‘Lois and Clark’s Dean Cain Expresses Interest in New Superman Role

Dean Cain, the actor who defined Clark Kent for a generation of TV audiences on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, took some time out from his vacation to tweet about his interest in a gig as Superman.

Joking around after reports circulated yesterday that current Man of Steel Henry Cavill was ready to move on from the franchise, the actor — who has also played villains on both Smallville and Supergirl — asked, “is there an age qualification” for the Superman part, and added a hashtag “Lois and Clark Reboot?”

When a fan asked whether he would want co-star Teri Hatcher to join him, Cain said that she was the “greatest Lois Lane of all time.”

Fans have long asked for closure on the series, which ran for four seasons before ending on a cliffhanger that was never resolved.

The cliffhanger dealt with a baby, left on Lois and Clark’s doorstep in the series finale, with a note to the effect that the baby belonged to them. What came next, producers said, would have been a new challenge altogether for the super-couple.

“It’s starting to get a bit fuzzy in my mind, but Lois and Clark became very attached to the little boy who began to grow at an abnormal rate, turning into a pre-teen in a matter of a few months,” executive producer Brad Buckner told Kryptonsite in 2003. “He also began to develop super powers, not all of which he used responsibly, since he was a troubled kid. Turns out he was Kryptonian royalty, stashed by his mother to keep him safe from assassins. In the end he had to (tearfully) leave the only parents he’d ever known (L & C) and return to save his imperiled people.”

Lois & Clark was made in the ’90s as, following the 1986 comics reboot The Man of Steel, Superman was more truly the “last son of Krypton” than he had been in years, with even characters like Supergirl and Superboy getting alternate origins with minimal ties to Krypton itself. The show also played fast and loose with comic book canon and often used concepts and villains who were either new or reinvented for television.

It is difficult to know, then, whether Lois and Clark’s Super-Son would have turned out to be some version fo Conner Kent (the Superboy at the time), Mon-El (a longtime Legion of Super-Heroes member whose history got impenetrable after the Crisis on Infinite Earths), someone else, or no one at all from the comics.

Lois & Clark ran from 1993 until 1997 on ABC, and used Superman stories as a kind of pretext to explore the work, life, and romance of Lois Lane and Clark Kent. Many of the stories involved Superman fighting corruption and organized crime, elements that were relatively inexpensive to portray and which could tie into things the Daily Planet was writing about in the episode’s A-plots. As the series (and the romance) matured, Lois and Clark’s personal life took a more central role, with the two eventually getting married (and, obviously, Lois learning Clark’s secret identity).

You can find all four seasons of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman on the newly-launched DC Universe app this week.

You can also check out our list of the ten best episodes ever right here.