Shrinking back down to 13 episodes after a bumper second season, STAS was all over the map on its way out, with some of the best and worst episodes in the whole series. But how does it compare to previous seasons and what does it do to the show’s overall… Legacy….?

More Season Reviews:

Batman: The Animated Series (Season One | Season Two | The New Batman Adventures)

Batman Beyond (Season One | Season Two | Season Three)

Superman: The Animated Series (Season One | Season Two)

1. Season Three Review
2. Director Rankings
3. Writer Rankings
4. Animation Studio Rankings
5. Composer Rankings
6. Top Performances
7. Episode Ranking
8. Rogues Roundup

Season Three Review

After proudly launching their new baby with the first season, the creative team really found their feet for the middle portion, while also bringing Batman back in to the fold with TNBA. You would be forgiven for calling it the golden era of the DCAU as they had two high quality shows on the air at the same time, featuring their two most popular characters. It was the best season of STAS and… an underrated season of BTAS. But with such a high has to come a low, and that’s the final season of Superman: The Animated Series in a nutshell.

With the creative team (particularly Bruce Timm & Paul Dini) focused on launching the upcoming Batman Beyond, you could really feel their attention wavering from what seemed like the flagship show in their eyes (many of them seemed to enjoy making Superman more than Batman in my opinion.) One of my favourite things about the first two seasons was the sense of gradual progression and subtle themes that ran through what was otherwise an episodic show. Season 3 fails dramatically in this regard, and feels somewhat hastily thrown together and random for the most part.

This is a show that theoretically had a lot of supporting characters but so few of them appear regularly or do anything meaningful. Jimmy Olsen. Perry White. The Kents. Lana Lang. Dan Turpin. Maggie Sawyer. In fact Emil Hamilton gets the second most play behind Lois because he’s so convenient for explaining sci-fi nonsense to the audience. Supergirl gets a big debut two-parter and is set up to be a series regular to shake up the status quo… but then doesn’t properly again until right before the end. You’ve even got Lex Luthor on the villain side having a slightly smaller role than you might expect compared to The Joker in BTAS, and Mercy Graves ends up barely speaking 90% of the time when she should be his Harley Quinn. They seemed like they’d finally figured out how to use Jimmy with the Signal Watch and him getting into silly adventures… but that happens right at the end of the series and he only uses the watch once. Similarly, Darkseid got a nice variety of henchmen in his first few episodes (Kanto, Kalibak, Steppenwolf) but once they debuted Granny Goodness and the Furies they never looked back.

Paul Dini has acknowledged these issues and wishes they’d been able to flesh all these characters and relationships out more.

Season 2 saw a bunch of other DC heroes and future Justice League members make one-episode appearances to mixed results. They could be fun, but generally they seemed to be going out of their way to use them to make Superman look better. Season 3 broke that trend a little, with Green Lantern and Aquaman getting to shine in their own right, but it became much more difficult to keep Superman in the spotlight. This may be because of the idea ‘Legacy’ was meant to be a season premiere with the episodes that followed being mostly about Superman trying to regain public trust. I’m unsure which season it was meant to be the start of, having seen claims of either a cut-down Season 3 or the never-to-be Season 4. If it is the former, it would explain why our hero takes a bit of a back seat, not just when other heroes take the forefront, but also the Jimmy Olsen episode and even ‘Unity’, where Supergirl drives the narrative. There’s even an episode set entirely in the past with the Legion of Super-Heroes trying to prevent Brainiac from killing a teenage Clark, all while singing SUperman’s praises. That episode offers hope that he succeeds in his redemption mission, even if it potentially took almost a thousand years. All that being said, if it’s the latter and the originally conceived Season 3 just coincidentally cuts things back… then I’m not sure what to make of it. It feels like a bunch of half-baked stories. Regardless of which way around it is, the giant gaps of 6-months between certain episodes must have been jarring for viewers at the time. Ditto the ‘3 episode season’.

