My Adventures With Superman season 2 took the Superman mythos in a bold, new direction, changing how Krypton was destroyed and altering Clark’s origin as a result. The latest animated offering from DC continues to push its stories in unexpected directions, carving out its own path while remaining true to the core ideals of the character. Hopefully, My Adventures With Superman season 3 will consistently find new ways to set itself apart from other Superman adaptations as it has routinely done throughout its first two seasons.
My Adventures With Superman has never strictly adhered to its titular character’s source material, always in favor of changing aspects of the lore to better fit with the story it seeks to tell. This is particularly evident in season 2’s narrative about Supergirl as a Vegeta-like antagonist to Superman before ultimately becoming a hero, which takes aspects of her familiar comic story and weaves new narratives with them. My Adventures With Superman’s season 2 finale illustrates this change of lore perfectly by making a major change to the destruction of Krypton, making the world Clark left behind even more tragic.
The Animated Show Makes A Major Change To Krypton
In My Adventures With Superman season 2, episode 10, “My Adventures with Supergirl,” Brainiac explains to Superman and Supergirl that he was the one who caused the destruction of Krypton. Brainiac learned that the Kryptonians were hoping to negotiate a peace treaty during their final war, and this led him to seek its downfall. “I was built for war, but now I was supposed to just let them decommission me?” he says to Clark shortly after one last attempt at taking control of Kara.
This adds a different layer to Brainiac as a character and his relationship with both Superman and Supergirl in the show. They were the ones who got away from his destruction, but his arrogance couldn’t allow that to happen, especially when part of him still wanted to craft a warmongering Kryptonian Empire. As such, he would hunt them both down and try to use them to help destroy even more worlds, which he successfully did with Kara before setting his sights on Clark.
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It changes the death of the planet into one that is caused by Brainiac’s arrogance and his willingness to do whatever he must in order to survive, even if that means the destruction of Krypton and all its people.
My Adventures With Superman changing the cause of Krypton’s destruction to Brainiac after he discovers Jor-El’s plans for a peace treaty alters Superman’s story. Showing Jor-El was looking at peace talks paints him and other Kryptonians in a more sympathetic light, adding a depth to their story that otherwise wouldn’t have been as possible. It changes the death of the planet into one that is caused by Brainiac’s arrogance and his willingness to do whatever he must in order to survive, even if that means the destruction of Krypton and all its people.
The contrast between Clark Kent – a small-town farm boy having grown up in Kansas – and his Kryptonian heritage is a prevalent part of the character of Superman. All of this still remains in My Adventures With Superman, but the story fundamentally alters his relationship with Brainiac as a villain, allowing his human compassion to be compared with the antagonist’s cold and calculated robotic ruthlessness.
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My Adventures With Superman Benefitted From Its Krypton Change
Having Krypton be destroyed by Brainiac is a significant change for My Adventures With Superman to make, but it feels like a fitting decision for the story being told. Firstly, changing the destruction of Krypton makes Supergirl’s storyline throughout season 2 even more tragic. Under the control of Brainiac, she has helped to destroy numerous worlds, much in the same way her own planet was destroyed. This in turn makes her development into Supergirl even more satisfying, and makes her power-up transformation alongside her cousin hit even harder.
The change also adds an interesting layer to Superman’s Kryptonian side. By having Jor-El and other Kryptonians looking for a path to peace instead of war, it allows for a more complex look at the Kryptonian race, providing a sneak peek at a more three-dimensional political and moral set of circumstances. The emotional connection it builds by having Brainiac be the cause of Supergirl and Superman’s world dying also makes the impact of his defeat feel that much more significant, and a much-needed catharsis for Clark and Kara.
It’s not always the right choice for an adaptation to stray away from its source material. In My Adventures With Superman, though, having Brainiac be the ultimate cause of Krypton’s destruction does feel like the right choice for the story it was trying to tell. After all, Brainiac was the biggest threat My Adventures With Superman had seen so far, and this change only reinforces that idea.
