Tom Welling spent almost his entire time as Clark Kent in Smallville pushing back against doing anything too Superman-y. In fact, the show’s famous motto was “No Tights, No Flight.” The idea was that since Smallville was about Kent becoming the Man of Steel, once he did these things, the show would have no reason to exist. However, the series pushed these rules about as far as they could, allowing their Clark Kent to use superspeed a lot (often effectively flying) and wearing a jacket with a big S on the front.
In the finale, where it would’ve made sense to finally show him in the suit, we only very briefly got to see the full deal. We saw Clark receive the costume and some brief shots of him flying, and final shot of the series was a tease of Kent ripping open his shirt to reveal that iconic S. Skip forward almost a decade and there was a Smallville cameo scheduled for The CW’s multiverse-spanning crossover “Crisis on Infinite Earths.” Surely now, after all these years, we’d get to see Tom Welling’s Superman in full costume once again?
Not quite, as sadly, we were denied once more. As the scene showed, the Smallville Clark Kent has given up his powers to lead a quiet domestic life with Lois Lane and their two daughters. To be fair, it’s a touching scene and there’s a hint that his daughters may have his powers but dammit, it’s not what fans had been itching for for over nearly two decades.
Now, however, we’re learning that The CW was pushing hard to get Welling into costume. In fact, We Got This Covered reported late last year that the actor was going to suit up. And it seems that was the plan. According to FandomWire, however, they couldn’t convince him in the end and Welling refused to wear the suit. As such, we got the scene that we got.
Unfortunately, at this point, it seems unlikely that we’ll ever see Tom Welling in a Superman costume again. Oh well, at least he looked buff as hell in that farming gear in “Crisis on Infinite Earths.”