All of that being said they really did stick the landing. It can be difficult to tie a bow on a multi-season series, but they nailed it with Superman’s brief foray over to the dark side (pun intended), hitting his absolute lowest point and resigning himself to a suicide mission to Apokalips. The final battle is really well done, with Darkseid calmly mopping the floor with our hero, and even when Clark ‘wins’, his minions just carry him off to get patched up. That’s when they really threaded the needle by bringing things back to a place of love and empathy, with Kara convincing Superman to return home and Lois imparting some insightful wisdom as they finally kiss. It for sure sets up more story, which we’ll get in Justice League, but it also still work if this were the last we ever saw of The Man of Steel.

On the whole this is the weakest season, with the majority of it landing near the bottom of the list… but also delivering a handful of my favourite episodes. I had ‘Obsession‘ at number one for a while, and really toyed with ‘Unity‘ dethroning it. Season 1 was mostly about establishing the show so there was only one episode I felt enthusiastic about, but there also weren’t many clunkers. Season 2 delivered the bulk of the middle and top half of the list, with only a smattering of whiffs. Season 3 is very much about extremes. It’s not just the creative team getting distracted with Beyond, it was also about losing Tokyo Movie Shinsa and being forced to bring in Group TAC & Jade for four episodes. Three of these look pretty awful, with a severe lack of detail in the backgrounds and missing/expressionless faces in wide shots. They fared much better with the body horror and bizarre alien creature designs in ‘Unity’, but otherwise it’s probably the worst animation in the DCEU. Koko & Dong Yang came a long way compared to BTAS, but as I’ve talked about a lot, the cost of achieving a consistent, clean look was a lack of sauce compared to what TMS and Spectrum were doing with Batman (enraging Bruce Timm because he felt they were straying from the character models!)

After Season One I came away enjoying STAS much more than I expected, historically not being much of a ‘Superman Guy’, but feeling while the floor is higher thanks to the lessons they learned from BTAS over the years and tightening things up to achieve a more consistent quality level… the ceiling is also lower in return. Fast-forward to the end of the series and I feel exactly the same. There are only really like 3-4 episodes I’d recommend alongside the best of Batman, and none of them would be top 5 in a combined ranking. If you’d rather curate yourself a list of 30 episodes and just enjoy the high points, BTAS has you covered. But if you were watching both start to finish, I do think Superman will let you down a lot less often. There are some truly abysmal BTAS episodes to offset iconic stories and definitive takes on characters. You can probably attribute that to them going straight for a 65-episode season in the early 90s and trying to get everything off the ground. Over the course of Batman they figured out what they were striving for and took much bigger swings. Superman is a product of learned lessons and several years of animation enhancements. 

I see some people make the bold declaration they prefer STAS to BTAS. To me that could only be true if you preferred Superman in general, but as I say, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I like it after previously somewhat dismissing it in comparison to my life-long love of BTAS. If nothing else, the show has certainly made me more of a Superman fan, and while I’m not going to tell you the Rogues Gallery is as good, there were more compelling villains than I expected. I was always a ‘Superman’s boring because he’s too powerful’ person, but they kept finding believable ways to allow characters to temporarily get the advantage on him. Whether that be aliens not constrained by human limitations, utilising Kryptonite/Red Sun tech, or establishing early and often he has a degree of vulnerability to extremely strong electrical currents. That goes hand in hand with their general decision to have him struggle with his incredible feats. He can still lift anything. He can still withstand anything. But he has to grimace along the way. That may not seem like anything at all, but it’s remarkably effective every single time. That’s why the show has kind of made me a ‘Superman Guy’, and again, while it’s not AS iconic and definitive as BTAS, this is still my favourite take on the character.

Director Rankings

Season 3

1. Dan Riba (3 eps)
2. Curt Geda (3 eps)
3. Shin-Ichi Tsuji (3 eps)
4. Butch Lukic (3 eps)
5. Kazumi Fukushima (1 ep)

Remember everybody, this is based purely on the points values of the episodes these creatives worked on and is not an actual attempt to rank their ability.

I say things like that because I can already feel some nerds coming at me over Butch Lukic (who will end up one of the most tenured DCAU directors and one of Bruce Timm’s closest allies) only placing fourth. I don’t really know what to tell you, they placed him on ‘Absolute Power‘, my least favourite episode of the season, and ‘New Kids In Town‘ which wasn’t much stronger. It is kind of fun he ends up accidentally (or maybe it was on purpose, I don’t know!) as The Space Guy, as his third episode was the Green Lantern one.

