Smallville Creators Reveal What They’d Change Now About the Series

Smallville ran for 10 seasons on The CW, starting in 2001 and running until 2011, so clearly it’s hard to say that show wasn’t a huge success. Still, executive producers/showrunners Miles Millar and Alfred Gough aren’t convinced that they couldn’t do it better with the benefit of hindsight. In a new interview about Wednesday, their new series for Netflix, the two suggested that if they had it to do over again, they would have done better by Lana, who they say was not fully fleshed out, and who they feel got an unfair shake from all the make-up/break-up stuff she and Clark did.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Millar and Gough said they didn’t have any real interest in revisiting the world of Smallville (which raises some questions about the long-rumored animated revival), and that they had no advice for James Gunn as he takes on the Man of Steel (they said he’s a good filmmaker who doesn’t need their help). They also talked about how they would approach Smallville differently if they were making it now.

“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.”

You can catch Smallville on Hulu these days, or rewatch it on DVD, Blu-ray, or Digital.