How The Superman & Lois Series Finale Killed Off Its Strongest DC Comics Villain

Spoilers for "Superman & Lois" to follow.

With the end of "Superman & Lois," the last remnant of the old Arrowverse has been swept away, leaving The CW's multi-series TV franchise now just a notable blip in the long history of scripted television. To be fair, the Arrowverse officially came to a close with the series finale of "The Flash" back in 2023, due to some multiverse shenanigans. But parallel universes and time travel didn't stop shows from being connected under the franchise banner before, so for all intents and purposes, this is the real, final end, and it brings a surprisingly tender sendoff for one of the show's main villains — Doomsday.

If you watch the show and know much about the Superman comics, you'll know that this particular version of the deadly beast is a good deal different from past incarnations. That's because "Superman & Lois" did something no previous DC Comics adaptation has done by combining Doomsday and Bizarro, another major Man of Steel bad guy and an evil twin of sorts for Kal-El, into a single character. Over the last couple of seasons, the show blended Superman's dark other half with the horrifying death and rebirth origin story for Doomsday, leading to a final death scene that's more touching moment than climactic battle.

After a good bit of teamwork on Earth knocks Doomsday out cold, Clark flies him to the sun to put him to rest for good. His enemy awakens right before his death and the two share a quiet moment of mutual understanding, with Doomsday recalling his former life as Superman before allowing himself to be gently pushed into oblivion by Clark.

When Doomsday was first conceived in the '90s, his only real purpose was to provide a primal force so strong he could feasibly kill Superman. While that story arc remains one of the most famous in comic book history, Doomsday himself has rarely been portrayed as much more than a monstrous threat — a kind of ancient counter to Superman's humanity and sacrificial nature. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that, but at the same time, the villain's origin story — one in which an alien scientist brutally kills and repairs him countless times as a baby to turn him into a perfect killing machine — is inherently tragic, leaving the door wide open for some more interesting character development.

Fusing Doomsday with Bizarro wound up being a great way to bring out that potential, as it made the monster who famously kills Superman a literal shadow of the hero himself. He doesn't just represent the most powerful foe Clark faces, but also all of the potential darkness that could arise within himself. In the "Superman & Lois" finale, Clark winds up a punch to send Doomsday hurtling into the sun, but his rival holds up a hand, asking him to send him off peacefully instead. He doesn't fight back, which makes the scene even sadder. And when Clark details the rest of his life in montage at the end of the episode, it hits all the harder because we know things didn't work out so well for every version of him.

Given the mixed response certain parts of the Arrowverse received over the course of its run, it's nice to see "Superman & Lois" go out on such a high note. Doomsday in particular has received a lot of praise from fans online, both for his story arc and for his final live-action look, as many folks have compared the "Superman & Lois" Doomsday favorably to the version from "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," which has gotten criticism for years.

"I think by the end, Doomsday's life had been denigrated down to just pain, suffering, dying, and hate," series co-showrunner Brent Fletcher said in an interview with ComicBook.com. "He was always raging. And so, what the end is for us, I think, is release. Release from all the hatred and the pain, and an acknowledgement between these two that they shared something."

Live-action versions of beloved comic book characters are always tricky to get right, but the fan consensus on this particular "Superman & Lois" arc seems to be a resounding thumbs-up. "Doomsday, you know, Bizarro Superman's story is really tragic, probably the most tragic of the series," co-showrunner Todd Helbing told ComicBook.com. "And it felt like out of any way to end it, this was the most graceful." With James Gunn bringing Superman back to the big screen in 2025, fans don't have long to wait for the next live-action incarnation to make his mark.

"Superman & Lois" is streaming on the CW app.