Clark Will Finally Fly In Smallville Season 8

Fans of Smallville have long been frustrated by the “no flights” portion of producers Al Gough and Miles Millar “no flights, no tights” policy established 7 years ago at the start of the first season. As a matter of fact, as the series has evolved, the fact that Clark (Tom Welling) still does not fly on the show has become pretty ridiculous.

Many other characters on the show have had the ability to fly, including Clark’s cousin Kara (Laura Vandervoort) and other Kryptonians. On toleapsp of that, portraying Clark, who is virtually indestructible as having a fear of heights is at this point ridiculous – especially as we enter Smallville’s 8th (and supposedly final) season.

Sure, they’ve thrown us a bone here and there with him making giant “leaps” and actually showing him flying when he was possessed by other characters, but the producers have stubbornly clung to their original premise. As long as they were in charge we weren’t going to see Clark fly.

But they aren’t in charge any more.

Now we have Kelly Souders, Todd Slavkin, Darren Swimmer, and Brian Peterson running the show. Between them they’ve written 100 episodes over the course of seven years. That’s the equivalent of four full years of Smallville.

Comic Book Resources interviewed them recently and they had some interesting things to say about this upcoming season. While season 7 started to pull away from the arc of the previous six years and finally showed Lex go over completely to the dark side, it’s looking like season 8 will be a big leap forward in the evolution of the characters and the series.

Here are the highlights:

• They will not attempt to bring in a character to replace Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) as the prime antagonist.
• All of the characters will be moving on to the next phase of their lives.
• The show will be moving on to the next phase in the Superman mythology.
• They want to bring Clark closer to the traditional Superman character that we all know.
• There will be an episode that explores the relationship between Clark and Chloe (Allison Mack), and the underlying sexual tension that’s been brewing there for so long.
• On the other hand the season will move Clark and Lois (Erica Durance) towards the relationship that is well established in the comics and films.
• They will highlight the need for Clark to maintain a dual identity and move heavily in that direction.

Ah… but what about Clark flying?!

They dropped a couple of hints that leave me no doubt that he will indeed be finally taking to the skies this year:

“We have a lot of conversations [about flying and the costume], the only thing that we are saying is that we can absolutely confirm that there is no tights, so that’s pretty much all we can say on that.”

And:

“Saving people in Smallville was one thing — when he had to run to the factory to save Chloe the roads weren’t very crowded, the streets weren’t very crowded. Being alive in Metropolis as Superman is a very different experience and you will find very quickly in this season he discovers it’s not so easy when you’re running through crowded streets or your having to run into a crowded crisis situation.”

Take those two comments, along with their plan on moving the story towards the traditional Superman mythos and I’d say we’ll finally get our wish in the flight department.

Here’s what I’m hoping: This team of writers wants to really put their mark on the show as producers and will really hit it out of the park this year. It would be fantastic if this turned out to be the equivalent of Manny Coto coming on board Star Trek: Enterprise in its final season. That show had been ruined by the direction its producers had chosen, but Coto came in fresh in the final season and turned the show around big time.

And of course they’ve finally decided to get rid of Lana (Kristin Kreuk), thank goodness. That can’t do anything but help make the show better. And that’s NOT a slam on Kristin – they just ran the whole Clark/Lana thing so far into the ground that it became nauseating. Also gone is Kara, who never really worked for me as a character on the show.

Here’s hoping that season 8 of Smallville brings us better things than last season did.

Source: Comic Book Resources