Could 'Krypton' Have Made a Major Change to Superman's Family Tree?

Warning: Spoilers ahead for the pilot to Krypton, which airs today.

Moments after Seg-El made his way to the Genesis Chamber to mix DNA with his intended, Nyssa-Vex, in tonight's pilot episode for SYFY's Krypton, audiences saw him in the arms of his true love, Lyta Zod.

The pair, who were on her bed and unclothed, spoke about her upcoming binding ceremony -- her arranged marriage to Dev-Em -- before rolling over to make love.

While it is certainly not clear or a given, fans have to be asking themselves: could Lyta Zod turn out to be the biological mother of Jor-El?

Such an event would make General Dru-Zod, also her son, Jor-El's brother and Superman's uncle -- and would cast the generational feud between the two houses of Zod and El into a truly startling new light.

In the comics, it is not clear what the name of Jor-El's mother was. In some versions of the continuity, Jor-El's father is also named Jor-El, while other versions made it Seyg/Seg-El.

(The preferred spelling for the purposes of the Krypton TV series is Seg-El, although technically the House of El has been disbanded and its sigil outlawed, so he is known in-universe just as Seg.)

Of course, even if the comics laid out a clear path as to who Seg "should" end up with, there is no guarantee that it would be adhered to for the sake of the show. Time travel aside, there is the idea that Seyg-El in the comics is generally a more staid, conservative figure who sees his son Jor-El's rebellious ways as something of an embarrassment. That seems an unlikely path for the young firebrand at the center of Krypton's drama.

There are two potential questions here, of course: the first is whether Seg-El might have impregnated Lyta during their coupling -- which would raise some interesting issues since Kryptonians have their children biologically farmed, rather than grown in the womb (something, it is worth mentioning, that Nyssa specifically refers to as an oddity in the pilot), so a pregnancy would be a conspicuous condition.

Even if she is not pregnant by the end of the pilot, the question of whether Krypton might put an El and a Zod together in the longer term is an interesting one.

This, and other open questions about the world of SYFY's Krypton, were touched upon in the Panel Discussions podcast I just released. You can hear me talk about those questions with From Crisis to Crisis co-hosts Michael Bailey and Jeffrey Taylor, plus Superman podcaster Jon Wilson, below.

Krypton airs on Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. ET/PT on SYFY.