I do think Dan Riba deserves to be number one though. He was a replacement director for BTAS after one of their original pool quit, so many of his episodes were kind of bad as they were low priority ones suitable for a newcomer. But over the course of his Batman work (especially TNBA) he really rose up to become arguably the go-to director for the DCAU. Hence him being assigned to the entirety of ‘Season 4’ (three episodes is not a season, so I folded it into Season 3), including their epic ending. Curt Geda seemed to have a similar rise from the art team to direction, and really comes to prove himself on Batman Beyond (like Lukic) but he was behind Riba in the queue, so it makes sense to end up behind him on the rankings.

Overall

1. Bruce Timm & Scott Jeralds (1 ep) (–)
2. Dan Riba (14 eps) (–)
3. Kenji Hachizaki (3 eps) (–)
4. Kazuhide Tomonaga (2 eps) (–)
5. Yuchiro Yano (2 eps) (–)
6. Nobuo Tomizawa (1 ep) (–)
7. Curt Geda (16 eps) (–)
8. Toshihiko Masuda (5 eps) (–)
9. Shin-Ichi Tsuji (3 eps) (NEW)
10. Butch Lukic (3 eps) (NEW)
11. Hiroyoki Aoyama (3 eps) (↓)
12. Kazumi Fukushima (1 ep) (NEW)

Basically Season 3 had no impact on the final Director placements whatsoever. Three people debuted, one of which debuted straight at the bottom of the list, while the other two weren’t much higher.

It is kind of wild to me that Dan Riba and Curt Geda could do over half the episodes between them and only place second and seventh respectively. With a gun to my head they’d be the best two, but the law of averages can be a harsh master, and where would we be in these aggregated rankings if Bruce Timm weren’t stealing top honours by only working on one episode?

Writer Rankings

Season 3

1. Andrew Donkin & Ron Fogelman (1 ep)
2. Paul Dini (5 eps)
3. Rich Fogel (6 eps)
4. Bob Goodman (3 eps)
5. Stan Berkowitz (1 ep)
6. Hilary J Bader (4 eps)
7. Alan Burnett (2 eps)

Okay. This is the category I most often end up agreeing with the results of, perhaps because I subconsciously attach more weight to the writing than the other things that go towards episode quality. Or maybe the results just hit my eye better, I don’t know.

Paul Dini fails to capture the top spot, but not by much. Dini’s only real sin is his love of Mxyzptlk meaning he was attached to what I thought was a pretty awful second outing for the imp from the fifth dimension, dragging his average down. Conversely, Donkin & Fogelman only wrote a single episode that I placed really high… and they shared writing duties with Dini. Maths, man! Dini still penned my entire top 3 (remembering two-parters are only good for one set of points), so he’s clearly the actual best writer this time around. I feel like if you ignore anyone who didn’t do at least 3 episodes then the lists looks a bit more accurate.

On the other end of the scale of my personal favourites, Hilary Bader, took a real beating, working on my two least favourite episodes of the season, and two more from around the middle. She co-wrote that bottom two with Alan Burnett (hence him placing last), who didn’t get to bail himself out with any other scripts.

Rich Fogel has never really been a writer I have adored, but he did a lot of heavy lifting in the final season and I’d say he generally rose to the challenge.

Overall

1. Andrew Donkin & Ron Fogelman (1 ep) (NEW)
2. Bruce Timm (2 eps) (↓)
3. Steve Gerber (2 eps) (↓)
4. Marty Isenberg & Robert N. Skir (1 ep) (↓)
5. Paul Dini (17 eps) (↑)
6. Rich Fogel (13 eps) (–)
7. Mark Evanier (1 ep) (↑)
8. Stan Berkowitz (8 eps) (↓)
9. Evan Dorkin & Sarah Dyer (4 eps) (–)
10. Alan Burnett (10 eps) (↓)
11. Hilary J Bader (13 eps) (↓)
12. Bob Goodman (8 eps) (↓)
13. Joe R. Lansdale (1 ep) (↓)

Again, for the squeamish, maybe just ignore anyone with fewer than 3 writing credits and then consider Paul Dini to be number one, because he’s obviously the best DCAU writer. He and Rich Fogel‘s strong third season efforts allow them to hold on while other tenured writers like Berkowitz, Burnett and Bader tumbled multiple spots.

