Lana Lang was inconsistent as a comic book character. First, she was essentially Superboy’s proto-Lois Lane. Then in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, she was Clark Kent’s co-anchor on WGBS News. Post-“Crisis on Infinite Earths,” she was the sad, left-behind best friend. A few years ago she was Superwoman, and in the current comics, she’s a respected scientist. Other Superman characters, including Superman himself, have certainly changed over the years but have core elements that stay more or less the same. The only aspects of Lana Lang that have stayed the same are her association with Clark Kent and the fact that she’s from Smallville.
This character squishiness gives creators a lot of leeway in developing Lana in whatever project they want to use her for. Sometimes this works well, as it does on Superman & Lois. Other times, it just results in a character with no real independent identity, as was the case with Smallville’s Lana Lang -- who ended up being not only inferior to her current CW counterpart but the worst character in her entire series.
In Smallville, Lana was the literal girl next door. She was the ever-smiling cheerleader who dated the high school quarterback but maybe harbored secret feelings for Clark Kent. Had the writers intended for her to be a secondary or tertiary character, that would be enough. But they made her one of the show’s stars despite not knowing what to do with her. She had little to no agency or internal motivation, and any definition she had came through other characters.
Throughout just over seven seasons, the majority of Lana’s subplots involved her romantic life. In Season 1, she couldn’t break up with her boyfriend Whitney because his dad just died. Then she had feelings for Clark but believed he was hiding something. After she dated two other people with secrets, Lana and Clark finally got together in Season 5. Things got particularly weird when she was blackmailed into marrying his iconic frenemy Lex Luthor and faked her death. In Season 7, she returned to Smallville for Clark and became obsessed with hurting Lex. Finally in Season 8, she devised a plan to give herself super powers so she could be with Clark, but Lex sabotaged the plan and Lana had to leave town for good.
Unlike Chloe Sullivan and Lois Lane, whose investigatory instincts pulled them into Smallville's main action organically, Lana's curiosity only seemed to extend to whether or not the current man in her life was hiding something. She had no natural place within Clark's pre-Superman adventures. The writers struggled to keep her relevant to the central narrative, making up romantic entanglements and plot contrivances. She decided to attend an art program in Paris despite never showing any artistic inclination or talent before then. When she partnered with Lex to turn the Talon into a coffee shop, she did so because her parents met there -- not because she had an interest in coffee shops, movie theaters or being a small business owner.
In contrast, Superman & Lois took the relative blank slate that is Lana Lang and turned her into a three-dimensional figure with hopes, dreams and aspirations of her own. This version of Lana has ties to other people, but they don’t define her. This Lana struggles with feelings of inadequacy while still trying to do what’s best for her family and Smallville as a whole. That internal conflict gives her decisions to take on the consciousness of Superman’s birth mother or run for mayor real weight. She’s not a piece of plot machinery or a means to propel other characters’ stories forward; she’s a full character whose motivations ultimately come from within.
The distinction makes the Lana Lang of Superman & Lois feel more alive and vibrant than the Lana Lang of Smallville ever did. While Smallville did better by its other heroines, Lana Lang's shortcomings were too common among female characters at the time. Hopefully her greater depth on Superman & Lois is an indication of progress; at the very least, it's a positive step forward for a character who has lacked definition for too long.