“You forgot your thruster.” - Penny Priddy

By TrinityVixen

It took me a while to realize why this episode was so wistfully artful: it’s a funeral farewell. I’m not sure why the creators are so upset, seeing as the only person who seems to be on her way out is Lana. And it’s not like that hasn’t happened before. Or, maybe, it’s my lucky day and the eighth and final season won’t include her!

“Veritas” starts off with a seriously morose ditty as the camera follows an eagle in flight, which Kara, getting the wiggins from alien things that can fly that aren’t her, follows into the Kents’ barn. The bird turns out to be Brainiac, who is in a playfully melodramatic mood, too. He tempts Kara with a promise to take her back to Krypton—to return before it blew up. He leaves unsaid whether she’s supposed to want to do this either to prevent its exploding or just to be able to be there with her family when it does (and get them off with her, perhaps). Clark joins the discussion and shoves Brainiac through several layers of barn. I can’t believe Clark can afford to keep disrespecting his property this way. And it’s no small miracle that barn is even standing after getting this many holes punched through it.

A rebuffed Brainiac threatens to get what he wants the hard way, and for the first time in the promo, James Marsters looks remotely interested in what’s going on. This was his problem on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, too; he treats all the earnest scenes as exercises in tediousness and only comes alive for the bad-assery. 

We have to wait for it, though, as he zips off to leave Clark and Kara pondering why he wants to travel with Kara back to Krypton. They plan to find him again by trying to force Clark to fly and help Kara search. When that doesn’t take off, Kara does the flying and Clark does what he always does: he nags Chloe into doing his share of the work for him. They’re going to track Brainiac’s power draining to find him. Advanced alien technology is backwards compatible with fossil fuels!

Brainiac’s “hard way” involves controlling Lana’s brain (it’s easy when there’s no competition for the space) and provoking a Clark freak-out when he sees that Brainiac can make her hurt herself. Of course, Kara can’t let that stand. Forget that going back in time has a hundred and one chances for this sociopath AI to do worse harm by a hundred times—LANA IS IN DANGER. Eee-ooo, eee-ooo, go the show’s sirens. Action stations! 

Listen to this brilliant plan: Kara leaps into outer space towards what looks like a worm hole with Brainiac, assuming on good faith that he’ll undo the damage to Lana. Yeah, good idea except he totally doesn’t. Speaking through walking-dead Lana, Brainiac tells Clark he’s lost her forever, and it sure seems as though the show believes it given the lavish ending with Clark bowed at her lap, an angel statue hovering over them as he closes her eyes. 

Oh man, I wish. If she’s not back by the next episode, I’ll be very surprised.

But maybe Lana isn’t the only on her way out. Lionel is running scared. Let that sink in a minute. Lionel Luthor. The Lionel Luthor. Scared out of his gray-ended wits. Lionel has stared death in the face and has paid the favor back in kind. He scoffs at aliens taking over his body. Lionel destroyed his own son in order to generate a merciless successor who could surpass him in fiendishness. Lionel Luthor. A man who only recently heard the call back from the abyss that his son never will and who, against all odds, braved the scorn of absolutely everyone to head towards the light.

That man is scared. So should we all be.

Nobody is. After his stunt with trapping Clark, Lionel’s hard-won friends and surrogate son have no time for his gasped pleas for forgiveness and forgetfulness. The man all but tears his whitening hair out of his magnificent head trying to make some one, any one hear him. Jimmy and Lois taunt him about being involved in Cygnet Swann’s murder. He tries to give his alibi for Cygnet’s murder (and even gives up Lex as the man who hired the killer) to Lana and Clark, neither of whom is available (physically or emotionally) to accept it. And then, when there is no hope, he attempts to pass off the most precious thing he has left now that he has no friends, and Chloe won’t take it. Chloe, I know the man tried to kill you a few times, but when the Devil is frightened, you’d do well to heed his warnings.

The last, most important thing Lionel has is a key. There are two keys, and both properly belong to the dead. Lionel’s key belonged to Robert Queen. The other, now in the possession of her murderer, belonged to Cygnet Swann. Lex dispatches girl-flunky Gina to Zurich to use Cygnet’s key on a safety deposit box. Inside the box should be instructions from Dr. Swann as to how to control the Traveler. Gina reports back on the need for two keys, and Lex flashes back to when he knew that. Apparently, being shot in the head gave Lex back his memory. No wonder his multiple contusions, concussions, and skull fractures haven’t left him a vegetable. He’s one blow to the head from evil genius.

Once, when Lex had hair and a conscience, he saw his father beg the members of the cabal to use their keys and learn the secret of Dr. Swann’s findings. Despite the envelope of incriminating information being on a pedestal out in the middle of Lionel’s study, he somehow could not get the others to let him open it. Lex remembers the meeting breaking up, leaving behind a very foxy Robert Queen. He takes out his key and slides it into a locket. 

(Not to interrupt or anything, but hot damn is Robert Queen good looking. The actor also bears a remarkable resemblance to Justin Hartley, who plays his adult son, which is creepy and incredibly sexy at the same time. Daddy Queen, we could have made beautiful music together.)

Lex next saw the locket in another flashback. (It amuses me to picture Gina standing there waiting for him to surface from these little fugues.) A man hands it to Lionel as he reports that the Queens are most definitely dead. As if having the key didn’t already put a sell-by date on his forehead, memory-Lionel proceeds to take memory-Lex on their fateful trip to Smallville immediately after.

Lionel is in a lot of trouble.

Lex comes back to the present knowing where to find his second key and why he ended up bald at five years old. The secret of Veritas was in front of him the whole time—hidden the crappiest family coat of arms ever. 

(Really, I know the Luthors are new money, but their crest looks as though they let little Lex pick it out. It has an L in one corner and the Veritas cabal’s super-sekret logo in the other.) 

With Gina smiling at him, psychotically in love and yet still helpful and efficient (a rarity for those who become enamored of Luthors past any degree of sanity), Lex prepares to move against his father. This does not end well. How could it possibly? I don’t know if I want to live in a world where Lionel Luthor is afraid. I’m even more unnerved by the possibility that he won’t have long to live in that state.

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About TrinityVixen: There’s an asterisk on TrinityVixen’scollege transcript that assures anyone who reads it that, though there is no specific major, degree, or certificate for it, she did, in fact, complete some kind of creative writing program as an undergrad. Armed with that symbol of irrelevant experience, she has polluted the internet with her opinions and horrible fanworks ever since (and for quite a long while before). Living poor in New York until she finds a means to become independently wealthy, she must subsist on the juicy meat of fandom. Fandom and noodles. And instant soup.