Superman & Lois Season 2 Review: The Problem of Loyalty
The moral case for making sure you know where to place your loyalty.
We're all loyal to someone or something.
Whether it's to our family or to higher principles or somewhere in between. On a certain level, we believe that there's someone or something that we care about enough that we would defend in a heartbeat if necessary. It's hard not to hold something sacred even if we don't necessarily think about it in those terms. People like to care about things, it's only a question of how much and for how long. Part of what makes us do this is our desire to have things which other people don't have. To distinguish ourselves from others in a way that makes us feel special and by extension ourselves. In doing so, we tend to make the things we care about feel important. Particularly when it's a person like our family members or friends or those we work with. Often this can get to a point where if we ever turn our focus towards someone who isn't them, those we care about get upset.
That's actually pretty understandable. People don't like to feel as if they're not special to someone. They want others to be loyal to them and when you do so, people feel an obligation to those willing to feel loyal to them. It's a great thing for so many people. Up until the point where it might go terribly wrong. When you have more than one group or individual which you feel loyal to, they might hurt you if you don't show it back to them. Particularly if you have power that can't be controlled any other way than through loyalty. You worry that anyone with that type of power might turn against you and use that power to hurt you or the people you're still loyal to.
Fundamentally, the second season of Superman and Lois is about how loyalty can go terribly wrong. While the first season spent a lot of time focused on establishing the bonds of family and how you might want to focus on those you care about most, the second season complicates that. It shows how thinking in such terms can become a problem when the people under them shift. First when Sam Lane tries to retire from the department of defence, it calls into question how much Superman can trust those who replaced him. Then through Natalie, the daughter of John Henry Irons, and the divided loyalty she feels towards a woman who looks like her mother and her father who keeps insisting she's not. And finally the reintroduction of Lucy Lane and her divided loyalties between her family and the woman who she sees as having made her feel complete, Ally Allston.
All of these conflicts offer powerful and often painful choices for them to find a way to work out. Often in ways that don't present clear and obvious fixes. Any choice they do make will end up hurting someone else. Yet in most cases there's some attempt to maintain loyalty to all of them. Even when there's a conflict between each. Maybe the worst example of this is Lucy's loyalty to Ally since it creates a serious problem for Lois and her father as well as Clark himself. Their desire to help Lucy because of family loyalty only reinforces Lucy's distrust of them and makes actually dealing with Ally extremely difficult. They risk losing Lucy if they act against Ally. Not acting against Ally has horrible results though, creating a serious problem.
It's a fantastic thing to watch and you should do yourself a favour and explore the problem of loyalty by checking out Superman & Lois' second season as soon as you can.
Watch the first and second season of Superman & Lois on the CW app in the United States, CTV in Canada as well as Amazon.
great article, again :-)) two-cents on being loyal: on a micro-level in some people loyalty is a more natural, or stronger character trait than in others - many traditional belief systems will vouch for that, for example Roman (monthly) and Chinese (yearly) astrology. also there are those who, by virtue of their character, don't find it easy to easily trust others. so there's trust on the one hand, and loyalty on the other. this makes life complicated, because one can be distrustful and still be loyal, for many, many reasons. however, I wouldn't like to be a ship's captain where my crew members are loyal but don't trust me....