Krypton Comes to CW Seed

Just a day before The CW will premiere Superman & Lois, a new series set in the Arrowverse and featuring Superman (Tyler Hoechlin), Lois Lane (Bitsie Tulloch), and their kids (Jordan Elsass and Alexander Garfin), the network has added Krypton — a series that features Superman’s grandparents — to the CW Seed digital platform. CW Seed, an ad-supported website, tends to find itself playing home to series that are closely aligned with The CW’s main line of shows, including the animated Vixen and Freedom Fighters: The Ray series, both of which were set explicitly in the Arrowverse, as well as the non-Arrowverse Deathstroke: Knights & Dragons.

Krypton sees modern-day Earth hero Adam Strange (Shaun Sipos) travel back in time to Krypton, shortly before the conception of Jor-El (Superman’s father). There, he tracks down Seg-El (Cameron Cuffe) and tells him that Krypton is about to be destroyed prematurely by a time-traveling villain known as Brainiac, and that they have to prevent it, becuase Seg’s grandson will be the greatest hero the universe has ever known.

Also starring Wallis Day, Georgina Campbell, Colin Salmon, and Emmett Scanlan as Lobo, Krypton was a fan- and critical-favorite, but was cancelled after just two seasons on Syfy. Its impressive visuals, elaborate practical sets, and painstaking worldbuilding made it one of the most unique, cinematic, and visually-stunning comic book shows ever made.

Krypton was a big acquisition for DC Universe, since the short-lived streaming service launched just as the series was about to begin its second season, and then acquired Krypton‘s second season over the summer, not long before DC Universe itself lost all of its video content. Now, DC Universe is a comics-only platform called DC Universe Infinite, while most of the video content originally licensed for DC Universe is either presently homeless, or heading to HBO Max.

The show was expensive, but drew fairly good ratings for Syfy, and there was a lot of enthusiasm. The network even went so far as to order a pilot script based on Lobo, the intergalactic bounty hunter played by Constantine and Guardians of the Galaxy actor Emmett Scanlan.

Soon, though, both Krypton and Lobo were dead at Syfy. Attempts to revive one or both of them somewhere else seem to have gone nowhere, and Krypton aired what would become its season finale in late 2019.

A part for Cuffe was written in the 2019-2020 “Crisis on Infinite Earths” event on The CW, but was never filmed, since the actor was unable to make it to Vancouver at the time. While it has never been confirmed, it was widely assumed at the time that he was screen testing for the live-action version of The Little Mermaid, where he was reportedly among the final two or three candidates.

“We were actually going to have Cameron play a Kryptonian elder,” Crisis showrunner Marc Guggenheim said, “so we could play a little fast and loose with continuity if we had to…When Alura was basically grabbing Kal-El and Lois on Argo, to take them to the ship, we were going to have this Kryptonian elder essentially hologram in with important information about the destruction of the multiverse. So that stuff is actually written!”

In a bit of a rarity for Syfy series, you can also get both seasons of Krypton on Blu-ray.