“You’re not going to save the world, okay? You’re delusional.” - Dr. Kathryn Railly, 12 Monkeys

By TrinityVixen

And thou shalt know thy secret societies by the private jets they fly. In other words, Veritas, judged by the paraphernalia of its members, is tacky. Eddy Teague is jetting to South America on what looks like a luxury bus. From 1973. Kara appears in stewardess drag, which makes an amazing amount of sense. This is where the techno soundtrack bungs in and she gives Eddy T a lap dance. The man has spent more than two decades in monk robes. He could probably use one. Alas, not. (Eddy Teague is not Tony Stark.) Instead of a beverage service, Kara serves him up heaping spoonful of attitude. She’s after the device to control the Traveler, looking to protect both from Veritas. She, awesomely, sticks Teague’s head out a hole she punches in the plane until he tells her that Lex has it. She punches out and leaves Teague and his pilots to die. The transition from flaming wreckage to the meteor shower of the credits is tasteless and crass and I love it.

At this point, it’s obvious that something is up with Kara. First, she passes out because of a brain spasm and now she’s hijacking planes. There’s no sense disguising the shocking answer to her bizarre behavior since the guest star credits give it away when James Marsters’ name pops up. Kara is actually Brainiac. Sorta. Back when Clark and Kara time-traveled to exploding Krypton, the Kara that returned wasn’t the same. Or, well, maybe she was and Brainiac rode shotgun until he could take over. Something. She’s been Kara and had a flip out and now is entirely Brainiac. The real Kara is riding the Phantom Zone Rhombus. Kara-ac’s demonstrable concern to Eddy Teague on behalf of the Traveler is just his way of screwing around. Does nobody like Veritas?

Back on the ground, Lex paces the mansion as his head lackey informs him that he’s lost contact with the second team sent to the location picked out by the Kryptonian Eight Ball. Jimmy arrives just in time to be given his bogus tit-for-tat assignment, as promised in exchange for Chloe’s being taken off the terrorist alert watch list. The dastardly deed Lex has for him: lying to Lois about why he’s dicking around in the Arctic. That’s…it? Even Jimmy doesn’t believe it. “You want me to lie!?” Come on, Jimmy, this Lex Luthor. You’re lucky he doesn’t want you to kill her yourself.

Jimmy demurs: “Lois is impossible to stop in her full-court power to the press.” He might have a hard, nay, impossible time of convincing her. “I’m well aware of your limitations,” Lex assures him. Lex is awesomesauce.

Cut to the Devil herself: Lois is off jaunting in Smallville to pass off an application to Clark. Chloe’s position has been filled, and an internship is now open. Way to pimp your cousin’s dream job to her less qualified best friend, Lois. My cynical heart scoffs and yet? Lois Lane is drafting Clark Kent to be an intern at The Daily Planet. Show, I swear, if this is a tease, I’ll kill…Stephen Harper. Take that, Canada!

Since being an intern, just like being a superhero, doesn’t fit into Clark’s emo plans to remain a recluse farmer, he refuses. Plus, he’d be working for Lex and that would be awkward times eleven. Lois says she’s looked into it (why?) and Clark and Lex used to be joined at the hip. But Lex is so evil! She asks why Clark and Lex were ever friends. The Gay, Lois.

Chloe shows up to spare us more of this. Lois smiles at her and departs without telling her about trying to rope Clark into her job. (If he’s any sort of man at all, alien or otherwise, Clark had better tell her. And ask for her permission first. While crawling over hot coals.) Chloe tells him about Teague’s plane going down, and they’re off to Isis to decipher the recordings of the black box, which, naturally, she has hacked out of the hands of the National Transit and Safety Board. The Department of Domestic Security is all over her a week ago, and here she is merrily adding more acronym notches in her hacking belt. That was some favor Lex did for Jimmy.

Clark super-hears through the garbled recording and discovers that Kara-ac brought the plane down and is headed for Lex. He reveals this to Chloe while angsting in a corner. Why do people on this show walk away when they discover something? LOOK AT EACH OTHER, DAMN IT. (Who blocks these scenes? Have they been dipped in boiling oil yet?) Chloe, sadly, reminds him that Kryptonians, save for himself, have a nasty track record when it comes to killing, though at least Kara-ac seems to be acting to protect him by getting friendly hands on the Kryptonian Eight Ball.

Of course, Kara-ac can’t actually touch the Eight Ball when he goes to pluck it from the Luthor mansion. It’s for humanity only, kinda like how the Talisman in Red Sonja was for chicks only. (What? I love that movie!) Clark zips in to moralize at Kara-ac and drag his ass back to the barn. Mansion security? Stay fabulous.

On the farm, Clark generously assumes Kara’s ‘tude is red K talking and not her just being pissy. He demands to know if she’s been playing dress-ups with any red trinkets. Kara-ac rolls his eyes at Clark. “I stopped wearing jewelry.” That’s more than Clark can say. The man is an accessory whore who never yet met a meteor-rock bauble he didn’t like. Kara-ac flies off after kicking him through the interior stairwell of the barn.

