WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Krypton's Season 2 premiere, "Light Years From Home," which aired Wednesday on Syfy.
Syfy's Krypton teased the arrival of Doomsday in its first season, only to whisk away the monster destined to kill Superman almost as quickly as he was revealed. So, viewers can be forgiven if they presumed the series would drag out the much-anticipated introduction of Lobo, DC's hard-living intergalactic bounty hunter, But the show throws a curve ball by calling in the Main Man in its Season 2 premiere.
"Light Years From Home" picks up six months after the events of the Season 1 finale, in which the city-stealing Brainiac (Blake Ritson) is swept into the Phantom Zone, but drags the Man of Steel's grandfather, Seg-El (Cameron Cuffe), with him. Thus, Brainiac is prevented from taking Kandor City and causing the destruction of the planet, but at the cost of great upheaval: Superman's enemy Dru-Zod (Colin Salmon), who somehow traveled back in time, purportedly to save his home world, rises as the despotic leader of Krypton, on his way, as Adam Strange (Shawn Sipos) discovers, to conquering the galaxy.
In the intervening period, Dru-Zod rules with an iron fist, with his mother Lyta-Zod (Georgina Campbell) at his side, rooting out the resistance, which includes Nyssa-Vex (Wallis Day), Val-El (Ian McElhinney) and Jax-Ur (Hannah Waddingham), and Adam, newly returned from Earth. With the Phantom Zone projector destroyed, and Val's secret laboratory seized by Dru-Zod, Adam gambles that he can modify his Zeta-Beam to journey to the Phantom Zone to rescue Seg.
And Seg most certainly needs saving. Trapped in that prison dimension, Seg is haunted by flashes of possible future events on Krypton, and visited by his grandfather -- "I'm a projection of your mind, here to help guide you home" -- who instructs him to use his sunstone, which "contains the harnessed energy of a 10 billion-year-old yellow sun," to tear open a time vortex, and transport him home. Except, that isn't Val-El, or even a projection of him. It's Brainiac, who knows Seg-El is the key to securing his freedom. The two are then teleported to Colu, Brainiac's home world, which looks a lot like a forest in British Columbia.
Just when it looks as if Krypton is about to turn into a sort of sci-fi Midnight Run, with Seg and Brainiac grudgingly bound by a mutual desire for survival, two things happen: an alarm sounds on a distant mountaintop, announcing "Shithead detected ... transmitting location," signaling that someone has been waiting for Brainiac; and Seg attacks his enemy and, against all odds, bashes in Brainiac's skull, leaving his gory, and seemingly lifeless, body on the forest floor.
That's what Adam finds when he's forced to use his Zeta-Beam to evade Sagitari on Krypton, and travels through the Phantom Zone to Colu. However, their reunion is interrupted by the arrival a bounty hunter who isn't Robert De Niro; it's Lobo (Emmett J. Scanlan), presumably responding to the detection of a -- or possibly the -- "shithead." If he's disappointed by the state of Brainiac, he certainly doesn't show it, yet. Heralded by a howl, he pops up in front of Seg and Adam, well-armed, and not only with light profanity.
Unsurprisingly, he makes quick work of the two, knocking them unconscious before introducing himself and posing two questions: "First question,, who are you two shit-birds, and second question, what are you doing on this shit-hole of a planet?" "Frag!" he continues, falling back on his favorite family-friendly profanity. "Probably should've asked you that first!"
No matter, because he wraps a chain around Seg and Adam, and drags their bodies through the woods, presumably to whoever placed a bounty on Brainiac. Given the number of enemies the "Collector of Worlds" has made across the galaxy, that could be virtually anyone.
Airing Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Syfy, Krypton stars Cameron Cuffe as Seg-El, Shaun Sipos as Adam Strange, Georgina Campbell as Lyta-Zod, Elliot Cowan as Daron-Vex, Ann Ogbomo as Jayna-Zod, Rasmus Hardiker as Kem, Wallis Day as Nyssa-Vex, Aaron Pierre as Dev-Em, Ian McElhinney as Val-El and Blake Ritson as Brainiac.