Author: Sydney Bucksbaum

October 16, 2016 12:00pm PT by Sydney Bucksbaum

Courtesy of WB

Over the course of 10 seasons, many of Clark Kent’s (Tom Welling) friends, loved ones and enemies discovered his secret identity either by accident or by Clark revealing the truth.

It has been 15 years since The WB Network-turned-CW’s first Superman (Tom Welling) began living a double life on Smallville, hiding his abilities from the world while also using those abilities to save lives.

The series chronicling the Man of Steel’s origin story first premiered on Oct. 16, 2001, and aired for 10 years until the series finale bowed on May 13, 2011. Over the course of 10 seasons, Clark Kent did his best to hide the fact that he was an alien from Krypton. He constantly lied to his friends, hiding his powers and never taking any credit for repeatedly saving people’s lives. Keeping the truth a secret cost him a lot, from ending his relationships to souring friendships and even causing him to make enemies dedicated to exposing him to the world.

But during those 10 seasons, no matter how hard Clark tried to keep everyone in the dark, some people in his life managed to discover the truth about his origins, either by complete accident without him knowing or by him deciding to tell them the truth about himself. Those moments were some of the best of the series, as they always made for a game-changing, epic episode that stood out from the rest.

To celebrate Smallville’s 15th anniversary, The Hollywood Reporter rounded up the top 10 times Clark revealed his secret. 

Season 2, episode 3: “Duplicity”

After Clark’s best friend Pete Ross (Sam Jones III) found his spaceship, Clark and his dad (John Schneider) stole it back. But Pete caught Clark in the act and threatened to tell everyone about how Clark was a thief, so he was forced to finally tell him his secret. It did not go well.

First, Pete’s reaction was to immediately become afraid of Clark and his powers, and acting as if Clark was no longer the same person he had grown up with. After he came to terms with Clark’s origins, Pete was constantly beat up and threatened by people who were trying to get to Clark. Eventually, Pete realized that knowing Clark’s secret put him at risk, and he didn’t want to be the one to expose Clark accidentally, so he ended up moving away from Smallville. Losing his best friend because of telling him the truth inspired Clark to not open up to anyone else about his secret for a very long time. 

Season 4, episode 12: “Pariah”

When Clark’s girlfriend Alicia Baker (Sarah Carter) was hurt that he didn’t believe her when she was being framed for some attacks, she thought she needed to “help” Clark by revealing his secret to his best friend Chloe (Allison Mack). Alicia wanted Chloe to write a story about it and expose Clark to the world so he wouldn’t have to hide anymore, meaning that he would understand Alicia. She teleported Chloe and made Clark believe she needed him to save her from a car crash, and Chloe witnessed Clark catching a speeding car with his bare hands. She also saw him superspeed away, but he had no idea that she was there. Chloe didn’t tell Clark that she knew about his powers, but that meant that she thought he was meteor-infected, and didn’t actually learn his true origins until the next season.

Season 5, episode 1: “Arrival”

After dropping hints and subtle sarcastic remarks for half a season, Chloe never told Clark that she knew about his powers. But after she was accidentally transported to the Fortress of Solitude with him, Clark was forced to use his superspeed to get her to a hospital to save her life before she froze to the death. He was shocked to find out that she already knew about his abilities. That’s when Clark finally told Chloe the full truth about being an alien from Krypton while in the hospital in the Yukon. Her reaction was everything he hoped it would be, because it was the exact opposite of Pete’s a few years ago. She saw him for the hero that he was, not the “freak” he always feared people would see him as.

Season 5, episode 12: “Reckoning”

In the milestone 100th episode, Clark could tell that his girlfriend Lana (Kristin Kreuk), his longtime love, was pulling away from their relationship because she could tell he was hiding something from her. That inspired him to finally tell her the truth to end all the lies pushing them apart. Clark took Lana to the Fortress of Solitude and proposed to her after telling her his secret, but after she died in a car crash he made his father Jor-El (voiced by Terence Stamp) take him back in time so he could do things differently. He decided not to tell her the truth the second time around to save her life, but instead, she broke up with him and his father died, so he ended up losing both his fiancée and his father in one fell swoop. 