I probably should have come up with a system that rewards having multiple credits earlier because looking back on all the Season Reviews I’ve done there’s always multiple people who slide into a high spot off the strength of a good but not amazing episode.

Animation Studio Rankings

Season 3

1. Koko Enterprise Co., LTD & Dong Yang Animation Co., LTD. (9 eps)
2. Group T.A.C. Co., LTD. & Jade Animation (4 eps)

To the surprise of precisely nobody, the emergency fill-in group who had previously provided animation support on some of the worse looking episodes of BTAS… also weren’t very good when called on for STAS! I talked about it in every one of their episodes, but Group TAC/Jade‘s visual quality was noticeably worse than the entire rest of the show, developing a trademark for ugly long-shots with zero detail. Faces would almost entirely vanish too. Just really rough stuff. My head-canon is TAC were fine and did the bulk of the episodes while Jade were responsible for these affronts to my eyeballs, but I have no idea if that’s true or not. The one high-point for the partnership was ‘Unity‘, which I thought looked legitimately great. Perhaps they have more experience in body horror and insane alien designs.

Koko/Dong Yang handled everything else. I’m sure they’d have done literally the entire season (like they would for Batman Beyond shortly after this) if Bruce Timm had his way, but apparently they couldn’t commit to that workload at the time. They continued to keep things looking smooth and on-model like Boss Timm likes.

Overall

1. Koko Enterprise Co., LTD & Dong Yang Animation Co., LTD. (34 eps) (–)
2. TMS-Kyokuichi Corporation (16 eps) (–)
3. Group T.A.C. Co., LTD. & Jade Animation (4 eps) (NEW)

While I personally prefer TMS‘ work, they trailed Koko/Dong Yang by quite a distance when all was said and done. In fact the points gap between first and second was more than twice that between second and third.

Things were split nicely in the Top 10, with 6 episodes for Koko/Dong Yang, 3 for TMS and 1 for TAC/Jade, but when you zoom out all of the rest of TAC/Jade’s episodes landed in the bottom 10, while TMS had a higher percentage in the bottom half than Koko/Dong Yang.

I’ve talked about this before, but one of TMS’ conditions for working on STAS was they be allowed to direct their own episodes. It would be racist to claim that American directors do better work, but it’s hard to deny we saw better results when the main creative team were more hands-on, versus outsourcing to a team who weren’t involved from the start. I think it’s about level of investment to be honest. I’m sure original work conceived entirely in-house by TMS (or any other studio) would be of a higher quality than stuff they’re being sent from afar. Or hey, maybe TMS just lost their touch over the years and Koko/Dong Yang just became straight up better.

Composer Rankings

Season 3

1. Shirley Walker (5 eps)
2. Michael McCuistion (4 eps)
3. Harvey Cohen (1 ep)
4. Lolita Ritmanis (3 eps)
5. Kristopher Carter (3 eps)

The harshest rankings each time. I feel so bad. The music is almost always excellent in these shows and has no impact on the quality most of the time. That being said I continue to not be mad about Queen Shirley managing to reign supreme after being almost entirely absent from the show at the beginning. She composed the theme and then nothing in Season One. Then by only doing 2 episodes in Season 2, but both of them being good, she ‘stole’ the top spot from her workhorse proteges. But despite scoring my least favourite episode of the season, she also worked on my top 2. She actually tied with McCuistion but given Walker both did more episodes and had the highest placing one, I gave it to her.

I don’t really have any other big comments here. I enjoyed Ritmanis‘ eerie score for the body snatching episode, ‘Unity.’ Perfectly on brief. I previously shared my belief ‘Superman’s Pal‘ was actually a mish-mash of unused music by all the show’s composers, as it seems unlikely so many people would work on such a low-profile episode. Whether that’s true or not I ended up really liking Jimmy bumbling about town to charming little ditties. Finally, Michael McCuistion got entrusted with recapturing the Gotham magic for the two BTAS crossover episodes and it was exactly what you’d want.

