The CW's Superman & Lois will take place in Smallville—and feature a "really badass" new suit
Saturday’s DC FanDome got off to a slow start thanks to technical difficulties. But 502 and gateway errors couldn’t keep Superman and Lois Lane away for too long. During the Superman & Lois panel, executive producer/showrunner Todd Helbing and series stars Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch weren’t allowed to give too much away since they haven’t started filming yet, but the actors have seen the first two scripts and there were a few details Helbing was willing to divulge.
The Superman & Lois series jumps off from this year’s Arrowverse crossover “Crisis On Infinite Earth,” which started with Lois Lane and Clark Kent parenting an infant and—after all the earth-combining shenanigans—ended with the couple as the parents of two teenage boys. Helbing promises the show will feature “a lot of set pieces and a lot of heroics, but “As a couple, we really get to lean into Clark and Lois not being Superman and the most famous journalist in the world, but really as parents—what is it that like when you have jobs like that?” he teased, adding that their fraternal twins will be polar opposites. “We wanted to present two kids who had two completely different skill sets— and how do you deal with that as parents?”
Helbing also revealed that the series will take place in Clark’s childhood town of Smallville, not the couple’s usual home base of Metropolis. “I’m not gonna give reason yet, but the story of Superman has taken place in Metropolis for very long—obviously there was the Smallville series—but I came from a small town in the Midwest, and the town that I grew up in had a business leave that sort of affected everyone in the town, and the town started to dry up, and it felt very current with recent years after 2008. So we wanted to tell the story of the parents, after this tragic event, move back to Smallville and really find that maybe it’s easier to raise kids maybe in a place where life isn’t as hectic as Metropolis.”
Making life a little hectic will be Lois’ father, General Lane. “He’s a very military guy, so he sort of looks at Superman like his soldier, and his relationship with Lois is a little fraught because of the way he took his job when he was a parent, versus the way that Clark is doing his job,” explained Helbing. “So all of that messiness is really fun.”
Clark’s first love, Lana Lang (Emmanuelle Chriqui), will also serve as a point of tension for the couple. “I think its an interesting dynamic as an adult how you deal with that relationship,” said Helbing. He clarified that Clark will never have an affair on Lois, “but she shouldn’t know that, you know what I mean?” added Tulloch. “We don’t want Lois and Lana brawling, but that dynamic as an adult is really interesting to us,” continued Helbing. “Those feelings are impossible to ignore and I think that’s a real thing for some people—especially when kids are involved. And then to see [Lana’s] husband and her kids, and that dynamic—there’s a couple characters that we invented: Kyle Cushing [Erik Valdez] and Sarah Cushing [Inde Navarrette,] who gets sort of wrapped up with the boys and they have their own love triangle.”
The panel concluded with Hoechlin being asked if Superman will have a new suit on Superman & Lois, a question he quickly passed off to Helbing. “Originally you came on for the crossovers and that suit just wasn’t built to sustained a series,” the showrunner told his star. “So, theres going to be a really badass Superman suit that I’m pretty excited about.”