'Smallville' Creators Reflect on Series' Legacy For Its 25th Anniversary

Twenty-five years ago, Smallville, a series starring Tom Welling, arrived in the world, introducing Clark Kent/Superman to a new generation. At that time, the MCU didn't yet exist, contemporary superhero films were still in their infancy in cinema – X-Men had premiered just a year earlier – and there was no talk of a "shared universe."

It was with Smallville, however, that some executives realized there were new opportunities to tell superhero stories beyond comic books. After the world met Tom Welling's Clark Kent (and many other characters from the series), a new era began for live-action superheroes.

“Its legacy is being kind of the first superhero television show that really explored the character over the costume. That’s something we were very proud of at the time," said Alfred Gough, co-creator of Smallville, in an interview with TheWrap. “Some of that, interestingly, was by design, and some of it was just the nature of where superheroes sat at that time; pre-Marvel Universe. The last iteration of Superman had been ‘Lois and Clark,’ and actually, the network asked us to kind of shy away from the actual superhero elements of it."

“There was sort of an allergic reaction from the network of anything that smacked of superheroes, or anything that was cartoony or comic-booky — that was always the term. The word ‘comic-booky’ was definitely a grave concern.”

According to Miles Millar, who co-created the series with Gough, the fact that neither of them were devoted to Superman comics helped breathe new life into the character within the universe they created in Smallville .

“There was moral complexity to the character, which there hadn’t been before. I think because we weren’t such avid comic book aficionados, we had our own creative freedom to change the mythology and to really expand it and do different things,” Millar continued. “That’s something that we would never, ever be allowed to do today. [Now], it’s much more about the canon and following what’s happened before almost like religious texts. What we did was blasphemous, in terms of adding the meteor shower, making Clark and Lex friends, the Lana element, all of it. We created Lionel Luthor, then Lex had a father. All this stuff is completely from our invention and not part of the canon. We would never be allowed to do that [today].”

Everything you need to know about Smallville

Smallville aired for ten seasons, between 2001 and 2011, showcasing the adventures of young Clark Kent (Tom Welling) and various other teen versions of DC heroes and villains.

In addition to Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum, the cast included Allison Mack as Chloe Sullivan, Kristin Kreuk as Lana Lang, Justin Hartley as Oliver Queen/Green Arrow, and Aaron Ashmore as Jimmy Olsen, among others.