Elsewhere, Jimmy sells Lois on the bogus cover story for Lex’s trips to the north. He does a hilariously bad job of lying, but as her only theory is Lex aims to garrote Santa Claus and conquer the Christmas racket, I guess anything sounds more plausible.

Lex walks into his office with a cautious alertness that can only come after being brutally savaged one too many times in your supposedly guarded home. You can see him thinking, “Hey, security guards, did anyone see some intruders? No, okay, well I guess that means there probably is one and it wants to kill me.” He takes his time. Wisely, for Kara-ac is sitting at his desk mocking the failure that is the Veritas crest. By the way, did you know that “Veritas” means “truth”? (For that matter, “ohana” means “family.” Different language, same level of “duh.”)

Oh, and Kara-ac cops to being an alien. Lex boggles at him (still thinking he is Kara) without following through on what that indicates about his ex and all the times Clark has claimed that Kara is his cousin. It’s too bad James Marsters couldn’t carry this scene, as I can only imagine how hard he’d be rolling his eyes as Lex asks who, who the Traveler could possibly be!? “Don’t you already know?” Says Kara-ac. Be fair, Kara-ac. He’s taken a lot of hits to the head over seven years. It’s a miracle he can tie his shoes. Lex has to take the Eight Ball to the Arctic. Hey, here’s an idea: Kara-ac will come with. Give the “girl” a second to get her nails done. Back in fivesies!

Clark pulls out the heavy artillery and gives Chloe green Kryptonite in a lead box to take down Kara-ac since he can’t be around it without falling ill himself. Chloe fakes a call of distress about Clark acting out, and Kara-ac shows up and burns down that ruse in a hot minute. For no reason other than he thinks he’ll get away with it, Brainiac melts away the Kara-ac disguise. Perhaps it is a measure of respect. James Marsters leers appreciatively (at least someone does) as Brainiac considers Chloe. “I remember you. Always sticking your pretty little head where it doesn’t belong.” So he plunges his mind control tentacles into Chloe’s brain. 

Brilliantly, Chloe unleashes some meteor freak whoop-ass. Brainiac is busted the hell up and frightened within an inch of his servos. “What the hell are you?” Chloe, the also-ran for Clark’s heart, the step-child of the show’s creators, the woman who is Watchtower—she can scare the Brain Interactive Construct. It doesn’t remedy the abuse she’s suffered, but at least she got her own back before Brainiac rendered her a vegetable like Lana.

Lex packs for his trip to the great white north. If he’s anything like me, packing time is an incredibly cranky time for him, and I am impressed that he does not strangle Jimmy outright when the recalcitrant little whiner comes in to moan about having to lie to Lois. Lex doesn’t quite laugh maniacally and demonstrate crushing Jimmy’s future like a soft fruit in his hand, but the inference is clear: by no means are they finished. Jimmy calls unfairness despite the fact he’s telling fibs to an airhead in exchange for his girlfriend having a clean record with a short-tempered anti-terrorist agency. Jimmy won’t do it—he can’t! Lex looks him through and says, “I respect your integrity, Jimmy.” Translation: “I’m going to have you killed.” Michael Rosenbaum is rolling death-by-irritation from his eyeballs as Lex departs.

Clark visits Chloe in the hospital. Her whited-out eyes clue him in and he takes off with the intent to mess Brainiac’s RAM the hell up. It’s already pretty fragged. Brainiac stutter-steps towards a power plant like a zombie shaking itself apart. Go Chloe! Clark smacks Brainiac around and bits of information fall out of him. Chloe’s powers must have scrambled him badly because he flat-out gives Clark a reason to murder him when he reveals that doing so is the only way to rescue the women he’s put into comas. He gambles on Clark’s goodwill and hesitance about murder, assuming that it will save him from permanent hard drive failure. It might have been a safe bet if a) he hadn’t attacked Clark’s soulmate and idyll of perfection, Lana Lang, and b) he was actually a man. But he’s only an evil machine, so Clark hardly hesitates. Somehow, it is possible to electrocute a creature that feeds on electricity and runs on it. Splashy death number fifteen hundred from the great computer that was.

Clark dashes to see Lana, barely behaving like not a douche long enough to call Chloe (you know, the woman who made vanquishing Brainiac possible?) and make sure she’s all right. Lana then upstages him with some even more horrifically self-absorbed behavior; when Clark arrives at her room, she’s already checked out and left him a goodbye recording on a DVD (an overly perky nurse happily hands his heartbreak to him). Back at the farm, Clark watches a tearful Lana tell him that she needs him, but the world needs him more. “Please, don’t come after me.” Why didn’t you stay “dead” in China, damn it? Clark gave her his heart, and she gave him a DVD telling him to go f*** himself. “I love you. More than you will ever know.” Yes, well, that’s easy to say because you’ve run away explicitly so he can’t ever know. Lionel dies protecting him, but this is how he’s going to get pushed into being Superman, isn’t it? Kill me.

