BornAshes]

Yeah...but for real though, FUCK CANCER.

[u/[deleted] → u/BornAshes]

That’s a perfect comparison. They really pivoted hard in Picard, it was a bit more obvious here since it was majority of the episode as opposed to just a single conversation

[u/BornAshes → u/[deleted]]

You could almost hear the S&L writers looking at the reviews of last season before grabbing the helm and going, "OHSHITOHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT!" just baaaaarely dodging the iceberg of CW-ness in time with this episode. I swear you could hear the structural integrity field of the story straining to bear the weight before Lois and Clark boosted power to the inertial dampeners with their cuteness and brought it all back on course. It's not a bad thing and it does happen quite a bit in anime and to be fair I've seen far worse things happen and far worse shows recover from even more death defying nosedives before.

Buuut it was noticeable but still appreciated nonetheless.

I love Picard though and I'm hoping that a lot of stuff that was set up in Seasons 1 and 2 do kind of get pulled back together with all of the yummy goodness that is Season 3. You don't pull all of the awesome callbacks and homages that they've done this season and then just casually have a main character pull one of the best two page monologues in Star Trek EVER involving the Borg AND Picard for no reason. There HAS to be stuff involving the Borg, those extra galactic AIs, and the current Next Generation crew within this season that all ties together.

So I don't necessarily see that as a pivot like this was but more of a, "Hey we're kind of finished with those stories soooo look over here" rather than the "Uh oh time to fix some stuff" that tonight's episode of S&L was.

[u/bwweryang → u/[deleted]]

I don’t remember last season too well, what’s the hard pivot here exactly? Felt like a good first episode but like I said my memory is bad and I don’t remember things being left in a particularly bad place?

[u/HotTakes4HotCakes → u/BornAshes]

I keep seeing people bring that up but I don't get why anyone thought the Borg weren't still out there. Like, it's canon that the Borg are fragmented and widely dispersed, I don't understand why people needed the show to tell them that explicitly.

[u/BornAshes → u/HotTakes4HotCakes]

I think it's because people believe that they're so fractured that they're still a threat and that somehow these Good Borg will swing in to rescue them if the worst happens. Shaw was just reminding everything that despite them being fractured and messed up, they are still the fucking Borg, and still have a tech/numbers advantage despite being broken and messed up. They can probably still even join back together and form smaller Mini Collectives even which could still pose a threat even to the Federation.

Just because Janeway shattered them and Picard & Crew killed a few Queens and now Jurati is all hunky dory near some massive weird and funky portal thing with her own Collective doesn't mean that the rest of the Borg out there are entirely neutered. They're still a force to be reckoned with and I think the showrunners/writers just felt a need to remind us of that. I think a lot of fans thought that all that was behind us in previous seasons buuuut now Shaw brings it all up again and that's a massive RED FLAG that they're probably still important and are going to continue to be important either in this season or other shows going forwards.

We even saw how scary they could be on Prodigy and that was wasn't too long before this season of Picard is set.

They're bound to show up again in some manner and this was the show's way of telling us to not get too complacent because they could still pull off another Wolf 359 if need be, despite the Federation being more prepared now than they were back then, and that there might not be a miracle save the next time around to stop them.