Season 6, episode 16: “Promise”

Fed up with all the lies being told to her, Lana decided to finally take matters into her own hands on the morning of her wedding to Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) to find out the truth about Clark. Lana locked Chloe in the wine cooler, knowing that she would call Clark for help, and so Lana hid and witnessed Clark use all his powers to save Chloe. She also heard both him and Chloe talk about how he really feels about Lana, confessing his love, before he used his superspeed to run away. While she was immediately ready to call off her wedding to Lex to be with Clark, Lex’s father Lionel (John Glover), realizing that Lana now knew the truth about Clark, threatened to kill Clark using his one weakness unless Lana went through with it. A heartbroken Clark was forced to watch Lana marry Lex, unaware that she was doing it to save his life. 

Season 7, episode 20: “Arctic”

After years of trying to figure out Clark’s secret, and a season of getting to the bottom of the Veritas mythology surrounding the Last Son/Traveler, Lex finally figured out that Clark was the alien at the center of everything. After getting manipulated by Brainiac (James Marsters) posing as Clark’s cousin Kara (Laura Vandervoort), Lex used the Veritas orb to find the Fortress of Solitude. He confronted Clark inside the Fortress for not trusting him with his secret, and then used the orb to bring the Fortress down with them still stuck inside, believing that he was meant to kill the Traveler in order to save the rest of the world. 

Season 8, episode 15: “Infamous”

When Clark was getting blackmailed by someone who was going to reveal his identity to the world, he decided to take his fate into his own hands and have Lois Lane (Erica Durance) tell his story to the world instead. At first she didn’t believe him that he was the Blur, but after showing off his super strength, she was a believer. She wrote his life story and published it in The Daily Planet, but the world turned on him and his friends, and he realized he made a mistake in revealing his secret identity. He used his Legion ring to go back in time and decided not to tell Lois, or the world, this time around. 

Season 8, episode 22: “Doomsday”

After Jimmy Olsen (Aaron Ashmore) helped save Clark from a kryptonite arrow, he witnessed Clark’s cuts healing instantly. Clark finally came clean and confessed that he was the Red Blue Blur, which Jimmy had put together earlier in the season but Clark had Oliver Queen (Justin Hartley) help him trick Jimmy into believing he was wrong about his theory. 

Season 9, episode 22: “Salvation”

General Zod (Callum Blue) pretended to be the Blur and worked with Lois until she realized she was being tricked. Zod then attacked her, and Clark saved her life as the real Blur. He then kissed her before superspeeding off, and she recognized him as Clark immediately from the kiss. However, she didn’t tell him that she knew his secret until he decided it was time to reveal it to her half a season later. 

Season 10, episode 5: “Isis”

In the final season, Clark finally decided to tell Lois that he’s the Blur since he knew they couldn’t share a life together if he couldn’t be himself around her. The twist: she already knew his secret, and was overjoyed that he finally felt like he could trust her fully. This time, there was no time travel or memory wiping, and Lois was in on the secret for good. Her reaction was everything he hoped it would be. 

Did your favorite moment not make the list? Let us know in the comments section below.

Sydney Bucksbaum

THRnews@thr.com

October 14, 2016 8:45am PT by Sydney Bucksbaum

Courtesy of Warner Bros. TV

THR rounds up all the major twists, new mysteries and more from this week in DC Comics TV shows.

Welcome to The Hollywood Reporter‘s weekly DC TV Watch, a rundown of all things DC Comics on TV. Every Friday, we round up the major twists, epic fights, new mysteries and anything else that goes down on The CW’s Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl and Fox’s Gotham and what it all means. 

Supergirl season two premiere

A new Superman: To kick off the show’s move to The CW, Supergirl introduced its version of the Man of Steel in the season two premiere. Clark Kent (Tyler Hoechlin) arrived in National City to team up with his cousin Kara (Melissa Benoist), and by the end of the episode, he decided to stick around a little longer to hear more about life on Krypton and his parents, since she had actual memories of all of it. While the Teen Wolf alum certainly looks the part of Superman, how did his performance stack up against other famous Men of Steel? Don’t ask Hoechlin.

