Krypton is not holding anything back in its sophomore season on SYFY with each week’s episode taking dramatic and unexpected turns that even the most dedicated Superman or DC Comics fan could anticipate. This week, the series goes even further than ever in a stunning turn in the war between Dru Zod and the rebels that will have devastating impact on many of the show’s key players — and the battle for Krypton — going forward.
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Spoilers for this week’s episode of Krypton, “A Better Yesterday”, below.
Tonight’s episode saw the immediate aftermath of last week’s failed rebellion on Wegthor. For a moment it appears that Dru Zod (Colin Salmon) has prevailed. The rebel ground forces are all dead, Lyta Zod (Georgina Campbell) sends those spared back to Jax Ur (Hanna Waddingham) and Val El (Ian McElhinney) to get them to talk about terms of surrender. Meanwhile, in Kandor, Seg El (Cameron Cuffe) confronts Zod with intent for his son to reveal the truth about his brutal regime and actions to Lyta.
And then it all goes sideways. On Kandor, Zod gets the upper hand, but on Wegthor, Jax Ur does. She takes Lyta prisoner and decides to play on the idea that Zod wouldn’t want his mother to die. She uses this to broker a retreat, holding Lyta hostage until Zod removes his Sagitari from Wegthor. However, while Zod doesn’t want his mother to die, he’s also not willing to lose. Even as he has his forces retreat to leave, he’s working on another plan and in the last moments of the episode it’s revealed. You see, making their way back to the other rebels, Kem (Rasmus Hardiker) and Adam Strange (Shaun Sipos) discover a mass of heat signatures behind a cavern wall that shouldn’t be there. Those heat signatures belong to the actual Zod forces. The people getting on the retreat transport were Sagitari prisoners. Zod’s retreat was fake.
Upon learning this, Jax Ur gets on the main communication channel for Kandor and broadcasts her message to everyone who can possibly see it. She reveals Zod’s plan and in response to Zod’s lies and manipulation and betrayal keeps her word. She slits Lyta’s throat and executes her on what is essentially Kryptonian national television while the horrified public watches — including not just Seg and Zod, but Lyta’s mother Jayna Zod (Ann Ogbomo) and her former betrothed Dev Em (Aaron Pierre).
As the episode ends on Jax’s shocking and brutal act, it looks quite a bit like Lyta did in fact die. That said, Krypton has seen some stunning reversals when it comes to death on the series. Brainiac, for example, continues to survive despite Seg’s best efforts to end him. Val El himself is another example of death not exactly sticking, though in Val’s case he never actually died when Seg was a child as he believed and instead had escaped into the Phantom Zone. If Lyta does somehow survive tonight’s episode, the witnessing of her apparent death by the Kryptonian public is likely to have a major impact on public opinion, both of the rebellion and Zod himself. It’s also likely to see things get even worse when it comes to Zod, seeing what appears to be the death of his mother potentially making him even more tyrannical and brutal than ever before.
It will also be interesting to see how Lyta’s death — real or not — impacts Seg. As we see in tonight’s episode a bit of Brainiac still resides within him and if Seg’s emotions get the better of him, it may be an opportunity for Brainiac (Blake Ritson) to gain more control, something that may not be good for anyone involved.
“The thing that drives Brainiac this season is the same as last season; it’s what has always driven Brainiac: it is the desire to control everything,” Ritson told ComicBook.com earlier this season. “There’s a great line in the Geoff Johns ‘Brainiac’ story from 2010: ‘I will be everything that has ever been,’ which in the history of megalomania is a great ambition. And that maintains as his absolute and driving principle for existence. He has existed for millennia as a basically immortal being and he’s trying to curate all of existence. Then as we find him in the beginning of season two, he is being knocked way off track. And I think that’s consistent for a lot of the characters this season. Everyone is being knocked off their pedestal and is trying to build themselves up again. And Brainiac is no different in that respect. So, he’s trying to get returned to the Skull Ship, return to his super objective, and return back to his existence. While he’s in what appears to be a very vulnerable, compromised position. And his journey to try and reconnect is extraordinarily strategic, manipulative and surprising.”
Krypton airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on SYFY.