I was never much of a Smallville fan. Well, sort of. I was always a fan of season openers and season closers, but everything in between was always just very formulaic freak of the week melodrama. Because of that, I bailed out on the CW prequel reboot of Superman’s mythos about halfway through its 10-year run from 2001 to 2011.
This means that I wasn’t around for the show’s ending where Tom Welling’s Clark Kent finally grew into his fate and became Superman. And thus I missed the whole brouhaha around the fact that fans never actually got to see Welling in the classic Superman cape and boots costume, with the closest being him ripping open his shirt to reveal the famous S shield.
Many fans were not happy with this, feeling they got cheated out of the big payoff that had been a decade in the making. And it turns out that it was all the fault of Superman himself, as Welling finally revealed (via CBM) what happened in that controversial ending.
Our finale was supposed to be, in the first act, Clark puts on the suit and flies around, saves Lois on a plane, and does this other stuff. It was a call that I had with Peter Roth, who is the head of WB Television, who’s a good friend of mine and we have a great relationship. I said, ‘That’s not our show.’ He’s like, ‘No, it’s going to be great,” and I go, ‘Yeah, but just think about what we’ve been doing. If we just jump into that, we haven’t earned it.’
We jumped onto this idea that at the end of the show, the idea is that Clark becomes Superman and he’s out there, and we know he’s out there, but we can’t go with him, but that we know and we feel good that he’s out there doing good. I hope the audience didn’t feel like we didn’t show them something that they needed to see. I felt like we gave them the jumping off point for their imagination as to what could happen.
Of course, while fans never saw Welling as Superman, they did a got a shot of the Man of Steel. Unfortunately, it was just a blurry long range CGI shot, as Welling refused to budge on the show’s initial grounded “no flights/tights” rule, despite the fact that since the early days of the show, several characters around him had taken on more fantastical characteristics.
It was something that we discussed before we ever shot the pilot. We literally had a sit down where we talked about the show and I asked about the suit and the tights and the flying, and they said, ‘No, absolutely not.’ Part of the reason being is that show is about a teenager trying to figure out who he is. They felt that once Clark put on the cape and the suit, life became too easy, in a sense. They wanted to focus on who this character was before that.
Were you a Smallville fan who felt shortchanged by the show’s lack of Superman reveal in the end? If you were, what do you make of Welling’s reasoning here? Sound off in the comments below!
Last Updated: August 11, 2017
RinceThis
August 11, 2017 at 09:41
I was stuck in China, so watched 4 years of the crap. Man, I should never have gone to China…
Chuckles von Clausewitz III
August 11, 2017 at 11:11
So the rumours are true… they kept you because you were a dirty damn spy! I KNEW IT! NEVER TRUST A GINGER!!!
Admiral Chief
August 11, 2017 at 09:54
ANYTHING is better than SUPERGIRL AND SUPERMEHN in the CW series.
Most useless Supes EVER, and Supergirl character and series is also lame to the factor 9k
RinceThis
August 11, 2017 at 09:56
Holy shit bro. Are you trying to start a war with Trevor? 0_O
Admiral Chief
August 11, 2017 at 10:18
SG is one of the WORST series I’ve watched in ages. Yet my daughter loves it, so I am dooooooooomed to watch it
RinceThis
August 11, 2017 at 10:23
If that’s the excuse you need, stick to it 😉 Trevor IS a girl, he uses that.
Chuckles von Clausewitz III
August 11, 2017 at 11:17
So that’s why I felt this weird attraction to Trevor… She’s an HONEST AND TRUE LADY???
Chuckles von Clausewitz III
August 11, 2017 at 11:10
Yeah, Supergirl started off lame… got interesting towards the end of season 1 and the beginning of season 2, and now it’s back to being shit again. It’s a real shame because Melissa Benoist is Supergirl. She’s actually pretty good in the role. They just need a new script and get away from the “Girl Power”/”We’re Woke” bullshit.
Admiral Chief
August 11, 2017 at 12:56
Agreed. She is quite the actress, but the show’s writing is too much SJW propaganda and not enough story
Chuckles von Clausewitz III
August 11, 2017 at 14:32
Yeah, the excessive “sjw/ I are woke” shit is nauseating. Supergirl should transcend that crap. They could learn so much from the wonder woman movie.
Chuckles von Clausewitz III
August 11, 2017 at 11:05
I enjoyed Smallville. Remember way back in 2001, it was THE weekly superhero show, and the first 4 seasons of Smallville were pretty good. You had some interesting cameos, and it was interesting how they developed the relationship between Clark and Luthor. Sadly, it went through the same problems Buffy and Angel did, in that, the last seasons were utter crap (and Kirstin Kreuk became annoying with each episode, a bit like Emily Rickards in Arrow). It went on far too long, and it should have taken a knee in the 5th season.
There are some interesting parallels with Arrow though, and much like with Arrow… once you go beyond 5 seasons the creative rot starts to set in.
Kapitan Balalaika
August 11, 2017 at 11:19
After two seasons of The Flash, the first 6 episodes of Arrow season 1 and episode 1 of Supergirl I decided never to touch superhero shows outside of Netflix.
For the Emperor!
August 11, 2017 at 13:20
My issue with Smallville came when Lana REFUSED TO DIE!
Sock-puppet
August 11, 2017 at 16:20
My issue was when it stopped being about a teenager with powers and it became a story about a journalist with powers that was somehow still not fully discovered.
Like when he became evil in one season he literally flew off. Once he got turned into a good guy again and was told “dude, you were flying” he literally just went oh ohkay then.
They hit a ceiling and should’ve stopped.
Dav620
August 30, 2017 at 18:48
Tom Welling is so full of crap! It didn’t have a thing to do with what the show was about because it was always leading to that moment when he became Superman. The idiotic remark about we haven’t earned it was a moronic statement, what in the hell was the 10 seasons leading to then? The fact of the matter is and has and ways been, Tom Welling didn’t want to be seen in the Superman suit! That’s it, and has always been that! So TW can spin it anyway he wants, it was only about him and what he didn’t want to do it, and to hell with making the fans happy! Imagine that, 10 yrs the audience stayed faithful and kept him employed only to get screwed out a proper finale with him as Superman for the last show ever of Smallville! Thank you Tom Welling for sharing with us that you screwed the fans over after it was given the blessing to allow Superman in full garb too appear in the finale, but Welling cried to the powers that be and took it away from the fans! What a joke and a waste of time!