Warning: Spoilers for the second chapter of Crisis on Infinite Earths and Tom Welling’s role in it are discussed within.
Tonight’s second chapter of the DC TV Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover aired tonight on The CW, and one highly anticipated part of the crossover was the return appearance of Tom Welling as Clark Kent from the popular and long-running CW series Smallville. This marks 219 episodes of Tom Welling in live action as Clark Kent, and apparently we’re still at a tally of 0 for how many episodes he’s appeared in full costume as Superman.
We learned that his Clark Kent has given up his powers in order to have a family with Lois, and that the happy seemingly-married couple has two daughters (Lana and Chloe?). It also was revealed that Lex Luthor is indeed President on Smallville’s Earth-167 — possibly named for show creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, who were both born in 1967 — though it is Jon Cryer’s Lex who Clark encounters in this scene. And then even a powerless Clark could deck him! But hey… at least someone called Clark “Superman” to his face, which is something new!
But why was Clark on the farm, and not the Daily Planet?
“We had conversations about how to best see Tom again, and we knew that we really wanted Brandon Routh as Clark Kent in the Daily Planet,” Batwoman Executive Producer and Smallville veteran Caroline Dries said at a Q&A last week. “I think the Tom Welling Clark Kent that we all kind of picture when we think of him is Clark on the farm. Tom was joking when he was there that ‘oh, that cow recognized me!’ It all felt very 10 years ago, and it just felt natural.”
Was there a plan for Tom to interact with Brandon Routh in Crisis Part 2? “In terms of putting Brandon and Tom and in a scene together it they were working at cross purposes, because we wanted Brandon at The Daily Planet, but we wanted Tom on the farm,” Guggenheim mentioned, pointing out that the Crisis on Infinite Earths tie-in comic book that will be available on December 15 will give people the multi-Superman (and multi-Luthor) stories they desire.
But as for the other question – did we see Tom Welling in a Superman costume, 8 years after Smallville’s end? He’s powerless, so the answer is… no. Unless you count the newspaper front page which showed his shirt rip from the Smallville series finale. And unless there’s a Crisis surprise coming in one of the remaining chapters, we still didn’t, which means your uncle’s friend from Antarctica with top-secret intel was actually wrong. But hey… that’s true to Smallville history, isn’t it?