Loved this interview!  Bryan Cairns with Smallville Magazine caught up with Smallville executive producer Brian Peterson, and [soon to be] former Smallville executive producers Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer at the Smallville L.A. offices.  

I quickly typed up the entire interview below - Check it out:

Smallville Magazine: Going into season eight, it seems Smallville went quite a bit darker.
Brian Peterson: We didn’t go into this season wanting to make it darker. Moving the show from sunny Smallville with all the cornfields to a more gloomy urban environment like Metropolis probably played a role in it. 

Todd Slavkin: In the premiere, we knew Clark was lost in the Arctic and would end up in a gloomy place up north. We knew Lex was presumed dead, which is a dark concept. When you have the search for a missing Clark, there’s already a sense of doom and gloom. We all loved the premiere and thought it was a great engine to start the season, but hopefully we lightened up! Instinct and Plastique were [certainly] fun. We knew we had this great dynamic of Lois, Clark, and the Daily Planet. There’s this light Moonlighting dynamic [with Clark and Lois], and to balance that out, there’s that depth and darkness of some of the villains. 

Smallville featured some new blood this season, so what have the characters of Tess Mercer and Davis Bloome added?
BP: With Davis, people are responding to us taking a chapter like Clark who finds out that he has powers, but is going down the opposite path. It’s been really rewarding to write, and the fans are enjoying watching it [play out].

TS: Lex was a fantastic villain for this series, [and was] played by a terrific actor. In comes Tess to fill this man’s shoes and create a mystery at first. Then, there’s an attraction to Clark that we’ll play in later. We always played that Lex/Clark brotherhood, and now we have a woman in those shoes saying, “I know your secret, but I’m attracted to you at the same time.” Cassidy Freeman has exceeded all our expectations, and Sam Witwer is fantastic as well. You can’t wait to see what Davis is going to do or say next. It’s almost like he’s a bomb waiting to go off.

Darren Swimmer: The other thing I would add about Tess is that Lex took several seasons to go from a person who had good intentions, but had a dark soul and an evil father, to eventually become a fully evil [character]. With Tess, it’s a different dynamic, because she comes in already with a dark soul.

Now he’s a series regular, Justin Hartley continues to infuse plenty of charisma into Oliver Queen.
BP:  Oliver has a very different take on justice and on being a hero than Clark does. Using the parallel to show how Clark grows into the hero he eventually will be has been helpful, because Oliver is the one person on our show who can voice the other side of what Clark is actually doing.

TS: It’s fun to write the cad. With Oliver, we’ve yet to really go there, and this year, the four of us made the conscious decision of, “He’s a playboy. Let’s see it, feel it, hear it, and enjoy him as the womanizing party guy on the streets of Metropolis.” Justin is so charming when he’s in that mode, so it’s been great.

DS: The other thing about Oliver this year is, because we’ve had him more episodes, we’re able to see more of his personality, and every episode [he’s in] doesn’t have to be Oliver-centric.

Doomsday is a very visual villain, so was it challenging bringing that image to the screen?
TS:  We were all extremely concerned when the four of us got together and came up with the idea of this mild-mannered paramedic who turns into this beast that would look like [he does in] the comic books.  We worried and talked about it, and our entire production crew in Canada did an extraordinary job.  Bill Terezakis, who created the suit for Doomsday, received so many notes from us.  The four of us were very pleased.

BP:  Bill does a lot of work in the movies. [Monster-making is] an area we don’t usually go into, so we spent all this money and time on Doomsday.  It’s really paid off.

DS:  One of our big concerns with Doomsday was fans expressing that you couldn’t really capture him on film.  We were wondering if we could, and I think we achieved that with this amazing work.  The last sequence in Bride where Doomsday takes Chloe to the Fortress is bone-chilling, if you’ll pardon the pun!

Another highly anticipated episode was Legion.  Was that super-hero group even on your radar, and how did that come about?
DS:  We knew writer Geoff Johns through [former Smallville supervising producer] Jeph Loeb.  We got word he was interested in doing [an episode with the Legion].  Geoff pitched us the concept and we immediately thought it was great.  Those three characters [Rokk, Imra and Garth] have an amazing dynamic with each other, and they’re really fun coming back in time [as they do].

TS:  Geoff was great to work with.  We felt extremely honored to have a writer of that stature wanting to come to Smallville.  That episode is unusual for us, because we wouldn’t normally have three comic book characters from the future come back.  It fits like a glove, and was incredible that it lined up to where we are with Chloe’s infection as Brainiac, how she’s going to get cured, and the fact that the Legion come back to help with that story as well as take Brainiac to the future.  It’s like we thought about it years ahead of time.

