Smallville Creators Confirm They Talked About Making Chloe Lois Lane

Fans of The WB's/The CW's Smallville long held a theory that Chloe Sullivan (Allison Mack) would, eventually, somehow end up being Lois Lane. It's something that ended up not bearing out, with Erica Durance joining the series as the iconic character first as a guest star in Season 4 before becoming a series regular in Season 5, but now series creators Miles Millar and Al Gough confirm that they did, at one point, consider having Chloe end up taking on the Lois Lane Mantle.

In episode of Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum's Smallville podcast, TalkVille, Gough and Millar confirm that they spoke about having Chloe eventually becoming Lois Lane.

"We did talk about that, that maybe she is the proto-Lois and then later on, she had to change her identity or something like that, and she becomes Lois Lane," Millar said.

"The issue, again, was we wanted to get Lois Lane, and they wouldn't give her to us," Gough added. "Then, when she came in in Season 4, there was this huge thing about 'you can have her for two episodes,' and then 'you can have her for three,' and then 'you can have her for half the season' and [WBTV head] Peter Roth, to his credit was like 'f—it, She's in the show now and she's just not leaving.'"

Gough would later go on to clarify (via KryptonSite) that the consideration that Chloe might eventually be Lois was discussed in development of the show, but even at the show's pitch, the character was Lois' cousin.

"We discussed it when we were developing the show in mid 2000, but even in the series pitch document Lois was her cousin," Gough said.

Smallville Creators Previously Revealed What They'd Change About The Series

Smallville ran for 10 seasons on first The WB and then The CW, starting in 2001 and ending in 2011 and while the show was clearly a success given its longevity, Millar and Gough do have, in retrospect, one thing that they'd change if they could do things over again: they'd take a different approach to Lana Lang, particularly the relationship with Clark.

"The Clark-Lana thing played out way too long," Gough said. "Something else had to happen there. I think that was one that got a little repetitive. My younger daughter is now, finally after Wednesday, she's going back to watch Smallville, and she's in season two. She goes, 'What's the deal with these two?' I'm like, 'It was a different time.' So, I think there are things there, if we went back, we probably would be a little more adventurous with some of those relationships and bring them to certain heads and let them play out."

"We were definitely cautious and just very conscious of the fact we wanted to get to five seasons, and we ended up at 10 seasons, but we're just like, 'OK, if we split them apart, what are we gonna do?'" Millar added. "Again, as the father of girls, I think the female characters we would do differently today. I think Lana, her agency was not there. She could have been a much stronger character, and she always felt put in positions of weakness. It's a different era, a different time. So, that's something I think we could have done and would definitely look at to do better."