New Smallville Zod Cast

Smallville's eighth season came to an end with the foreshadowed return of Clark's Kryptonian archenemy, General Zod.

Last time around on Smallville, back at the top of season 6, Zod possessed Lex Luthor, so it was Michael Rosenbaum that was hollering "Kneel before Zod!"

But this time, at some point after season 9 premieres (on Fri., Sept. 25), Zod will arrive on Earth in person, in the form of British actor Callum Blue. Wait – Callum Blue? Mason from Dead Like Me? As Zod? I was thinking something a little more along the lines of Callum Keith Rennie... If, you know, we're doing Callums...

Actually, I'm kidding. Callum Blue is a great actor, with plenty of dark side (he's also dome a bunch of episodes of The Tudors), and he's also an unexpected choice, which usually turns out well. Not to mention, he has the Terence Stamp skinny, hollow-eyes thing down.

Blue also presents a huge contrast from last season's conflicted supervillain, the broad-shouldered Sam Witwer (who I recently saw on an old episode of Angel, totally randomly) – and from series star Tom Welling, who'll be exploring Clark's own Kryptonian side more than ever next season.

Weirdly, both Blue and new Supernatural villain Mark Pellegrino were both in the movie Caffeine. Evidently that was some kind of TV bad guy nexus.