Overall

1. Shirley Walker (7 eps) (–)
2. Harvey Cohen (7 eps) (–)
3. Michael McCuistion (14 eps) (↑)
4. Kristopher Carter (14 eps) (↓)
5. Lolita Ritmanis (15 eps) (–)

Season 3 only impacts the final standings by having McCuistion leapfrog Carter in the overall. Everybody else remains exactly where they were after Season 2. Sorry it’s not more exciting!

Again, I refute that any of them is ‘worse’ than the others in a meaningful way and it’s just how the averages fell.

Top Performances

1. Michael Ironside (Darkseid)
2. Lori Petty (Livewire)
3. Dana Delany (Lois Lane)
4. Clancy Brown (Clancy Brown)
5. Ed Asner (Granny Goodness)
6. Bud Cort (Toyman)
7. Malcolm McDowell (Metallo)
8. Tim Daly (Superman/Bizarro)
9. Gilbert Gottfried (Mr. Mxyzptlk)
10. Joseph Balogna (Dan Turpin)

I debuted this for Season 2 and I’m really not married to it and could add a bunch of extra candidates if pushed. Likewise the order doesn’t matter much. Everybody in that Top 6 is excellent at what they’re being asked to do. I just put Michael Ironside in first place because of what ‘Legacy’ adds to what he was already doing so well before. If Lori Petty had gotten another outing I’m sure she’d have reclaimed the top spot.

The only other real change besides a small shuffling of the order is Tim Daly pushing Sharon Lawrence off the list. I really loved Queen Maxima, but by the end of the series Daly had really put the work in and deserves to be here. His final turn as Bizarro was much stronger than the earlier ones, and Superman really goes through the ringer emotionally this season too.

It’s a really strong voice cast. Not many steps behind BTAS in my opinion. The latter’s deeper roster of villains tended to attach more exciting names to those roles, but the series regulars of Superman are much better, Conroy vs Daly notwithstanding.

Episode Ranking

Season 3

1. Legacy
2. Obsession
3. Unity
4. Knight Time
5. In Brightest Day…
6. The Demon Reborn
7. Where There’s Smoke
8. New Kids In Town
9. Superman’s Pal
10. Little Big Head Man
11. A Fish Story
12. Absolute Power

I’d mostly be repeating my Season Review if I got into this too much but every time I see Season 3 in isolation like this the quality gap feels so profound to me. Those Top 3 are excellent. The two BTAS crossovers are ‘Good’ and ‘Okay’ respectively, and then things start to get ‘Mediocre’ before settling on ‘Outright Bad’ in the bottom 3.

Overall

1. Legacy (S3)
2. Obsession (S3)
3. The Late Mr. Kent (S2)
4. Brave New Metropolis (S2)
5. Apokalips… Now! (S2)
6. Unity (S3)
7. World’s Finest (S2)
8. Livewire (S2)
9. Double Dose (S2)
10. Fun and Games (S1)
11. Warrior Queen (S2)
12. Knight Time (S3)
13. Father’s Day (S2)
14. Little Girl Lost (S2)
15. The Hand of Fate (S2)
16. The Last Son of Krypton (S1)
17. Ghost in the Machine (S2)
18. Stolen Memories (S1)
19. Action Figures (S2)
20. The Prometheon (S2)
21. In Brightest Day… (S3)
22. Tools of the Trade (S1)
23. The Demon Reborn (S3)
24. The Main Man (S1)
25. Mxzypixilated (S2)
26. Blasts from the Past (S2)
27. Target (S2)
28. The Way of All Flesh (S1)
29. Solar Power (S2)
30. Where There’s Smoke (S3)
31. Protoype (S2)
32. My Girl (S1)
33. A Little Piece of Home (S1)
34. Feeding Time (S1)
35. New Kids in Town (S3)
36. Superman’s Pal (S3)
37. Little Big Head Man (S3)
38. A Fish Story (S3)
39. Speed Demons
40. Two’s a Crowd (S1)
41. Absolute Power (S3)
42. Identity Crisis (S2)
43. Heavy Metal (S2)
44. Monkey Fun (S2)
45. Bizarro’s World (S2)

The distribution of episodes by season is always pretty fascinating to me, and STAS Season 3 really drove that point home. Half of the episodes landed in the bottom half of the show, and in fact ended up clustered suspiciously close together. I really tried to break them up but couldn’t convince myself there were enough episodes that deserved to move down enough spots to do that.

