Tom Welling Talks Smallville Season 9

The promos for season nine have described the year as "Clark Kent's darkest hour," to which the actor offers this explanation: "In the past, Clark has always been the reluctant hero. Everyone is telling him what he has to do and he doesn’t want to do it. With the events of Jimmy’s death [in May’s season finale], along with the eight seasons building up, he realizes that his view on humanity has been wrong. And he goes to Jor-El and says, ‘I messed up, what do I do now?’ Jor-El takes him in, and Clark starts his training. His training ultimately is what will prepare him to be who we all know he’s going to be in the future. So it’s him spending time at the Fortress of Solitude downloading all this information. At the same time, information is given to him that the fate of the world depends on Lois Lane’s survival. So Clark has to struggle between his destiny and his humanity. Especially in the first few episodes it gets in the way of the training, because he just can’t help but deal with humans and help people, when all Jor-El wants him to do is shut everyone off, forget about them, rise above them and be the hero he needs to be.

"He's lost faith in his role with humanity," he continues. "I think he's lost faith in himself and what he thought he was supposed to do. Not only is there only so much he can do, but what he’s been doing was wrong, and he needs to go and change directions. There’s a lot of isolation. But then of course, there’s the struggle and the drama pulling him back into these relationships."That is the symbol of the House of El. I’ve gotten away for many years with the blue t-shirt and the red jacket. Very easy wardrobe for me, very simple, straightforward, very comfortable. This new wardrobe, the leather jacket is a little warmer, you have to learn how to not step on your jacket when you’re in a fight sequence. You learn that pretty quick—it doesn’t take many times before you figure that out! Anyway, he’s trying to establish a call sign for himself. Even though Clark isn’t putting his own face out there it’s his way of taking accountability for what he’s doing. This year he’ll be known as the Blur. And there’s a circumstance in the second episode where he’s almost caught by Lois. And through some very interesting lighting we see the symbol, but we don’t see Clark’s face. And it’s a perfect moment for him to step forward and say, “Lois, it’s me,” but he doesn’t. Poor Lois. Because that’s all she really wants to know.

"The thing is," he elaborates, "it’s a show going into Season 9. We’ve covered a lot of ground. When we first started talking about [this season] my first thought was apprehension. At the beginning the show was ‘Before Superman,’ Clark Kent’s origins, and how he got to that point [of becoming Superman]. Now you can definitely see that it’s a new era for the show. People say, ‘Season 9? It’s been so long.’ It has, but at the same time every year is the only year, every year is a new show. Especially this year. We look at posters up in the office of Season 1, 2 and 3 and we were kids, literally. Looking back it’s like a whole other world. But that’s the way it’s always been on our show. And standing on set wearing a black shirt, with silver S, black leather coat, black jeans, black boots, and thinking about last year, it’s night and day."


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