“I distinctly stayed away from every other Superman,” Hoechlin says. “I’m very ignorant to the past films and series. The one I grew up with was Dean Cain on Lois & Clark. That was my Superman growing up. I did not go back and watch any of the Christopher Reeves movies, I haven’t seen the current ones. As an actor, I wanted zero temptation to imitate or emulate anything. I had a great meeting with [showrunners] Andrew [Kreisberg] and Greg [Berlanti] where we hit it off about what we all personally found interesting about the character. I felt very convicted in committing to those ideas. If something’s similar, then sorry. If it’s completely off, then it’s completely off. But I was never intentionally trying to hit a beat or hit something that was done in the past. It was just the themes that we committed to from the very beginning.”

It’s interesting to note that Supergirl decided to introduce a Superman who was already seasoned in being a hero and thoroughly enjoyed his double life. This was unlike Smallville‘s version, which chronicled the origin story of Clark Kent (Tom Welling) learning to use his powers, or Batman v. Superman‘s Clark (Henry Cavill) who was jaded and disappointed in the world. Supergirl’s version was well known, loved for his actions and generally at peace with everything in his life.

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Guardian: There’s a new vigilante suiting up on the CBS turned CW series this season, and his secret identity is none other than James Olsen (Mehcad Brooks). Pictured above in his new suit and shield as Guardian, the photographer is trading in his camera to take a more hands-on approach to helping National City as the iconic DC Comics character. “He’s going to become Guardian, complete with the shield, which is going to cause a massive problem in his relationship with Kara because he has decided not to tell her,” Kreisberg says. “Now there’s this new masked vigilante, and she has her own feelings about vigilantes, and it becomes a push and pull about who gets to decide who gets to be a hero?” The character of Guardian was first created in the comics by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby back in 1942, and the vigilante is known as a skilled fighter with no superpowers.

Winn’s secret: James is going to enlist Kara’s BFF Winn (Jeremy Jordan), complicating matters even further between the three friends and former love triangle. “The two of them are doing this together, and Winn and James together — it’s comedy gold,” Kreisberg says. “Watching Winn, as he takes his job at the DEO, but then he’s lying to everybody about how he’s spending his nights because he’s going out with James and how he walks in exhausted or walks in with a black eye and says he walked into a door. It’s the fun and excitement of building these first 10 episodes.”

Arrow 

A new Canary: While the season five premiere revealed Laurel’s (Katie Cassidy) final words to Oliver (Stephen Amell) DC TV Watch: ‘Supergirl’ Introduces a New Superman and James Olsen Suits Up as Guardian she made him promise that she wouldn’t be the last Canary — don’t expect to see Oliver training a new Canary anytime soon. While he was busy training new recruits for Team Arrow this week, Arrow isn’t going to be exploring the legacy of Laurel just yet.

“I don’t know,” executive producer Marc Guggenheim says when asked when a new Canary would be introduced. “The big thing that we’re focused on is Oliver’s other takeaway from that flashback, which was not going it alone and his decision to recruit a new team. That will occupy our focus for the near future.”

Felicity’s new boyfriend: Olicity fans were shocked when the season five opener introduced a new love interest for Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards), and Detective Billy Malone (Tyler Ritter) is here to stay. “It’s an interesting relationship. He’s a cop, so he’s someone who lives in the world that Felicity inhabits as a member of Team Arrow,” Guggenheim says. “Oliver doesn’t yet know about the relationship and Billy hasn’t yet met Oliver. Knowing this show as I do, both of those things will eventually happen and it should be pretty interesting when it does. I’ll say this, there’s probably a significant interaction to be had between Billy and the Green Arrow at some point. But one of the things that we’re enjoying writing in the first half of season five is not doing quite as much soap operas as the show has traditionally done. We’re enjoying taking a breather from that.”

While angering the passionate Olicity fanbase is a daunting task, Guggenheim says there wasn’t any added pressure when it came to developing this new character as a love interest for Felicity. 

“First of all, love, love, love all the fans of the show, even the fans who are constantly angry at us,” Guggenheim says. “David Nutter, who directed the pilot, said, ‘The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy.’ Even when people are yelling and screaming at us online, we’re very happy that the show is at least engaging them. I love and respect the hell out of our fans, but that being said, I feel like I’m always going to disappoint them. When I watch TV, all I want to be is entertained and I write for audience members who watch TV the way I do. I’m not looking to bring about a certain outcome.”

