The following contains spoilers for Superman & Lois Season 3, Episode 5, "Head On," which debuted April 11 on The CW.
Season 3 of Superman & Lois is reminding Tyler Hoechlin's Clark how frantic life can get. While he helps Lois with her cancer treatment, the Man of Steel has to worry about Bruno Mannheim as well. The villain has already targeted Steel and marked Lana for death in Smallville, using immense resources to show the heroes that he can be everywhere at once.
Still, Lois has kept her wits, wanting to infiltrate Bruno's cancer treatment facility in Hob's Bay to learn more about Intergang's experiments. Bruno is using Superman's blood to make metahumans, so Clark reluctantly agrees as he needs the truth exposed. Unfortunately, Superman is baited into a war that shows how smart Bruno is and results in dark consequences as the tyrant gets a chance to revive a scary enemy.
Superman & Lois' Bruno Mannheim Gets Hold of Bizarro
In Episode 5, "Head On," Bruno uses the phase-shifting Deadline for an attack on the Department of Defense, which ends up being part of a long con. The villain, created in the 1980s by Roger Stern in Starman #15, hacks the military facility and transmits data to Intergang, duping Superman who doesn't realize their fight is a distraction. While Kal-El barely stops him, he can't prevent the transfer from occurring. Later, Sam Lane confesses that Bruno's crew then hit multiple hubs and stole a weapon.
The final scene reveals Bruno and Intergang recovered Bizarro's body and are about to experiment on it in the lab. With Superman's blood used to resurrect dead villains, Bruno's now looking to make Bizarro his pawn. It nods to Zack Snyder's Zod being used by Lex Luthor, who experimented on the corpse to create Doomsday. But seeing as Bruno can control the revived, it looks like he'll have an evil Man of Steel to change the world the way Bruno warned Steel he would.
Superman & Lois Makes Bizarro's Story More Heartbreaking
This is quite tragic for Bizarro, who was thought to be a villain when he arrived in Season 2, pushing Superman to the limit. However, he was just trying to stop Parasite from destroying this Earth, the way she did his. He fell fighting Parasite's minion, but he did inspire Clark and Tal-Rho to bury the hatchet and take Parasite down. Still, it was heartbreaking seeing him lose so much, then perish as this selfless, misunderstood entity.
It's going to be a heartbreaking challenge for Team Kent to face this new abomination, as they know Bizarro was an altruistic, sympathetic symbol. It subverts the idea of Bizarro being a warped version of Superman in the comics and cartoons, with villains like Lex Luthor using him as a pawn. Here, Bruno's all in, sure to strip him of his agency and turn him into an instrument of destruction.
In the process, it makes Bruno even more intimidating and quite a conflicted character. He wants to do good for society, helping out impoverished people in the Suicide Slums, and even aiding Lois' cancer treatment after his own mom passed from the disease. But this act undoes all the good work, making Bruno as maniacal as ever as he goes to extreme lengths to reshape the planet. Ultimately, it's a double-edged sword because while fans feel for Bizarro, this move makes Bruno a true threat and someone Clark can't underestimate in the war to come.
Superman & Lois returns April 25 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.