"Had you always been working toward a plan for the ending that you wanted for the series?

GOUGH: You have ideas, but I don’t think you can plan for that, in terms of a script that was sitting in a safe for 10 years and then you’re like, “Finally, here’s the last episode.” The characters evolve and the series evolves. If it had gone five years versus 10 years, you’d end it one way.

MILLAR: Ultimately, in our own heads, we had an ending that we wanted. The last moment of the show would be him putting on the suit and flying off into his future and his destiny. That was always in our heads. That would be the ultimate end to the show. The thing that was always frustrating for us was that the whole “no flights, no tights” became this ball-and-chain to us. For us, that’s his destiny as Superman, but it was also a budgetary concern. Initially, we wanted to ground him and ground the show.

GOUGH: They were slaves to that for the entire run of the series, and it went 10 years. After awhile, it was like, “Come on, already!”