"I Dropped The Ball ": Smallville"s Controversial Arrowverse Snub Finally Cleared Up By Arrowverse Showrunner

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Summary

Smallville's absence in Crisis on Infinite Earths' final montage was due to oversight and SAG pay rules.
Future possibilities for Smallville's fate lie in a planned animated sequel series.
Updates on the Smallville animated series development and potential pitch to DC have come out in 2024.

The Arrowverse's Crisis on Infinite Earths showrunner explains the crossover's confusing Smallville choice. One year before Arrow debuted in 2012 and the Arrowverse was born, Tom Welling ended his run as Clark Kent after ten seasons of Smallville. With the final season of the Superman prequel series, it seemed like the actor would never play Clark again. Thankfully, the Arrowverse changed that, with Welling and Lois Lane actress Erica Durance returning for the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, though there was an issue.
On The Showrunner Whisperer podcast, Crisis On Infinite Earths showrunner Marc Guggenheim talked about why Smallville's universe was not included in the event's post-Crisis montage. At the end of the crossover, several shots of heroes from all over the multiverse appeared; however, Welling's Clark and Durance's Lois were nowhere to be seen, which had some fans thinking Smallville's universe was destroyed. Guggenheim reveals the reason for them not appearing was that he did not think that would be a question, as well as Welling's pay, which had to be contained to one episode. Check out the full quote below:

"Why didn’t we have Smallville? I’ll be honest with you. I think it was two reasons - Number 1: it never occurred to me until I got the question on Twitter that people think we did blow up the Smallville universe. So part of it was that, and part of it was, we had obviously seen Clark and Lois in episode 2 [of Crisis on Infinite Earths.] For the most part, the ‘going around the horn’ [closing sequence montage at the end of episode 5] was to see all the universes and all the characters that we didn’t get to see.
If I could have done it all over again, it would be awesome to just have a shot of Lois and Clark on the farm, kissing, for the go-around-the-horn-sequence. But yeah, sorry, I dropped the ball on that! We only had Tom for a few hours, but also, here's the thing: under SAG rules, an actor don't get paid by the amount of time they spend on set. They get paid by the number of episodes they are in. So if Tom was contracted for episode 2, and if Tom appeared in episode 5, that would trigger a completely different payment. We certainly didn’t have the money for that, but that really wasn’t a factor. It, quite frankly, just didn’t occur to me."

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