UPDATE: While Matt Morgan claimed he was cast as Doomsday for the future of Smallville, BuddyTV received different information from the CW. According to an official CW spokesperson, there is no such deal. “Apparently a former wrestler named Matt Morgan is saying he is cast as Doomsday for next season and that is not true.”
Smallville has been renewed but will season 9 be Clark Kent’s personal Doomsday? Matt Morgan has been cast as Doomsday, a mammoth beast from the planet Krypton on a collision course with Earth. Morgan, a former WWE and TNA! wrestling star best known as Beast on American Gladiators, told pro wrestling sports talk radio show The Pain Clinic that he had originally been up for a different role. He was vague about what that role was, presumably to protect the direction of future storylines, but we can guess.
“My agent was trying to cast me for a different role and [the producers] called him back and told him I was a little too tall for what they were trying to cast me as. And then I guess they went to lunch and the director was saying to them ‘Yeah, you ought to see this kid. He’s seven feet tall and three hundred pounds and he’s young. You know? It’s a shame. He’s just a little bit too tall for the spot we were going for.’ And the guy goes ‘Hold up. Why didn’t we find this kid for the role of Doomsday?’”
There was just one problem. Smallville already had a Doomsday, Sam Witwer, who this season has been playing Davis Bloom, a paramedic who leads a Jekyll and Hyde double life as Doomsday. Turns out Morgan stole the role – or, more accurately, the director stole it for him.
“Cause they had just previously casted [sic] the Doomsday character already – signed, sealed and delivered. You know? It’s already in concrete. This guy’s already playing Doomsday. And I guess the casting director was like ‘We had no idea who he was or where he came from or -‘ Long story short the director said ‘Let’s find a way to recast the role for Doomsday and maybe have this Matt Morgan kid play him and see how he tests for it and things like that. And maybe they can-‘ In post production they’re going to try to write around it hopefully. And, you know? I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”
When new episodes last aired, Chloe, possessed by Brainiac, trapped Davis in a crystal chrysalis in the Fortress of Solitude. Perhaps the Davis-Doomsday monster goes through a metamorphosis, Davis dies and Doomsday lives on.
The comic book is little help. Doomsday already had a completely different back story.
In the comics Doomsday was the result of an ultimate cloning experiment, a creation of the mad scientist Bertron on Krypton before the humanoid Krptonian race had gained control. Sounds like a hot button storyline to air in a year in which newly elected President Obama is receiving pressure from all sides regarding the legalization of stem cell research.
Doomsday is best known as the villain in The Death of Superman, which begs the question of whether the famous issue will be reproduced in some form on Smallville. Sounds like a heavy duty season finale cliffhanger to me.
-Henry Jenkins, BuddyTV Staff Writer, The Pain Clinic
(Image courtesy of DC Comics)
Guest Columnist, BuddyTV
