Lower Decks

The following column will preview season 8 of Smallville.  There will be spoilers inside, and if you don’t want to know anything about the upcoming season, I would suggest you stop reading immediately.

Is this finally going to be the season that our favorite farm boy becomes the man of steel he’s supposed to be? If you believe the spoilers, the hype, and the new producers, then that’s a big yes.

And for what might be the final season of the series, that shouldn’t exactly be big news. But it’s news to be excited about nonetheless.

If there’s a theme for this season, it’s probably change. There’s going to be a lot of change in the cast, behind the scenes, and with Clark Kent himself. We won’t know if the changes work for a while, but we can at least break them down.

Writer/producers Miles Millar and Alfred Gough left the series after season seven, leaving the show they created way back in 2001. Almost every major episode in the series was written by the pair, and they were pretty hands on with the show’s development. The shows new executive producers were promoted from within, but there have been hints that this upcoming season will have a lighter tone leading toward the Superman we know and love.

Cast-wise, there are some major changes; of Smallville’s Big Three (Tom Welling, Kristin Kreuk, and Michael Rosenbaum), two are gone. Yes, you read that correctly, Lex and Lana are both off the show. Lana will be back for a five-episode run (reportedly happening during November sweeps), but Lex’s future on the show is up in the air (with reports indicating that he’s not coming back this season at all). Also gone, considering his death last season, is the elder Luthor played by John Glover. Last season’s newcomer, Laura Vandervoort (Kara aka Supergirl), is also off the show.

As you can see, the cast will be extremely different. In fact, there will only be two original castmembers left in season 8 (Welling and Allison Mack). Everyone else has left stage left at one point in the series or another.

Three new castmembers will be joining the gang in Smallville, though. Replacing Lex’s bald self will be Cassidy Freeman as Tess Mercer. Following Lex’s disappearance/exile, Mercer is brought in to handle Lex’s estate, and it seems like she will play the same type of role that Lex was playing. Another villain has joined the fray in Sam Witwer, who will be playing Davis Bloome. Bloome is the “human” alias of the creature that will eventually kill the Man of Steel, Doomsday.

Mercer will be an interesting character to watch, and I’m looking forward to seeing how she fills Lex’s shoes. Michael Rosenbaum stole most of the scenes he was in, and the show is desperately going to miss his acting skill and presence. Mercer was named after two of Lex’s most famous female sidekicks, Eve Teschmacher and Mercy Graves, and she will probably be a mix between those two characters.

Doomsday coming to Smallville is another thing to watch. Doomsday is obviously one of Superman’s most iconic villains, and he’ll probably fill the “nemesis” role this season. It really might be a move designed to shift Clark into Superman since Clark will need more than intelligence and wit to take down Doomsday (unlike Lex, who was a good match for the teenage Boy of Steel).

But Clark won’t be facing these two new villains alone. Joining him at his side will be the popular Justin Hartley, returning as the Green Arrow. Fans like me were excited to hear that Ollie will be returning as a main character, particularly since (as I’ve stated in earlier reviews) Green Arrow is about as close as we’re going to get to Bruce Wayne on Smallville. The two characters are similar enough for the dynamic to work, and I think they’ve made the best of it.

And, of course, since Oliver’s main role on the series has been to push Clark into a bigger role, it would only make sense that he’d need to be in every episode this season. In addition to Green Arrow, there will be the return of Justice League members Aquaman (Alan Richardson), Black Canary (Alaina Huffman), and Martian Manhunter (Phil Morris) in episodes this upcoming season. Hopefully the entire Smallville JLA will make an eventual appearance because I think that team had great chemistry (the episode “Justice” is one of my favorites of the series).

Another comic group, the Legion of Superheroes, will also be making an appearance a little later in the year. I’ll admit that I’m not overly familiar with this group, but I know that they’re a group of Superheroes from 1000 years in the future that come back to visit Superboy to learn from him. That will certainly be an episode to look forward to since Clark will learn how important he is in the future.  Something he really, really needs to learn.

In general spoilery news, we’ll apparently see a move toward a relationship between Lois and Clark. There’s at least one episode in the first few that will have the pair posing as a couple, and it’s apparently going to be a running theme for the whole year. Since Lana will be gone and Chloe will have her hands full with Jimmy (and apparently Doomsday), it is only reasonable to have Clark’s attention turn to Lois. But, of course, Oliver will probably throw a wrench into that.

A while back, a Lois/Clark relationship seemed to be as taboo as the flights and tights, but with new people running the show, we don’t know where they will go with things. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if in-costume Clark shared an in-flight kiss with Lois this season. Any rules under the Gough/Millar regime might be thrown out.

So there you have it.  It sounds like the upcoming season of Smallville will be full of things that fans have been looking forward to for years.  Will we finally see the cape come into play?  Will more major characters and familiar faces be coming back to the screen?  And will this be the final season of one of the most successful comic book inspired shows in television history?

It all starts tonight.  I guess we’ll find out very soon.