REVIEW: ‘My Adventures With Superman’ Season 3 Episode 5 — “The Death Of Superman”

The sobriety in which the title card, “The Death of Superman,” drops in the exemplary series’ best My Adventures with Superman Season 3 Episode 5 speaks to the intensity of the story to follow. Jake Wyatt and co aren’t playing around. Paying homage to the ’90s iconic storyline, the narrative pushes the series to its limit as it expounds on what it means to be a hero, and the lasting trauma of loss in a truly remarkable episode whose gargantuan efforts pay off with astonishing effect. 

The majority of My Adventures with Superman Season 3 Episode 5 takes place during the fight between Clark Kent/Superman (Jack Quaid) and Hank Henshaw/Cyborg Superman (Max Mittelman).  Henshaw is radically disillusioned and entitled, believing he’s earned the right to call himself a hero and the accolades that follow despite continuously inciting fear in the residents of Metropolis. Superman and Supergirl (Kiana Madeira), in his eyes, are enemy (s) number one.

And not just that, proof of why people like him finish last, believing their alien nature makes them less worthy of the spotlight and warmth he desires. He’s human and therefore deserves all the blessed happiness he believes Superman receives. His contemptible “you aliens are breeding now” drips with disgust, a revealing moment of ugly bigotry from the character sold by Max Mittelman. 

“The Death of Superman” is an astonishing feat of storytelling. 

With some remarkable fight animation and stellar performances all around, “The Death of Superman” astonishes in the totality of the story despite being only the halfway mark. Superman is having his big standoff with a big bad. Meanwhile, Superboy (Darren Criss) is confessing the truth about why he traveled to the past and his resistance to growing closer to Kara. In his world, his parents are long dead, and the woman who raised him, Kara, has also been recently killed. Lex Luthor (Mittelman), of all people, is the one to help shepherd him into the past to save the day. 

And, in perhaps one of the smartest character beats, Jon/Superboy struggles with his arrival in this version of Metropolis because of how wonderful it is. His world is overcome with violence and bloodshed, smothered with smoky blazes. But Clark and Lois (Alice Lee) get to enjoy a Metropolis filled with vibrancy and radiant happiness.

He wanted, for a mere moment, a chance to enjoy the sprightly happiness his parents seemingly get to enjoy daily – to fly as close to the sun as he might manage. The sequence where he first arrives is gorgeously animated, bringing forth the most idyllic warmth the series is capable of to convince us why he’d be willing to push off his mission, even for just a few hours. 

If Superboy is Trunks, that makes Supergirl Gohan, right? 

The Dragon Ball Z references have hardly been subtle, but they’re brought into the forefront in My Adventures with Superman Season 3 Episode 5 in Superboy’s backstory. We learn that it was Kara – in full Gohan mode – who trained him when his parents died, offering him the emotional support he needed. And it was her death that inflicted the greatest pain since he’s gotten the chance to know her. So, of course, he’s keeping his distance, worried about any potential threat that may come to her while he’s here. 

Kara confronts him about this, saying that Superboy can’t work alone, especially against such a strong antagonist. And that while she’s sorry about what he’s gone through, she’s also right here, in the present. These bouts of emotional, character-driven interactions are just part of what makes the episode sore.

Even the moment when Lois leaps out of a moving car to clock Lex is well delivered and certainly justified. That it all happens in the midst of a titanic bout of might and city-leveling destruction makes it all the more potent. These moments of reckoning are visualized in the fallen debris and sense of impending doom. 

My Adventures with Superman Season 3 Episode 5 raises the stakes with emotional volatility. 

It’s hard to believe that, in a show with his name in the title, Superman is actually going to die. And how “The Death of Superman” plays with its own iconography and the expectations that come with it play into its excellence. Henshaw puts Superman through the wringer, and Mittelman makes for a superb villain while taunting Clark, telling him he’s stronger and faster than he is, as he bodily tosses him through the air. The moment he slams Superman’s face into a skyscraper, the glass shattering around them, is a bit on the nose but effective, as we see Henshaw’s own visage shatter into pieces. 

Henshaw is not the man he once was, nor is he the man Lex envisioned when he kept him alive. Lex, who is even working to help take him down in an effort to save his own skin. For a moment, it seems that the “death” might align itself with the death of ideals. Because My Adventures with Superman Season 3 Episode 5 doesn’t just see Clark suffer a physical onslaught, but also emotional ones, as Hank tries to split his attention by dropping a plane out of the sky and derailing a train. 

But that’s where the theme of family comes in: Kara and Superboy can split off and handle those potential disasters so Superman can shoulder the real threat. No scene is more insightful into his inner plight than his Atlas moment, when he holds a building on his back, his will bolstering his strength until someone can help him. He is no longer a sole figure with the world on his shoulders. But that doesn’t make the fight any less brutal. 

The fight is a brutal explosion of opposing forces on their last legs. 

The entire fight is the best the series has ever looked, with Studio Grida upping the ante and leveling each blow with an impactful sense of weight. While relatively bloodless, the battle is exhaustive and effectively conveys the innate strength of these characters. It’s peppered with fun throwbacks, too, such as when Henshaw rebuilds his cybernetic arm, which uses rippling, sinewy animation reminiscent of Akira and Tetsuo’s transformations.

And each fights with their own distinctive personalities that change as fatigue sets in, from how Jon can fight differently due to a suit and his half-human biology that keeps Kryptonite from affecting him the same way, to Superman’s defaulting to brawling attacks when push comes to shove, and Supergirl’s warrior methods, each has their own way of arriving at battle. 

It all culminates after a bruising 23 minutes with Clark, on his last embers of strength, ringing whatever power he has left in him to overcome Henshaw’s own might. It’s a superb moment to showcase why Superman is the icon, a beacon of hope, overcoming impossible odds to save someone he cares for. He beats Henshaw, who, rather than use the remaining sparks of his own power, instead lets his heart run out, the machine going dead. 

The future is uncertain at the end of My Adventures with Superman Season 3 Episode 5. 

But that’s not the only “death” in My Adventures with Superman Season 3 Episode 5, though it would be a clever enough one. Henshaw dies, but Clark can’t sense his powers, believing he went too far in his efforts to save the day and severed something. Is that not a death, of sorts, to a hero, even if the man who dons his cape still stands?

Ending with a tag that suggests the heroes didn’t achieve the success they’d hoped for when Jon travels back to the future, “The Death of Superman” refutes easy answers or tidy transitions. Instead, it asks what happens when a hero sacrifices everything only to learn that the ideal outcome didn’t happen. 

My Adventures with Superman Season 3 Episode 5 demonstrates the continued legacy of DC animation being the best home for these stories. It’s an epic-scale showdown, and moments of genuine emotional impact and narrative ambition build on the formidable foundation the series has set. It all works because of how much we care about these characters. Characters who, at the end of this, are staring at a wildly uncertain future, a call back to Lois’s fear in Episode 4 and Jon’s reassurance. The future isn’t static; it can be changed. 

My Adventures with Superman Season 3 Episode 5 is available now on HBO Max. 

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