WARNING: This article contains major spoilers for "Crisis on Infinite Earths," the latest Arrowverse crossover.
With the plethora of cameos featured on The CW's "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossover, including Smallville alumni Tom Welling and Erica Durance, fans might be asking: where was Michael Rosenbaum, aka Smallville's Lex Luthor? The event's showrunner says there was a simple but unfortunate reason: scheduling.
“We had a version where he would have been in the scene [on the Kent farm] with Tom," executive producer Marc Guggenheim told TVLine. "And then the clock ran out on that [due to Welling’s availability].”
Guggenheim had a contingency plan involving Rosenbaum, but that wasn't able to come together, either. "I then had the idea of having [Michael] and Jon Cryer have a scene together, which would have been really, really cool."
While Rosenbaum's Luthor didn't make an appearance in "Crisis," his character was mentioned during Welling and Durance's cameo. As had been shown in Smallville, Luthor had become President, so he probably didn't spend much time in Smallville by that point. Perhaps a revised script could have featured Cryer's Luthor making a trip to the White House to visit his, had Rosenbaum been available.
“It's a bummer,” Guggenheim lamented. “Michael is definitely the one that got away.”
"Crisis on Infinite Earths," the latest five-show crossover between all the Arrowverse series, will soon be available on The CW's streaming service in its entirety.