Steven DeKnight Discusses the Justice League Series That Never Was

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Back when Smallville was airing on The CW, the series managed to bring on quite a list of DC Superheroes and even form its own version of the Justice League. The team was never officially called that, but it was apparent that this would be the prototype of sorts of this universes version of the League.

Now Steven DeKnight, who served as writer and director on Smallville, has tweeted his disappointment in the fact the proposed spin-off series never got off the ground. What is also interesting is that he was in heavy talks with Justin Hartley about the series, meaning his character of Oliver Queen/Green Arrow would have been the main focus of the series.

Other heroes that made appearances and most likely would have served as members were Supergirl (Laura Vandervoort), Aquaman (Alan Ritchson), The Flash (Kyle Gallner), Black Canary (Alaina Huffman), Cyborg(Lee Thomas Young), Superboy (Lucas Grabeel), Zatanna (Serinda Swan), The Wonder Twins (David Gallagher & Allison Scagliotti), Martian Manhunter (Phil Morris), Booster Gold (Eric Martsolf) and Blue Beetle (Jaren Brandt Bartlett).

Justice Society of America members, Star Girl (Brit Irvin), Alan Scott/Green Lantern (Dough Pinton) and Dr. Fate (Brent Stait) were also featured on the series, there were even members of the Legion of Superheroes and mentions of Wonder Woman and Batman.

Kryptonsite had also gone into their archives for the Smallville: Official Companion Book Season 6where Steven DeKnight discusses the idea for a Justice League series.

“It was going to be basically Green Arrow, Cyborg, Flash, a couple of other DC characters living in Metropolis,” DeKnight recalled. “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.”

“I was supposed to co-create it and run it, so I’m doubly sad. We were all really excited about it, you know, me and the other actors. We all got along great. We really wanted to make this show, and we thought it would be really, really cool,” DeKnight lamented.

It was also stated that the spin-off would have tied up with the Smallville season six episode “Prototype”, which does end in a way that would show them going off on their own journey as they are determined to shut down all of Lex Luthor’s facilities.

The last season does hint at the world being expanded for the possibility of a Justice League team, as the Legion of Doom was shown to have formed, as well as Task Force X, not to mention the inclusion of characters like Booster Gold and Blue Beetle a couple of episodes before the series finale. So it’s quite possible they were still pulling for the spin-off even at that point.

By the time the series ended Tom Welling had made it clear he was done with the character of Clark Kent and wanted to move on, so its more than likely he declined to return, even in a recurring capacity and without Superman, as he would have been known by than, they couldn’t really justify a Justice League series.

WRITER NOTE: The Smallville Companion Book series stopped at Season 7 but are great books and serves as sort of like Special Features in book form. Author Craig Byrne has said he would like to finished the series up, but needs to show the publisher there are still a demand for it.

So if you are interested in those books, you can go here to purchase.

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