‘Krypton’ Finale: The Comic Book Roots of That Last Shot

The final scene of tonight’s Krypton season finale was not only effective, creepy, and exciting…but if you are a fan of the comics, it was pretty familiar, too.

Spoilers ahead for “The Phantom Zone,” tonight’s season one finale of Krypton.

After the mind-twisting ending of the Brainiac/Zod plot, and after a time-breaking change to Superman’s personal history, “The Phantom Zone” turned its attention to a cavern below the surface of Kandor City, where the Cythonnites had left Doomsday.

As the camera panned through dark tunnels, the sound of Doomsday’s fist smashing against the stasis chamber where he had been stored rang through the air.

As the camera got closer to the creature, Doomsday’s bony knuckles first cracked and then broke through the door of the vault, leaving viewers with a final image of the monster’s roaring face.

Flash back to 1992. The Superman family of titles ship weekly, with four different creative teams working on Action Comics, Superman: The Man of Steel, Superman, and The Adventures of Superman.

In the run-up to the anticipated “The Death of Superman” storyline, in which Doomsday was introduced, each issue for a month concluded with a page of — you guessed it! — Doomsday’s fist banging on his underground cell.

Here’s what some jerk on Twitter had to say about that last month…

…Then Krypton showrunner Cameron Welsh and Adam Strange actor Shaun Sipos both favorited that tweet. That might have been a clue.

“There’s one shot in that little sequence, the tight shot of the fist,” Welsh told ComicBook.com, adding that he had hoped that the image might thrill some of the comic book creators involved. “Yeah, he’s not in the green suit and the angle’s slightly different, but we tried to very much tip our hat to the comics.”

Krypton returns for a second season in 2019.