But then when all was said and done 3 of the stories ended up in the Top 10, which sounds like a pretty good hit rate for such a short season. Consider that Season 1 was equally long and only managed a single entry on the final Top 10. There’s no doubt Season 2 reigns supreme, but where you fall on the idea of consistent mediocrity versus very high highs and very low lows, you may flip Seasons One and Three from how I’d place them.

Rogues Roundup

Season 3

1. Darkseid
2. Toyman
3. Unity
4. General Harcastle/The US Military
5. Talia al Ghul
6. Granny Goodness
7. Volcana
8. Lex Luthor
9. Bizarro
10. Gotham Rogues
11. Sinestro
12. Mxyzptlk
13. Metallo
14. Brainiac
15. Ra’s al Ghul
16. The Female Furies
17. Project Firestorm
18. Jax-Ur & Mala

When ignoring all previous season episodes the eye surely goes straight to Lex Luthor only managing a mid-point ranking. They completely changed his characterisation in ‘A Fish Story‘ and while it’s one that probably could have worked if they’d been leaning into it the whole time, in a bubble it was just pretty weak. He had a solid final appearance which dragged him up from his original placement.

Conversely General Hardcastle/The US Military fared much better when taking the events of the finale in isolation. This is a potential series-long antagonist hiding in plain sight, and I get why they had plans to pivot in that direction. (When placing him overall I retroactively considered his role in ‘The Prometheon‘ which wasn’t bad, but was a little more boring.)

I don’t think anyone else is overly surprising. The likes of Metallo, Brainiac and Mxyzptlk‘s final season appearances are weaker than what we’ve seen before so they placed low. Darkseid, Toyman, Unity and Talia had strong showings. Everybody else is just kind of floating around.

Overall

1. Darkseid
2. Livewire
3. Toyman
4. Lex Luthor
5. Unity
6. The Joker
7. Queen Maxima
8. Parasite
9. Metallo
10. Granny Goodness
11. Karkull
12. Brainiac
13. Mr. Mxyzptlk
14. General Hardcastle/The US Military
15. Talia al Ghul
16. Harley Quinn
17. Kalibak
18. Volcana
19. Ra’s al Ghul
20. The Gotham Rogues
21. Lobo
22. Luminus
23. Sinestro
24. Project Firestorm
25. The Female Furies
26. DeSaad
27. Detective Bowman
28. Bruno Mannheim (and Intergang!)
29. Steppenwolf
30. The Preserver
31. Bizarro
32. Kanto
33. Mercy Graves
34. The Prometheon
35. De’Cine
36. Mala & Jax-Ur
37. Corey Mills
38. Earl Garver
39. Titano
40. Weather Wizard

There’s not really much to say here given I’ve been ranking them as I’ve gone, but I will say now the list is complete if you’d told me when I started that there would be 40 entries and like… 35 of them are at worst fun but don’t appear for very long, I would have been shocked. It’s obviously not Batman’s rogues gallery, but it comes closer than I could have imagined, and I feel really good about that Top 10. Whether it’s limited appearances but strong gimmicks from the likes of Livewire, Toyman, Unity and Queen Maxima, or the slow-burn brilliance of Darkseid, Lex Luthor and Metallo, I do sincerely think there’s something here for everyone. And yes, that includes a guest appearance from The Joker.

Even the middle portion of the list contains plenty of villains that had a lot going for them but either made multiple appearances that dragged them down over time (Brainiac, Mxyzptlk and Kalibak) or things started promising but they didn’t fully thread the needle (Lobo, Luminus, De’Cine, The Promtheon). I say that to say even the ones I wouldn’t immediately draw on to try and change hearts and minds about Superman’s villains had more going on than I expected. I think that’s a testament to this creative team, as well as a smidge of unfair bias against anyone not called Batman.