Lois Lane costume appreciation (Part III, seasons 8-10)
This is Part III of my appreciation for Lois Lane's costuming in Smallville, and in particular the colour yellow.
While the previous seasons relied heavily on the red-blue-yellow colour scheme, the soft reboot of the later seasons moves slightly away from it as we spend more time in gritty Metropolis. Although we still have primary colours in the setting - the Kent farm, the Talon, the Daily Planet, and in season 10 Lois and Clark's apartment - the costuming shifts to more muted tones. In season 8 Clark takes up the persona of the Red-Blue Blur, but to protect that identity he stops wearing red and blue in his civilian life, starting work at the Daily Planet in suit and tie to match Lois's business attire that she adopted in season 7.
Lois actually doesn't wear straight yellow as much these last seasons (other than a few notable exceptions), but is occasionally associated with gold. She still favours red and blue, but we start seeing shades rather than the bold primaries of the earlier seasons. Lois is also often costumed in pink or white at important moments - white being the colour of purity, but also Krypton/formal Kryptonian robes we see both Jor-El and Lara wear (as opposed to black which is Kryptonian military/solider coded). Clark wears a lot of black and shades of grey in season 9 as he is torn between his Human and Kryptonian sides, and between the philosophies of his father Jor-El and his would-be brother Zod.
Pink is of course a mix of red and white, and also a Superman I reference ("I like pink very much Lois"). Lana wore a lot of pink in the earlier seasons, so there is a precedent for it being used to denote romance/the love interest in the show's visual storytelling.
As Lois and Clark's romantic relationship develops, we rely less on the symbolism and subtext because it's up there on the screen. Lois becomes Clark's heart in the narrative, so we don't need to see it represented as visual foreshadowing. But there's still some key symbolism to explore in the presence of yellow and thematic-adjacent gold.
