Lois Lane: Who hasn't heard of her? Despite generally sporting the moniker of “Superman’s Girlfriend,” may that series forever rest in flames, she’s actually a lot more. She has quite the history. The original Lois Lane was created in 1938, in the first issue of Action Comics, right alongside Superman. Siegel and Schuster managed to create a character far ahead of her time: a single, strong, sassy, successful woman in a profession dominated by men, and who didn’t sit quietly by and write about toy dog shows. True, sometimes someone decides to kidnap her to draw the Boy Scout out. Through the years, however, she has usually gotten herself into the worst of her trouble by going after dangerous stories, pursuing corruption to inform the public.

Basically, she’s ridiculously nosy and believes strongly in… well, truth and justice. Sadly the cheeky line’s the best way to put it.

I’m playing the Smallville incarnation of Lois Lane, played by Erica Durance from 2004 to 2011. There haven’t been too many live action Loises, but she’s easily at or near the top. Durance played her from a snarky, arrogant, insecure but secretly quite caring nineteen year old to a dynamic, confident, successful, snarky twenty-five year old who protects her fiancé and his friends with her life.

However, I’m bringing her in from just after she arrives in Smallville, Kansas. She is still working on quitting smoking, and last night kind of ran into a naked boy in a cornfield who didn’t remember his name. Luckily for all concerned, she managed to deliver him safely to his mom. She’s still having a bit of a spazz, because she came to Smallville looking for answers about her cousin Chloe’s death (well, supposed death), and Chloe left a message for one Clark Kent. Lois goes to Smallville looking for him.

I’ll be taking her through canon. Right now she’s partway through “Gone,” the second episode of Season 4, and in the middle of her first little adventure with Clark. This time it was running away from a federal crime scene, pursued by an army chopper through corn fields until Clark (unbeknownst to Lois) took it down with some heat vision. Later on in Season 4 she gets kicked out of Metropolis University, and she’ll probably end up begging for a job at the Bar to try to help cover living. Oh yeah, and she’ll probably also end up trying to bum alcohol off of people legally allowed to drink, and generally getting into minor trouble. (And annoying Clark whenever she sees him.)

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Henry Mills spent his early life in a haze, a fairly normal if rather unhappy little boy. His adoptive mother, Regina Mills, was a rather strict parent, and he didn’t really have friends. When he was ten, his teacher--Mary Margaret Blanchard--saw his unhappiness. Knowing that life doesn't always have happy endings, she gave him a book of fairy tales, trying to give him hope.

Thing is, those stories were all true.

Inexplicably, the stories in it woke him from his fugue-like state, and he realized the people of Storybrooke were displaced fairy tale characters. It’s never really made clear how Henry figures out his biological mother is the key to breaking the curse, but all in all, that he could see it at all is probably due in part to his nature as not-one-of-the-trapped-in-time characters. It’s also likely that it’s due to being Emma’s child (and possibly whoever his father is contributed).

He’s a precocious boy overall. Magical advantages due to his genetics or not, he still saw past the curse, and was even able to start determining identities before adventures made it obvious. Like his mother, he tracks down information well. He also has a sense of adventure and wonder. Serious as the curse is, it’s still a very fairy-tale-like quest, and likely the glamour of that gets the better of him in some ways. This doesn’t mean he’s any less committed to his quest, codenamed Operation Cobra. Its goals are to keep figuring out who is who in town, to remind them of their identities, and to break the curse.

It's dangerous, but he's a brave little boy, and in true fairy-tale-prince form, he is determined not to let evil win.

As for how he’ll be interacting with the Bar, Henry is in a special position. In canon, he’s the first to see what’s happened, and to start figuring out who is who. In the Bar (already discussed with Snow, Emma, and Regina’s players), Henry is going to be able to see who everyone is. Canonically he gets to break the within-canon fourth wall a little. This will hold true in the Bar as well.