The TV Series History

The Third Season

This is the season that changed it all. The third season started in October of 1990 and the show would never be the same again. From the opening sequence with the most memorable of the Superboy themes all the way to Superboy's fall to what could be his death, "Bride of Bizarro" part one showed just how much the show had evolved by that point. The look of the show had changed significantly again. And the setting had changed as well. Instead of Shuster University, Clark and Lana were now interns at the Bureau for Extra Normal Matters, an organization that investigates strange phenomena. With the change in setting, one character had to go as well. Andy McCalister was gone, and in his place was Clark and Lana's co-worker, Matt Ritter, along with their boss, C. Dennis Jackson. Ritter was played by Peter Jay Fernandez and Jackson was played by Robert Levine. The series' title changed also. The show had been known as "Superboy" for the first two seasons, but in season three became "The Adventures of Superboy".

With the new setting, the show switched from daytime adventures to numerous night-time adventures. The night-time adventures brought about many darker episodes. We see a version of the devil trying to take Superboy's soul in "Carnival". In "Werewolf", Clark falls in love with a girl named Christina, but the relationship ends in death as Christina is revealed to be a werewolf and killed with a silver bullet. In "Rebirth", Superboy faces his own greatest fears when he believes he has accidentally murdered a man. In "Wish for Armageddon", Superboy faces a man who is immortal and must bring about the end of the world to end his own life. All of these stories are quite dark in tone and are great improvements over some of the earlier stories of the first and second seasons.

But two episodes stand out above the rest of the pack. These two are regarded by many viewers of the series as the absolute best of the series. These two episodes go by the title "Roads Not Taken". In these incredible episodes, Superboy visits alternate worlds and meets alternate versions of himself while trying to bring Lex Luthor back to his home world. Superboy finds a world where his alternate's anger brought about his downfall and created a bleak world. The alternate's anger got the best of him, and he cut Luthor in two with his heat vision. He then gave up being Superboy and instead of the famous suit, now is seen in a leather jacket and dark sunglasses. This Superboy reminds Clark that the same anger, the same ability to kill, is inside him too. "Our" Superboy leaves telling him never to give up hope. Superboy enters another world where his alternate is a tyrant and rules the entire earth going by the name "Sovereign". Lana is one of the leaders of the movement to overthrow the Sovereign. Her lover is an alternate Lex Luthor who is also a member of the movement. Superboy joins the movement and confronts the Sovereign, but it is Lana who brings the Sovereign to justice. She arrives with a kryptonite bomb attached to her body. She backs the Sovereign into the corner of a deep corridor within his citadel and detonates the bomb, killing the Sovereign as well as herself. Superboy is saved from the kryptonite explosion by his alternate from the last world, who has turned himself around and become Superboy again. The explosion follows them back to the last world. Superboy and Lex escape using the remote portal device, but does the other Superboy survive? We will never know. This is one of the absolute best stories of the series. It even spawned a sequel episode, "The Road to Hell" in which Superboy was pulled to an alternate world to save a 3 year old version of himself who had landed in a jungle rather than in Kansas. Though not as memorable as "Roads Not Taken", "The Road to Hell" stands out as well as one of the best.

To me, the third season will always stand out as THE best season of the series. Others may believe otherwise, but this season will always be the best to me. The season lasted 26 episodes once again and ended with "The Road to Hell".

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