r/Smallville_

this dress on her? her hair in this scene?? 😍

Clark... he may be an alien but he's just like us😭😭

clana's chemistry is devastating!

I’m watching Smallville for the first time and I’m on S2 and this from the early episode the one with the class ring and it’s so funny I had caught it and rewind it back to make sure.

Lois Lane Has Always Felt Like a Character the Fandom Filled In for the Writers

🚨DISCLAIMER🚨

THIS IS NOT A HATE POST!

I repeat,

THIS IS NOT A HATE POST!

and most importantly this is NOT a Lana vs Lois post.

end of disclaimer

___

Smallville's Lois has always been such a nothing-burger character to me.

And there's something important about the way I originally watched this show that I think explains A LOT of it.

I watched Smallville knowing absolutely nothing about Superman.

And when I say nothing, I mean NOTHING.

I started watching when I was young, around high school age. I watched at first on demand on cable then caught up at season 9 was airing and I watched a few episodes of that season and a few episodes of season 8 too, and I wasn't into superheroes. I didn't know Superman lore. I didn't know the comics. I didn't know who Clark was "supposed" to end up with or end up as. (Until much later. Definitely not while I was watching.)

I didn't even know Lois Lane was an iconic superhero name.

So when Lois suddenly appeared in season 4, there was no:

"OMG, IT'S LOIS LANE."

There was no built-in attachment.

There was no excitement because Superman's future wife had arrived.

There was no waiting for Clark and Lois to get together because I didn't even know that was supposed to happen.

To me, Erica Durance's Lois was literally just some new girl who showed up in Smallville.

And initially, that WAS refreshing.

I'd already spent three seasons in this town with these characters, and suddenly there was a completely new person walking into this established world. I remember enjoying the novelty of watching someone new interact with everybody.

She could be fun.

And then the novelty wore off.

And... that was basically it for me.

I kept waiting for there to be something underneath it.

There never really was.

And looking back, I actually think watching Smallville completely Superman-blind gave me a very different experience with Lois than a lot of the fandom had. My sister and my friend ALSO watched it Superman-blind for the most part and had similar experiences to me. And one of them lives in France, so I know it's not an American thing lol💀.

Because the name "Lois Lane" couldn't do any work for me.

The character had to.

I couldn't fill in the blanks with decades of Superman mythology.

I couldn't look at Clark and interact a couple minutes an episode and read more into it beyond what is showed, or get excited because I knew where history said this was eventually going.

I couldn't see journalism and think, "There she is! She's becoming THE Lois Lane!" In fact, I thought journalism + Lois Lane felt a little out of left field to me, as I have always paired that profession to Chloe. (Imagine my surprise when I later learn Lois Lane in all other adaptations is basically KNOWN as the j**ournalist chick.)

I didn't have some pre-existing idea of Lois Lane that Erica Durance was either living up to or putting her own spin on.

All I had was the character Smallville put on my screen.

And based purely on that?

I never became emotionally invested in her.

That's the fundamental problem I've always had with Lois.

And I say problem in lower case, cause truly that character has never bothered me for me to have a problem with her... and that’s the problem...

She made very little impression.

She does not feel like a fully realized character, she feels more like a collection of characteristics.

She's sarcastic sometimes. She's blunt sometimes. She's supposed to be tough... She banters. She gets herself into situations. Eventually she's a reporter... anticlimactic.

Eventually she's Clark's love interest... also anticlimactic.

Okay.

But who is she?

Her fans talk about Smallville's Lois like she's this incredibly layered, complex, badass character, and sometimes I genuinely wonder if we watched the same show.

Because I hear far more depth in the way her fans DESCRIBE her than I ever actually saw on screen.

And I think that's the disconnect I've never been able to articulate before.

It feels like they take the basic ingredients the show gives Lois and fill in the rest themselves.

They tell me how emotionally complex she is. They tell me how badass she is. They tell me how much she's grown. They tell me how fascinating her vulnerabilities are.

But when I'm actually watching the show? (I finally finished it in full last week. Previously, I'd only watched a couple episodes of season 9 and 8)

I'm waiting for the writing to make me feel any of that.