He continues, “Some fans, it’s not enough for them to be entertained. They want to feel like they have some influence over the show. That’s just not the way we operate. We’re not doing things to piss people off but at the same time we’re not doing things to cater to fans. Having Felicity date someone is upsetting to the Olicity fans, and having Laurel die was upsetting to the Lauriver fans. At the very least, we show that we’re equal opportunity in so far as we’re just trying to tell a story. Trust the tale and don’t try to manipulate the teller.”

Gotham

Mayor Penguin: After deciding to run for Mayor of Gotham last week, Oswald “Penguin” Cobblepot (Robin Lord Taylor) won the election in a landslide, and legitimately, since Edward “Riddler” Nygma (Cory Michael Smith) made sure there was no election rigging to prove that the people really did love him. But aspects of the election episode hit a little too close to home, as Penguin was overly tanned and used the tagline “Make Gotham safe again” in his campaign. Were the Gotham writers trying to compare the fictional criminal to the real-life Republican Presidential nominee? Or has reality just become as strange as fiction?

The Flash

Flashpoint consequences: Barry (Grant Gustin) quickly realized that his jaunt into the past had some permanent effects on the timeline, more so than he initially thought. Cisco’s (Carlos Valdes) brother was killed by a drunk driver and he blames Barry for not going back in time to save him. Barry has a new coworker, Julian (Tom Felton), who is dedicated to discovering the secrets that Barry is hiding. And Diggle (David Ramsey) from Arrow now has a baby boy, meaning that his baby daughter Sara never existed. The only person Barry confided in about the changes to the timeline was Felicity, and she advised him to keep all his knowledge to himself. While changing the gender of a character’s child on an entirely different show seems like it’s inconsequential, that will definitely play an important role down the line. Otherwise, why make the change at all?

Legends of Tomorrow season two premiere

Legion of Doom: The final moments of the premiere introduced half of the formidable villain team-up that the Legends will be facing this season, the Legion of Doom. Made up of Arrow villains Damien Darhk (Neil McDonough) and Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman) and The Flash villains Reverse-Flash/Eobard Thawne (Matt Letscher) and Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller), The CW’s latest spinoff series is going to make the conflicts much more personal this season for each of the Legends, as was evidenced by Sara’s (Caity Lotz) desire to kill Damien for murdering her sister. While it’s unclear so far what the Legion ultimately wants, they already accomplished getting rid of the Legends’ leader, Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill). Without the captain of the Waverider making sure they preserve the timeline, there’s no telling what irreparable damage the Legends will have on history this season.

What did you think of all the shocking twists, reveals and mysteries on the DC Comics shows this week? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Gotham airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on Fox, Supergirl airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on The CW, The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on The CW, Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on The CW and Legends of Tomorrow airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on The CW.

Arrow The Flash Gotham

Sydney Bucksbaum

THRnews@thr.com

October 02, 2016 8:00am PT by Sydney Bucksbaum

Courtesy of Netflix

“That’s what this whole show is about, ultimately, being able to do the superhero thing with flavor,” executive producer Cheo Coker tells THR.

[Warning: This story contains spoilers from Luke Cage season one, episode three, “Who’s Gonna Take the Weight.”]

Daredevil’s infamous hallway fight scene is a thing of the past thanks to Luke Cage.

Marvel’s latest Netflix series blew one of the most iconic superhero TV show fight sequences in recent memory out of the water only three episodes in, with the epic Crispus Attucks fight scene shot from two different perspectives. The episode, “Who’s Gonna Take the Weight,” opened with Luke (Mike Colter) putting in his earbuds, playing music and walking right into Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes (Mahershala Ali) and Mariah Dillard’s (Alfre Woodard) stash house, taking out all the hired guns and walking out with stolen money, but the sequence was only shown from outside the building. The only sign that there was something violent happening inside the building was a couch flying out of a second story window. 

Later in the episode, viewers finally got to see the fight sequence from Luke’s point of view. With the scene set to the music of Wu-Tang Clan, Luke got his revenge on Cottonmouth for killing Pop (Frankie Faison) by hitting the crime lord where it hurts: his money. He took out every single one of the men posted up inside like it was nothing, and only took one bag of money from the stash house, instead leaving the rest for the police to seize as evidence.

