Question: With the suit being encased in the Fortress of Solitude, obviously it’s something he needs to earn. Is he going to earn it sooner rather than later?
Peterson: I don’t know that we’re at liberty to discuss that.
Souders: He still has quite a bit to go through. And we’ll see that the world around him also puts up some major stumbling blocks for him, so as much as he’s progressing, things around his life and around, the environment around him, is going to shift after this episode to a place where he’s got some major battles still to overcome here. So he’s earning his stripes, though, all along. How’s that?
Question: With Oliver (Justin Hartley) stepping out to the light essentially and taking his place in the superhero universe, are we going to see other heroes stepping out and, you know, starting to join Clark in the bigger picture?
Souders: Well the first thing we’re going to do is see some ramifications of Oliver stepping out, and for Clark it’s very impactful in his life because he’s actually, the thing that he’s struggled with from the beginning about whether or not to be open with who he really is, he’s now watching his best friend sort of go through with exactly what he’d do...It’s almost worse to watch your friend take the hit because you’re still hidden than to take it yourself for Clark, because he’s such a hero. So I think that’s going to be a bit part of this journey for Clark, is watching what happens to Oliver. You know, after he’s come out.
Nrama: How and exactly when will Darkseid make his presence fully known?
Peterson: He’s sneaky.
Souders: And it really starts in three [Newsarama Note: Referring to episode 3, Supergirl, which hadn't aired before this interview], which I know you haven’t seen, but that’s really where you start to see the beginnings of it, and it just sort of starts creeping up in new places all throughout the season.
Question: Is there any fear of, this late in the series, introducing more DC canon characters?
Souders: No. I think that, you know, over the last couple of years, obviously we’ve been introducing more and more of the characters from the DC world and acknowledging that world on a greater level. And it’s, you know, for us anyway it’s a lot of fun, and our crew just does an incredible job of looking at the characters from the comic books and then trying to figure out, okay, what’s the Smallville version and what can you actually do, because, you know, we’re all just human. And I think it’s actually been a fun challenge. We always enjoy it.
Peterson: And we really promised that we wouldn’t just bring—this wouldn’t be a whole season of reflection, it would be pushing forward. So that’s why in addition to Aquaman (Alan Ritchson) and Supergirl (Laura Vandervoot) that we’re bringing from the past, we’re bringing, you know, we brought in Deadshot (Bradley Stryker) last week, and you know, Booster Gold, and there’re probably a couple other people we want to bring in and introduce, so at least it, there’s still a push off and it feels fresh.
Question: In that same vein though, are we going to see more Justice Leaguers and Justice Society members coming back? You know, Bart Allen (Kyle Gallner), Black Canary(Alaina Huffman)?
Souders: We’re actually in quite a few contract conversations right now, but you’ll definitely see a big League presence. Sort of in the middle of the run. You won’t have to wait ‘til the end, we promise.
Question: Is there a contingency plan on how to end characters if this is the final season and you can’t get the actors back?
Peterson: Yes, absolutely.
Souders: Uh huh.
Question: Even though season ten is completely mapped as the final season, if you were to, when would you probably start negotiating for an eleventh?
Peterson: I’m not aware of any plans for that, to be honest. Because as much as we all don’t want it to end, you know, just having seen Tom and Erica in the last couple of days, you always want to keep working with them. You know, they’re fantastic people as well as just actors. But you need the show to go out when the time is right, you know, and it feels like the time is probably right for that, as much as well all will be very sad. That said, you never know. So we could be as surprised as anyone else.
Question: The choice to use that specific suit, was there any discussion about making another suit that would be more your, more Smallville specific, as opposed to using a pre-established design?
Peterson: We did.
Souders: But we kind of like to dovetail. Because we work really closely with DC and obviously with Warner Brothers as far as the Superman arena goes. So it very quickly came up, well, would we like to link up with the feature, and we just thought it would be really fun.
Go to Newsarama for the full interview