My guess is if they had retrived the stuff from the explosion they could have reversed the process, and then local Clark would not die.
I would say that these new developments reduce Luthor's cahnces with Lois, but since she is already engaged to Clark Kent and she believes that he was going after Superman, I think his chances with Lois were nill before the power transfer, so no real reduction there.
I would say that in a lot of ways Lois as Superwoman makes more sense than her as trying to be a differentiated superhero. Especially here where she gets the powers after she is engaged to Clark. Anyway, it has good precedent from the Superman comics, where Superwomen occasionally showed up as Lois with Super powers. Of course, it happened enough that sometimes she had a totally different outfit.
Still my favorite is when she used a black wig to hide her hair of the exact same color.
