Actor Tom Welling spent over a decade on Smallville proving Clark Kent didn’t need his cape or his flashy Kryptonian powers to inspire people or save the world. For many who grew up glued to WB (and then The CW) every week, he’s still the Superman they picture first when anyone brings up the hero. Yet, after years of saving the day in plaid shirts and farm boots in Smallville and then in a suit in Metropolis, Tom Welling has his eye on playing someone much darker: Batman.
At Comic Con Liverpool, the Smallville cast reunited for a panel that quickly turned into a DCU casting pitch session. A fan asked which characters they’d like to play in James Gunn’s new universe. Before Welling could even get a single word out, his Smallville co-star Michael Rosenbaum (who recently interviewed Allison Mack) started pointing straight at him and mouthing the word “Batman”. Welling finally shrugged and answered with a smile: “I mean, Batman.” The room then exploded with cheers and laughs.
Aaron Ashmore, who played Jimmy Olsen on the show, was also in attendance and took the opportunity to shoot his shot, too, and suggested that he would play Robin. Welling fired back: “I’d fly with you anytime.”
Welling’s ambitions to play Batman aren’t new, of course. In 2019, on Rosenbaum’s podcast Inside of You, he admitted he’d jump at the chance to play Gotham’s Dark Knight. He said, “Yeah, I do like Batman, and I think there is some room to grow there. And, yeah, it would be different.”
We’ve seen him as a farm kid learning to be a symbol of hope. But seeing him as a guy who hides in shadows, punching clowns and penguins at night, would definitely be very different. He would need to be a lot darker to pull it off. And, let’s be honest, with Welling’s charm, it’s hard to see him as a wounded vigilante.
Smallville eventually introduced Batman, of course… just not on TV – except if you count his dead corpse in the first season of the show. No, the Season 11 comic continuation actually brought in the Dark Knight with Barbara Gordon as Nightwing. It was exactly what fans had wanted to see live on-screen all those years.
But… the part everyone weirdly glossed over at the panel is when Rosenbaum pitched himself as Joker. Not Lex Luthor again. Joker. And he didn’t just say it, he actually delivered the voice and the laugh.
He’s already friends with James Gunn. He’s already nailed a legendary DC villain once, and he’s appeared in a bunch of Gunn films. Heck, Gunn even called him the best Lex Luthor of all time. So, why not switch sides? Luthor and Joker are both terrifying in completely different ways. One plots and the other plays. Rosenbaum can do chaos just as well as calculated evil, and fans know it.
So imagine this rebooted DCU with Tom Welling behind the Batman cowl and Michael Rosenbaum with the twisted Joker grin. Smallville fans get the reunion they’ve always wanted, and James Gunn gets the cast for his DCU Batman movie, The Brave and the Bold.
No? Well, we can dream.
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