And it rarely does.

Compare that to Lex, Chloe, Lana, Lionel, or even Oliver.

Whatever you think about those characters, I KNOW them.

I know what Lana is afraid of. I know what abandonment did to her. I know how badly she wants stability and how that desire affects the decisions she makes, including the terrible ones. I can trace how the girl from season 1 becomes the woman she is later. Her arc makes sense and her character is human and layered.

I can watch Lex slowly deteriorate and understand exactly how he got there, because I know his flaws, his desires, his struggles, he's fully layered and explored.

I understand Chloe's insecurities, jealousy, ambition, loyalty and resentment.

I understand Lionel's relationships with power, control, his children and eventually Clark.

Those characters have interior lives.

They make decisions that alter their relationships. They hurt people. They get hurt. They lose things. Their experiences leave scars. Their flaws aren't just cute personality quirks they show you in a few episodes by saying cute and shallow one liners. Their flaws actually cost them things.

Most importantly, the show spends TIME letting those things breathe.

I don't get that from Lois.

And yes, I know the arguments people make.

Her relationship with her father. Her childhood. Her insecurities underneath the sarcasm. Her journalism career. Her relationship with Clark. Her loyalty. Her bravery.

I know.

My problem is that listing things that happened to a character isn't the same thing as giving that character emotional depth.

I can make a list of Lois's traits and experiences.

What I struggle to do is identify the emotional journey those things created.

Where are the moments that fundamentally changed the way I understood Lois?

Where are the consequences that reshaped her?

Where are the character-defining emotional arcs that permanently altered how she moved through the story?

Where is the interiority?

Where is the emotional toll?

Because that's what I keep coming back to.

Lois goes through things.

But I rarely feel like things go THROUGH Lois!

Even her introduction shows the problem perfectly for me.

She was refreshing because she was NEW.

A new personality. A new dynamic. A new person bouncing off characters we'd already known for years.

But once "new" wore off, what replaced it?

For me, not much.

She just... remained Lois.

And even the personality eventually became incredibly one-note to me. The sarcasm. The quips. The supposedly badass attitude. The banter.

I get it.

But those aren't substitutes for characterization.

And this is where my original experience watching the show becomes especially interesting to me now.

Because I had no idea I was "supposed" to care about this woman.

Nobody had told me that Lois Lane was important.

Nobody had told me Clark Kent and Lois Lane were this iconic pair.

Nobody had told me she was his future.

So I judged her exactly like I judged Chloe, Lex, Lionel, Lana, and everybody else.

Based on what Smallville gave me.

And those characters made me care.

Lois didn't.

That's also why reducing my opinion to "you're just a Lana/Clana fan" doesn't work.

I wasn't sitting there as a teenager protecting Clana from Superman canon.

I DIDN'T KNOW THE CANON.

I didn't know there was anything to protect Clana FROM.

Lois wasn't "the woman who eventually replaces Lana" in my head because I didn't know that was going to happen.

She was just Lois.

Some new character.

And she had every opportunity to make me care about her on her own terms.

She never did.

That's why I've never understood the enormous disconnect between the Lois I actually watched for six seasons and the Lois her fans talks about.

Sometimes it genuinely feels like I'm hearing about a character who existed in somebody else's version of Smallville.

Because the woman I watched mostly felt like a 2D concept of a character.

And ironically, I didn't even know what that concept was supposed to be.

All I knew was the woman on my screen.

And she didn't leave much of an impression.

Maybe that's why I've never hated Lois either.

Hatred would require considerably more emotional investment than I have in her.

She's just... there.

And after years of not being able to explain why a character that other people constantly tell me is supposedly one of the greatest parts of Smallville has always done absolutely nothing for me, I think that's finally the answer.

Her name couldn't make her important to me.

Her place in Superman history couldn't make her important to me.

Her eventual relationship with Clark couldn't retroactively make her important to me.

The character had to do that herself.

She never did.

And when I read the way this fandom talks about her, I think:

The fandom keeps telling me who Lois Lane is.

Smallville never did and Smallville never made me care.