How Many ‘Lucifer’ Season 3 Episodes Will Tom Welling Will Be On?

When “Lucifer” returns for Season 3 on Oct. 2, a new, yet familiar, face will be there to greet everyone. That face’ll be none other than Tom Welling’s, who starred on The WB’s “Smallville” for 10 seasons.

The news that Welling would be joining the cast of the hit Fox series was announced in July, but there was no indication as to how long he would be sticking around.

He’ll be playing Marcus Pierce, a serious police lieutenant who doesn’t care too much about Lucifer (Tom Ellis) but does start to take a liking to Chloe (Lauren German). And it seems like he’ll have plenty of time to make his move on the tough detective, because he’s been guaranteed 15 episodes on the series.

Welling revealed this news during an interview on his former “Smallville” co-star Michael Rosenbaum’s podcast, “Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum,” which was released on Tuesday.

But while he’s been promised 15 episodes, it turns out that that was a negotiation on his part and he was firstly only asked to do 10.

“Originally they wanted me in 10,” Welling told Rosenbaum on the podcast. “It was pretty funny because I’d been in front of Fox in another couple projects this season and it just didn’t work out and so I got a call on a Monday from my agent, like, ‘Hey we got an offer for you for this show Lucifer’ and I was like, ‘Oh, I think I know that show.’”

Well, he really started to get to know the show and how interesting and exciting it is after he watched a few episodes of it.

“So they sent me some episodes to watch and the money was where it was and they wanted 10 episodes and it shoots in L.A,” the 40-year-old actor recalled. “I was like, ‘Hey guys, I don’t know about this 10 episodes.’ They’re like, ‘They need you for 10, they can’t do any less.’”

It turns out, it wasn’t less episodes he was after.

“I’m like, ‘How about 15?’” he said he asked. “I wanted to do more. I’m like, ‘This is great. I love the show.’”

When Rosenbaum asked his friend if that means he’s guaranteed 15 episodes, Welling simply responded, “Yup, the show is literally that good.”

With a stamp of approval like that from Clark Kent himself, there’s no telling how good the new season will be, but we can make a pretty good guess. Though this new role firmly throws him back into the TV acting world, there was a reason for his absence from that world in the first place.

“This television season, I had sort of reengaged,” Welling said. “For a couple years, I didn’t want to go back to TV because I associated it with that experience of ‘Smallville.’”

With his reengagement a success, the rest of us can’t wait to reenage with “Lucifer” when it returns on Oct. 2 to see what kind of fun Welling’s character will add to the mix.