'Supergirl' Casts the Perfect Superman in 'Teen Wolf' Alum, Tyler Hoechlin
The Man of Steel has never seemed more picture perfect.
Fans of the DC Comics series Supergirl will finally see what Superman looks like. Tyler Hoechlin, best known for his stint in MTV’s Teen Wolf, will play Clark Kent in Season 2 of the CW series Supergirl, which aired on CBS this past fall. With a bearded, chiseled face regularly seen in public behind thick black glasses, Berlanti and company really knocked it out of the park with this casting choice.
“Greg [Berlanti] and I have wanted to work with Tyler for ages, so this worked out perfectly because Tyler is Superman,” Supergirl executive producer Andrew Kreisberg said in a statment. “We are so thrilled and humbled to add another amazing actor to the legacy of this iconic character.”
Hoechlin’s foray into comic book adaptations doesn’t begin with Superman. In 2002, the actor played Tom Hanks’s son in Sam Mendes’s Road to Perdition, based on the graphic novel by Max Collins. Hoechlin later received acclaim for his role in Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some, released this past winter. He is also set to star Simon West’s Stratton: First into Action, a British thriller based on Duncan Falconer’s series of novels.
It’s worth noting that at 28, Hoechlin is both old and quite young to play Superman. While Christopher Reeve was younger than Hoechlin when he took on the role at 26 in Richard Donner’s Superman, Hoechlin is also younger than Supergirl hinted its Man of Steel to be. In the show’s prologue, Kara arrives on Earth to an adult Superman already saving the world. The show then jumps forward ten or eleven years to the present day, when Kara takes up her superhero mantle. By that timeframe, Superman would probably be in his mid-thirties.
But if Hoechlin can make us believe a man can fly, and he probably will, then his age will be the last thing anyone cares about.
Supergirl will air on the CW this fall.
