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Oliver Queen, aka the Green Arrow, played an integral role in DC’s extended presence on television for a decade thanks to “Arrow” on The CW, which launched the “Arrowverse.” However, while Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, and Andrew Kreisberg built an entire universe of shows around Stephen Amell’s Emerald Archer, the character almost starred in a very different TV series years earlier thanks to Justin Hartley’s portrayal in “Smallville.”
During an appearance on the “Inside of You” podcast (hosted by fellow “Smallville” alum Michael Rosenbaum, who played the classic DC villain Lex Luthor), Hartley revealed that his character was in line to star in a spin-off at one stage. “While I was on ‘Smallville,’ there were several different spin-off ideas that they had,” he said. “They wanted to do a spin-off called ‘Metropolis’ or something like that, I heard whispers of that. It was Lois and Oliver in Metropolis and whatever that was. They were trying to extend the life of the show.”
Hartley didn’t get into further details like how far along this idea was or when the show would have premiered, but it likely would have happened between “Smallville” Season 6 and Season 7, because that’s when Queen was romantically involved with Erica Durance’s Lois Lane. He later moved on to Lois’ cousin Chloe Sullivan (an original character created for “Smallville” and played by Allison Mack). And, of course, Lois would go on to live happily ever after with Tom Welling’s Clark Kent.
Justin Hartley almost led the Justice League in another Smallville spin-off
Another potential “Smallville” spin-off was meant to feature Justin Hartley’s Green Arrow leading a version of the Justice League trying to put a stop to Lex Luthor’s human experimentation program known as Level 33.1. The popular “Smallville” Season 6 episode “Justice” was intended as a backdoor pilot for the show, which would have been co-created and run by that episode’s writer and director Steven S. DeKnight. The team would have consisted of Kyle Gallner as Bart Allen/Impulse, Alan Ritchson as Arthur Curry/Aquaman, and Lee Thompson Young as Victor Stone/Cyborg.
This series wouldn’t have been a traditional portrayal of the Justice League. Instead, it was more akin to Marvel’s X-Men, with Green Arrow in the Professor Charles Xavier role. “The idea was that Oliver Queen was basically giving refuge to young people with superpowers, kind of in a Professor X kind of way, putting together this team and also trying to help out these people, like he says in ‘Justice’ about how he helped out Victor Stone and Bart and Arthur Curry,” DeKnight revealed in an interview for the book “Smallville: The Official Companion Season 6.”
As for the spin-off show’s big bad, there was talk of James Marsters (known for his role as Spike in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) reprising the role of Brainiac, the primary antagonist of “Smallville” Season 5. DeKnight also kicked around the idea of bringing Brainiac back in a different form and casting someone else from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in the role, possibly even a woman. That’s right — there’s an alternate universe in which Justin Hartley led an X-Men-inspired iteration of the Justice League against a female Brainiac played by a “Buffy” alum, possibly even Sarah Michelle Gellar herself.