“Lana comes back a different woman, and leaves even more different [than she arrived] –Brian Peterson

Has it been tricky weaving Lana back into the storyline?
BP: We actually had a plan right from the start, and it laid out exactly as we intended. It’s exactly what this season needs right now, where she comes in and inspires the love triangles, as well as Clark and Oliver’s journeys. Lana comes back a different woman, and leaves even more different [than she arrived].

TS: We wanted her time [back] on the show to have [a lot of] gravity and magnitude.

There’s also been some foreshadowing concerning Lex’s return. Are you still hoping to get Michael Rosenbaum back?
DS: We’d like to. We’re trying our best.

 TS: Michael’s busy. He’s doing a lot of projects, but we’re in constant contact with him.

BP: He knows how much we want him back.

After Bride and Legion, where’s Smallville heading in the second half of the season?
DS:  We’ve been talking about how, for so long, Clark was not willing to accept the mantle of being a hero, and now that he has, the second half of this season is going to be him slightly overshooting that target and neglecting the life of Clark Kent.  That identity will become an impediment to the hero he’s trying to be.  It’s a flip of what we’re used to seeing him [deal with].

TS:  In the end, Clark will face the biggest decision of his life.  That’s what we’re gearing toward.  Whether this is the series’ end – which we hope not since the four of us are intent on a season nine – this will really propel us in a great way.

DS:  The series has always been Clark grappling with being a super hero and resisting his alien nature.  Now, it’s [about] him grappling with being a human.

Will there be a big pay-off between Clark, Doomsday, and the League?
TS: We have plans for the Justice League, Doomsday, and Clark Kent.  They’ll all tie up in a huge grand finale.  At this point, the specifics aren’t ironed out, but those three entities will definitely be in play.

After all Chloe’s been through, is she going to catch a break?
BP: We’re right in the middle of her arc right now and trying to figure it out. It’s going to involve Davis, though. Since the beginning of the show, she’s been on a trajectory of where she wanted her life to go, and she’s been on a bit of a detour from that. Chloe’s going to get back on track to what she [always] wanted.

TS: With Davis, she sees a victim, someone she can help. The fact that he’s [created by] Kryptonians makes it that much more special. She knows so much, yet refuses to give up on Davis. She sees him plagued by these demons and this beast, so Chloe is intent on quelling that beast. She and Clark will be at odds in a certain way, but she’s doing the right thing. Chloe has been through a lot this year and has had the most difficult time of all the characters.

If Chloe is bent on helping Davis, where does that leave Jimmy?
TS:  In episode 16 [Turbulence], they split up, and this is where Jimmy begins his dark spiral.  He knows the truth about Davis, and I’m not  going to say he turns into a stalker, but Jimmy desperately wants to convince Chloe of the truth..  What we don’t want to do is more of Chloe and Jimmy pining for eachother.  We want them to move on.

BP:  Turbulence is Jimmy-centric.

TS:  Turbulence is not him in a different guise, but it’s all about Jimmy, and we’re playing it a little serialized.  We’ll find Jimmy transferred [to Metropolis] for his recovery [from his injuries when Doomsday attacked], and that’s [where and] when he discovers the truth about Davis.

Are we going to see Lois becoming more of that iconic reporter she is in the comic books?
TS: Starting with Legion, she’s not in the next four episodes. That was due to contractual issues, as well as the fact we only have Lana for these four [episodes]. We really wanted to put our energy into that. I think the Lois fans will be really happy by the end of the season, because now that the “Red/Blue Blur” is [in the news], all her feelings for Clark are moved toward that [mysterious stranger]. Clark becomes much more of the mythos where it’s about Lois getting that interview – who is that guy? – and Clark trying to balance those two [different identities].

As we break the stories, every time we use the Justice League, we look at each other and say, “What a great television show Justice would make.”  –Todd Slavkin

Do you get a kick out of writing the Justice League?
BP:  What I like about them is, just like Oliver, they all help Clark become a hero.  What’s great is when they’re all placed in a story that puts them at odds with Clark.  We don’t want to do that all the time, but there’s still lessons he needs to learn.

TS: As we break the stories, every time we use the Justice League, we look at each other and say, “What a great television show Justice would make.”  You have all these great characters, but [we're making] Smallville, and it’s all about Clark.  It’s hard to explore them in that time, so to imagine a TV show where you have [characters like] Cyborg and Dinah Lance is amazing.  But a little goes a long way on Smallville.  We have an awesome Justice League episode planned [for the near future].

When you weren’t sure whether there’d be a ninth season, were you building toward a season finale or something open-ended?
TS: We had plans for both [eventualities]. We had two endings. We think there are many more stories to tell in the Smallville universe. We’re still pumped. To this day, we all still get excited about what we’re doing.

SOURCE:  Smallville Magazine #32