While Smallville ended 15 years ago this month, the DC show still hides things nobody has talked about – like the corpses of Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and a few others.
Most people know that Smallville ran for ten seasons, gave us the best Clark Kent ever put on screen, and pretty much became the show that every other superhero TV series has aspired to be since. But what most people don’t know is that the show actually hid most of the Justice League in plain sight back in Season 1. And strangely, most people are only realising it now, all these years later.
In Season 1, episode 6 (titled Hourglass), around the 42-minute mark, Lex Luthor (played by Michael Rosenbaum) is shown a very scary vision of his future by a psychic. In the vision, we see Lex in a white suit surrounded by a field of dead bodies. If you look closely amongst the dead people, you’ll see the charred remains of Batman (his helmet visible in the ash). But right beside him lies Wonder Woman (we see her bracelets). And next to her lies Green Lantern (we see his ring). We also see Martian Manhunter’s skull.
From the looks of it, somewhere in Smallville‘s future, Lex Luthor wiped out most of the Justice League. While the series never did cover this story, and Michael Rosenbaum eventually left the show in 2008 after the show’s 7th season, it could still be part of the show’s timeline.
But, in all honesty, Warner Bros. never planned to allow Wonder Woman or Batman to ever appear in the show – at least not beyond that corpse cameo. See, throughout most of Smallville‘s run, Wonder Woman was locked behind a studio wall. At the time, the studio had a live-action Wonder Woman feature film in active development by Joss Whedon. He spent four years working on the film that never came to be. But while the film was in production, the TV rights to Wonder Woman were frozen. The character wasn’t allowed to appear in Smallville or later in the Arrowverse.
So, hiding Wonder Woman’s corpse in that Smallville episode was the only way the showrunners could show the character without WB’s lawyers ever noticing. And they did it when nobody was looking. Nobody expected to see Diana of Themyscira’s bracelets in the pile of ash.
The irony is that Smallville was actually born from a similar rights issue. The show began as a Bruce Wayne series, but was shelved in favor of Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins. When a Batman origins show was rejected, WB allowed the showrunners to tell the story of a young Clark Kent.
Smallville ended 15 years ago this month, with Clark finally tearing open his shirt and John Williams’ classic theme playing, but it left behind a ton of cool Easter eggs just waiting to be found. Go back to Season 1, Episode 6, at the 42-minute mark. Then try telling us Smallville wasn’t playing the long game.
