When Supergirl returns to the small screen in October, she’ll have plenty of company in her first two episodes.
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Her famous cousin, Superman, is coming to the show. The Man of Steel will be played by Tyler Hoechlin of Teen Wolf fame — for at least those first two episodes –whether he sticks around or returns will be announced at a later time.
Confirmed to return will be Season One regular, Calista Flockhart, in the role of Cat Grant.
After relocating production from Los Angeles to Vancouver at the start of Season Two, Warner Bros. Television had to deal with questions about whether or not Flockhart — whose character was a major part of shaping the show last year — would return at all. During a recent interview, showrunner Andrew Kreisberg told Collider that she would return for at least the first two episodes.
“Well, she’s in the first two episodes and we’re talking to her about doing more, Kreisberg said. “It’s funny because, from our perspective, we thought she wouldn’t do any. And it’s not because she doesn’t love the show. She’s such a huge fan of the show, but moving to Vancouver, we assumed that we would part as friends.
“But she’s so into the show and feels such an allegiance and a responsibility to it that she’s agreed to come back, so we’re very happy. We’re not focusing on what we don’t have, we’re focusing on what we do have. It’s allowed us to have Ian Gomez, who’s playing Snapper Carr, come in, in a more supervisory capacity, which is fun. Kara has spent two years of her life learning to deal with Cat Grant’s idiosyncracies, foibles, short temper and mixed signals, and just when she finally got that down, she’s now introduced to a new boss who’s very different, has his own thing, and isn’t quite as impressed by her spunk as Cat always was, even if Cat wouldn’t admit it. It’s a journey, like any of us go on. We’ve all had different bosses, over the course of our careers.”
But that idea — that Cat will be on the same episodes as Superman and that’s it — made me wonder: Could Cat Grant’s absence from CatCo be explained by a trip (or a return) to Metropolis?
Well, here’s one theory: What if, as they did when Clark Kent was fired from The Daily Planet in The New 52, Cat and Clark Kent might decide to start a Metropolis-centric news blog together?
In the TV series, we know that Cat has a background with The Daily Planet. Before becoming Queen of All Media, she said during Season One that she had started as Perry White’s personal assistant.
We also know that Clark Kent isn’t married.
…Wait, what?
Yeah, in the set photos that show Hoechlin as Clark Kent, he’s not wearing a wedding ring.
That’s notable first of all because they just recently reintroduced the idea of a married Superman to the comics, so keeping it out of the TV series where the character is said to have 12 years of superheroing experience is an interesting choice.
But also if Cat and Clark head back out of town at the same time, it could mean that the Supergirl writers are exploring the possibility of a relationship between Clark and Cat.
That was, after all, why she was created in the comics.
Jerry Ordway, who co-created Grant, told ComicBook.com that his angle may not be the show direction.
“Well, I can’t speak for Marv Wolfman’s intentions, only what I know. My take on Cat was that she came to like Clark Kent for who he was, while Lois loved Superman, and kind of barely tolerated Clark,” he said. “So instead of one love triangle, Lois/Clark/Superman, we had another, Lois/Cat/Clark. With that change in the dynamic, we were able to have Lois look at Clark much differently, as a result of Cat Grant’s interest in him, which eventually led to Lois and Clark becoming a couple.
“Keep in mind that the intention of the Superman reboot was to de-age Superman and Clark from a 40-ish person, to someone shy of 30. From your father’s Superman to your own Superman, and romance was an important aspect to a younger, less conservative Clark.”
To counter the point, Wolfman explained his stance on the subject.
“Clark Kent is a tall, handsome, wildly successful newspaperman/writer and I thought some woman would see him for his virtues rather than look down on him because he wasn’t Superman,” he said. “Cat Grant was that person.”
He went into a little more depth on the theme during an interview on the Superman fan podcast From Crisis to Crisis:
“Cat was very much a character that I wanted to be outrageous. She’s a gossip columnist. I wanted her ot be outrageous and way out over the top and super fun and somebody who would just talk at Clark and help remake him,” Wolfman said. “She got him out of those stupid suits and into sweaters and much more modern clothing — and suddenly you would realize that there was a lot more to her than just this one-dimensional, flighty character. There was actually a very strong character who was trying to make a family and who saw in Clark a very stable, very good, very honest, very strong man, and that had not been in her life before.”
Is any of this a guarantee that either the blog angle, or the romance angle, will be explored in Season Two? Absolutely not. It’s pretty unlikely that Cat’s departure will have anything to do with Superman’s. But that doesn’t mean it’s not fun to think about how these things might shake out in a way that would make sense for the character.
As a fun aside, it’s very likely we almost never had this conversation.
Per his own From Crisis to Crisis interview, Jerry Ordway had to sell DC Editorial on a story change that would keep Cat alive. When DC was working on Millennium, Ordway says they considered making Cat Grant a Manhunter robot.
For context, Millennium featured an invasion of Manhunter robots, who impersonated people close to the superheroes of the DC Universe in order to launch a massive surprise attack.
Editors at a meeting had been keen to use Grant, but Ordway proposed using Lana Lang, instead. “Cat Grant very likely wouldn’t have survived Millennium….That means she’s expendable in comics, so I guess I saved her for at least several years after that.”
