Superman & Lois: Super-Sons Jordan Elsass and Alex Garfin Look Back on Season 1

Superman & Lois, the most recent show to join the Arrowverse on The CW, has become one of the most widely-acclaimed Superman projects in recent memory. The series, which centers on Clark Kent (Tyler Hoechlin) and Lois Lane (Bitsie Tulloch) adjusting to family life in Smallville with sons Jonathan (Jordan Elsass) and Jordan (Alex Garfin) Kent, premiered last year to rave reviews and will return for a second season beginning in early 2023. The idea of Lois and Clark as parents is something that distinguishes the show from any previous live-action interpretation of the characters (assuming you don’t count their illegitimate son in Superman Returns, but they didn’t co-parent in that case).

The twin brothers are an invention of Superman & Lois producers; in the comics, there’s just one son — Jonathan — and he has had super powers since he was 10, whereas in the TV series, Jon is the one without powers, and Jordan has them instead, having discovered them at around age 15, when the series began. That isn’t the only difference, of course; in the comics right now, Jon is aged up into adulthood, acting as Superman while Clark is off-planet, and is set to come out as bisexual in next month’s issue.

“That is the comic version of the character,” Elsass told ComicBook, suggesting it’s unlikely any of that story would end up in the show. “This character is a different Earth, it’s a different version. There’s always that possibility, but it’s looking like Jonathan Kent this version is most likely straight. We don’t even know if he has powers at this point.”

Jordan does have powers — something that alienated him from his parents at first. Frustrated that they had kept the secret of Clark’s superhero identity from them for years, Jon and Jordan banded together to protest, but it wasn’t long before the Kent family was working as a team again, with Clark helping Jordan come to grips with his new powers.

“I don’t think it was [Jordan’s’] social anxiety disorder that was causing him to blow up all the time at the beginning of the season,” Garfin told ComicBook. “It was the fact that he was completely misunderstood by his family. We have to remember that a big theme in the beginning of the show was that Clark was an absentee parent. For better or for worse, he was doing a great, amazing things, but he still couldn’t be there for his children. Jonathan was able to get along in school, and Jordan wasn’t, and he just felt completely cornered by everything. It happens to all of us; we’re all animals, and when you corner an animal, they go wild.”

While Jordan has found one of his first true friends in now-girlfriend Sarah Cushing (Inde Navarette), that won’t be a magic bullet. Jordan finding his Kryptonian identity has become, maybe ironically given the recent events in the comics, kind of a coming-out metaphor. Discovering who he really is, has helped him to become happier. That doesn’t make his anxiety disappear, though. It just changes the way Garfin and the writing staff approach it.

“The social anxiety disorder is still there,” Garfin explained. “It is a color that we use to paint the palette of Jordan. It’s not exactly the whole picture. I think Todd Helbing and all the writers did a fantastic job of making it so the pressure and the weight of that is still there.”

Some other evolutions, though, do happen more rapidly. While John Henry Irons (under the nom de guerre “Captain Luthor”) tried to kill Superman for the first half of last season, now that his backstory has come to light and he helped repel a Kryptonian invasion, it seems as though his relationship with the Kent boys is going to stay pretty straightforward.

“There’s no question that we’re, we’re apprehensive of, of John Henry at first, but I think very rapidly once we discover our dad is Superman, to trust him. It’s it took us time, but it sort of matures. I think Jordan and Jonathan have to grow up a little faster, and sort of learn that everything’s going to be all right, even when it seems like it’s not. So when Lois and Clark say that John Henry’s okay, and that he’s cool, I think we pretty, pretty quickly trust that.”

Superman & Lois is now available on DVD, Blu-ray, and digital now. The series is also available on HBO Max, and its second season launches on The CW in January 2022.