Thanks to exciting new characters and plenty of awesome action, season 8 of Smallville has been firing on all cylinders. Last week’s installment left viewers hanging after Doomsday crashed Chloe and Jimmy’s wedding, kidnapping the bride and taking her on the honeymoon from hell. The series won’t be back with fresh episodes until January 15, and when it returns it’ll feature some new super-powered heroes. The next installment, which is penned by comic book scribe Geoff Johns, will introduce the Legion of Super-Heroes to the Smallville universe. TV Guide recently announced which actors have been cast as the Legionnaires, and if you watch a lot of Canadian television you just might recognize them.
The producers of Smallville must be big fans of The N network, because two of the three actors cast as Legionnaires appeared on The N’s imported Canadian dramas. One is Alexz Johnson, who played Jude on Instant Star for four seasons. The actress has been cast in the role of Saturn Girl (aka Imra Ardeen), who has advanced telepathic abilities. Actor Ryan Kennedy, who starred on The N’s Whistler, will play Cosmic Boy (Rokk Krinn), a character who can generate magnetic fields. The one actor who hasn’t appeared on The N is Calum Worthy, who has been cast as Lightning Lad (Garth Ranzz). Can you guess what his powers are? Worthy most recently played an invisible boy in the “Wishful Thinking” episode of Supernatural.
With Geoff Johns updating the characters for the Smallville universe, you can bet they won’t look the same as their comic incarnations. The heroes will wear clothing that’s evocative of their original uniforms, much like Clark has his blue shirt and red jacket. There will also be a reference to the team’s flight rings, which were an important part of the original comics.
“I’m actually surprised by how faithful the Legionnaires will be to the comics,” Johns told IGN in a recent interview. “It’s really faithful to the comic book series. Who they are as people, what they do, it’s all in there. Obviously it’s going to be a little different because they’re just coming back for the first time to meet Clark. They’re uniforms are the Smallville versions, not spandex. But I’m really happy with how faithful it is. And writing the first live action of the Legion is an honor.”
The upcoming episode, entitled “Legion,” finds the super-hero team arriving from the future to help Clark separate Chloe from her Brainiac side. There’s no word on how many episodes the characters will appear in, but don’t be surprised if they return regularly to help Clark save the day.
– Don Williams, BuddyTV Staff Writer
Source: TV Guide, IGN
(Image courtesy of DC Comics)
Staff Writer, BuddyTV