“Just the image of the couch coming out of the window was so perfect,” executive producer Cheo Coker tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Guillermo Navarro, who directed that episode, not only is an incredibly brilliant director but is also a cinematographer, and shot Desperado and Jackie Brown, he’s so beautifully visionary. He’s the man. We laughed when we even thought about the couch coming out. Immediately it draws you in as a teaser, like, ‘What the heck is even happening in there?’ Then you hear the gunshots, and here comes Luke.”

Coker liked the idea of presenting that same scene in two different ways at two different points in the episode because of how it set up the tension for when viewers are finally able to witness the actual fight.

“You’re already anticipating what’s going to happen, so when you finally do get to that moment and then the music kicks in, it takes on this new energy,” Coker says. “Luke putting his headphones in, he knows he can’t get hurt. He knows he can’t really hurt anybody. So this is his workout. This is his way of working out the problems that he had from what happened in episode two. This is how Luke is going to affect — ‘I’m now coming out of the shadows and I’m now going to literally affect change.’ When he does this and goes through this whole sequence and it’s choreographed to the song, it has this energy to it.”

Coker is fully aware that the fight scene will draw comparisons to Oldboy as well as the Daredevil hall sequence. “But we wanted to do something that, while in the same realm, was its own thing,” Coker says. “To me, as a fan, watching Mike walk through that, he has such swagger. I’m like, ‘Good God!’ You envision something, but when you see it executed and when you see Mike as Luke pull it off, the imagery alone with the music and everything else, it’s so empowering. It’s so superhero badass. It’s fun. That’s what this whole show is about, ultimately, being able to do the superhero thing with flavor.”

According to Colter, filming that sequence was one of the toughest ones of the entire season.

“We talked about the sequence even before we started shooting, for a long time,” the actor says. “I couldn’t get that sequence out of my head. I was just thinking, ‘How was this going to be executed? How long will this take?’ When writers write a sequence, the stunt team and special effects and so many people have to figure out how to actually do it. And I remember that day, we were under the gun. We didn’t finish shooting that sequence until probably like five in the morning. It was a 14-hour day.”

He continues, “Tempers were running high, there was so much going on, and we had to get this shot done and we need to get that couch out the window, there were so many pieces to come together. The fact that we were able to pull it off is, I’m still impressed.”

There were several points throughout filming that Colter actually doubted that they would be able to finish filming it in time. 

“We were tired and didn’t have enough time,” Colter says. “I can’t tell you how many things that could have gone wrong and actually did go wrong, and we still had to keep going. I was frustrated. I couldn’t believe it, but that’s the world of television. You plan something, and what can go wrong will go wrong. At the end of the day, Guillermo was our hero. I remember giving him a hug halfway through because he was getting frustrated and I was getting frustrated and everyone was getting frustrated.”

Colter credits Navarro’s passion with pushing them all towards the finish line.

“Guillermo is a really passionate guy and I respond to that passion, I respond to people who care because I can get behind that,” Colter says. “And he did a great job. So when we shot that sequence, it was probably as adrenaline-pumped as you get from watching it, minus the music.”

And that high-energy during filming even led to a few on-set injuries.

“Some of the stunt guys even got hurt, but they didn’t care,” Colter says. “I kept apologizing. I kept hitting some guys in the face, and they were like, ‘No man, it’s okay!’ They were literally getting hit in the face with a car door and telling me it’s okay. They were just happy to be there and couldn’t wait to be stitched up and get right back in it.”

As much as Coker is proud of the choreography of the sequence, he loves it more for how much it shows about Luke as a man.

“You see the power of the character, but at the same time, you also see the personality of the character,” Coker says. “It’s the little gestures, like some of Mike’s ad libs. My favorite was like the classic Bruce Lee hand wave, like, ‘Come at me.’ One of the things we always talked about is that we know how powerful Luke is. He would never intentionally hit anyone with full force. He doesn’t want to kill anyone. So our name for it was smack-fu.”

Both Coker and Colter pause to laugh at their made-up term, before Coker continues, “With the smack-fu sequence, it was about seeing Luke go in, [his] POV, we’re with him as he goes through this whole thing, so there’s this fun to it. I think people are going to be talking about that sequence and I hope that it takes off.”

Adds Colter: “They’re going to want to replay it over and over and over.”

Luke Cage’s entire first season is now streaming on Netflix.

Sydney Bucksbaum

THRnews@thr.com