‘Smallville’ Fans Loved This Nod in ‘Lucifer’

This week’s episode of Lucifer gave fans more unique moments and pop culture nods than they knew what to do with – including one to Smallville.

Spoilers for this week’s episode of Lucifer, “Til Death Do Us Part”, below.

The episode saw Lucifer (Tom Ellis) and Marcus Pierce/Cain (Tom Welling) going undercover as a married couple, as a way to investigate a murder in a suburban neighborhood. At one point in the episode, Marcus said the phrase “Everyone has their Kryptonite” – a sly nod to his time playing Smallville‘s version of Superman.

Sure, it’s easy to argue that referring to someone’s weakness as Kryptonite has become increasingly common over the years. But for fans of Welling’s tenure as the Man of Steel (and all the various forms of Kryptonite that were involved with that), it’s just subtle enough of an Easter egg.

While some time has passed since Welling’s last appearance on Smallville, the actor has hinted that he has no plans to return to the role anytime soon. This made appearing in Lucifer – a show also inspired by DC Comics – a sort of fun new challenge.

“I definitely didn’t want to play Clark Kent again.” Welling revealed last August. “The great thing about Clark is he didn’t know who he was and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with what he had and his abilities. This character very much knows what he’s capable of and knows what he wants to do and knows how to do it. So as much fun as that is to play, it wasn’t necessarily because of Clark that I chose this character. It was so many more factors than just, ‘I don’t want play Clark again,’ but I’d be lying if I was saying that I do not enjoy playing something very different for sure.”

This was just one of the many pop culture nods that Lucifer provided in recent weeks. In the same episode, Marcus referenced his regeneration-based powers through a nod to Marvel Comics’ Wolverine, but a recent plot took inspiration from the wide world of K-pop (and things got pretty meta in the process).

New episodes of Lucifer air every Monday night on FOX at 8pm ET.