Superman & Lois boss talks Lucy Lane's arrival and exploring 'why Lois is the way she is'

For much of Superman & Lois' first season, Superman's (Tyler Hoechlin) biggest obstacle — aside from raising two teenage boys — was defeating Morgan Edge/Tal-Rho (Adam Rayner), which he did! Once again, the superhero saved the day! But the season 1 finale then left fans with a bit of a more family-oriented cliffhanger: John Henry Irons' (Wolé Parks) daughter, Natalie (Tayler Buck), arrived on this Earth, which brought her face to face with Lois (Elizabeth Tulloch), her dead mother's doppelgänger. And that's precisely where season 2 will begin.

EW spoke with Superman & Lois showrunner Todd Helbing about what to expect from Natalie and the rest of the show as it heads into its sophomore year.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: With one successful season under your belt, what were you most excited to dive into as you started planning season 2?

TODD HELBING: If you look at any comments section about any show, which I try never to do, it's always like, "Oh, the first season is by far the best." A lot of that has to do with the fact that it's just new and fresh. When you get through the first season, you sort of reflect upon what worked and what didn't work. On our show, we're really fortunate. We felt like we found the formula pretty quickly. I think you just want to take the football and make sure you don't fumble it again, primarily. Our main thing was, "Okay, let's just go deeper with the characters." The family stuff worked so well on our show. So now we have three families. Let's really get into their history, their past, dig up some secrets, find out more, tell the audience more about them, why they are who they are, why they're in Smallville, and just really go deeper. That was our main desire, and then create some cool villains that reflected upon the emotional stories we were telling for the season.

How is Natalie going to adapt to her new surroundings?

Well, it takes a while. There's some hesitancy. First and foremost, she found her dad, yay, but she sees instantly her dead mother's doppelgänger. We talked a lot about Natalie and Lois, and the reality of it. If this was a real situation, how would you respond? I think the initial knee-jerk response is, "Oh, it would feel like Lois is getting her daughter that she lost." But they're not the same person. It would be the same for Natalie. That looks like my mom, but it's not. They're strangers, which is a weird thing to think about.

We just really wanted to dig into the true struggle and the amount of effort it would take to develop a relationship, the time that that would take. It's not an instant thing. It's going to take probably a couple seasons before they actually really understand each other.

Speaking of family dynamics, we know Jenna Dewan's Lucy Lane is showing up this season. What can we expect from her arrival?

In season 1 you obviously get to know Lois, and you get to know General Lane [Dylan Walsh]. You come to understand their fraught relationship and many of the reasons for it. We hit a lot of those, but we never talked about Lois' mom. We never said her sister's name once. We really wanted to get into why is Lane the way he is, why is Lois the way she is? Both of those characters are in a situation where Lane's wife just leaves one day, and Lois' mom just leaves one day, and Lucy's mom just leaves one day, what does that do to a family? When you meet Lucy, it'll explain a lot why Lois is the way she is, and what she's searching for life, and how she's dealing with everything as an adult.

Are we going to get to see this school for super-kids?

What's so funny about that is we had a full story broken where you went to the school, but we made some changes and it got removed. You're not really going to see the actual school, but it's still a part of things.

Along those lines, is Jordan [Alex Garfin] going to be working on his powers a bit more?

Yeah, they're going to develop, I'll say, this season. You'll see quite a bit more.

For years in terms of the DOD, Clark had been working with family, and now we've got a new guy who isn't family taking on General Lane's role. How would you describe Clark's dynamic with Anderson [Ian Bohen]?

I would describe it as not great. [Laughs] It's a lot of misunderstandings. Anderson is like anybody that takes over for somebody that was really good at their job in that position. When you step into that new role, you don't have the benefit of the years that that person had before you, all the experience. In this specific case, it's like you said. Lane knows Superman's secret. He's part of a family. When Superman would just take off and leave, he knew where he was going. He was either going to go see Lois or the boys. But to Anderson, when Superman takes off, he doesn't know where he's going. He can't communicate that. The frustration starts to mount on Anderson's side.

Superman & Lois returns Tuesday, Jan. 11, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on the CW.

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• Superman & Lois season 2 trailer reveals an adversarial Teen Wolf reunion and Clark's glitchy powers
• Supergirl alum Jenna Dewan returning as Lucy Lane on Superman & Lois
• Superman & Lois boss breaks down [SPOILER]'s arrival, Tal-Rho's fate, and more