The only saving grace in this cowardly exit is Lois walking in on Clark watching Lana’s goodbye. (Her entrance is, conveniently, timed to miss incriminating statements about Clark’s destiny.) Without hesitation, she runs to hug him. They’re halfway to being in love because both of them are at that part where they loved once, brilliantly, and never want to do that again. They’ll learn to rely on each other, checking each other without knowing it, and one morning they’ll end up in bed together and wonder how that happened. It is sweet and foreshadowed in the desperate clasp. Lois might only passingly resemble a human being, but the Lois and Clark moments of mutual support through crises are genuinely touching.

Jimmy guides the restored Chloe through the Talon with extreme care, nerves popping all over his every tentative step. She raises an eyebrow, adorably, at his exaggerated caution, entirely unmanning him and making him and the audience fall utterly in love with her again. Jimmy confesses, “Until tonight, I never thought I’d lose you.” (Didn’t Chloe die last season, Jimmy?) With such a loving intro, he proposes to her with a ring he got from the hospital gift shop. (No word on whether he went to the counter or just turned a quarter in a slot until a plastic egg dropped out with a ring inside.) It’s alarmingly cute. “We can have Breakfast at Tiffany’s in the morning.” She says yes.

One second later, DDS agents swarm in, throw Chloe to the ground and arrest her for, well, all the things she’s actually done. Lex is a bastard on the double-cross. Way to go, Jimmy. Chloe cries out, “Call Clark! Get Clark!” And Jimmy does it, uncharacteristically mature about his would-be fiancée calling him to fetch another man—a man he’s accused her of harboring a crush on—to help her. 

To Clark’s credit, he snaps out of his post-Lana fug in a heartbeat when Jimmy relates to him Chloe’s troubles. Only Jimmy makes the mistake of also telling him that Lex is northward-bound. Save the Fortress or save Chloe? When has anyone, in the history of anything, ever saved Chloe when there was a choice to do something else instead? (“Darn socks or rescue Chloe? Chloe’s great, but these socks have such huge holes in them…”) I get that losing the Fortress pretty much destroys Clark’s last connection to his jerk-off father and lost civilization, but still: Chloe is awesome and in peril; Krypton is long gone and Jor-El is a total taint. Plus, if Jor-El can transport Clark into fake worlds, he can defend the Fortress his damned self.

Fate and predictability dictate that Clark go to the Fortress. Lex is already there, marveling at the wonders of the ice palace. He is underdressed for the frozen north—not even a billionaire’s peacoat and leather gloves are enough for the goddamned Arctic Circle. Lex locates a small section of the Fortress where the crystals are jutting and glowing and throbbing. I guess we know where Clark went after every bad breakup he and Lex ever had. Otherwise, I don’t want to know. He goes to lay the Eight Ball on the crystal and stops: his spidey-sense is a-tingling!

This is the moment. It feels cheap because we have been here before. How many countless bouts of amnesia have erased Lex’s memories of moments exactly like this one? Somewhere in his cerebral cortex, remnants of Zod are laughing at him. That Clark and Lex confront each other in an impossible location with nary a trace of brainwashing or mind control adds a little frisson of tension; otherwise, same old, same old. They pose at each other, Lex pretending to be shocked, Clark being genuinely disappointed. It’s not a bad reveal, really, just one that came several seasons too late. It helps that Lex is in control of his faculties and has the upper hand with the Eight Ball. It makes him burn with righteous fury.

“I must admit, Clark, this is a big step up from the barn.” (Yeah, the Crystals haven’t had too many douchebags thrown through them.) Lex is smug and triumphant and three seconds from crying. He is also coming all over himself for finally getting to bait Clark about not being the good son. In every other measure, Clark is the better person. But if he’s the Traveler that means that he’s going to enslave/destroy humanity and therefore anyone who stops him is the hero! (Not following through, he doesn’t wonder what being the Great Destructor of the Great Destructor makes him.) Lex has always, always wanted to be the hero. From his worship of Warrior Angel to the dirty-bad-wrongness-in-the-pursuit-of-rightness that was 33.1, Lex has cast himself as the savior and never understood why everyone crossed themselves at his beautiful destruction.

Clark attempts to reason with Lex, then quails as Lex threatens him with the Eight Ball. Clark bargaining from a point of terror and weakness is pretty devastating. It’s like that scene in Superman Returns where these nobody henchmen beat up on Superman as he’s being sapped by Kryptonite. It’s criminal to see the Boy Scout laid low and kicked to pieces by some piece of trash with a glory complex. It’s like that, only a thousand times worse because Lex is insane and used to be Clark’s best friend. Clark saved his life after he drove off a bridge–all so that Lex could return the favor by killing him. 

Lex hisses and spits and justifies and rationalizes. “You didn’t trust me!” All the while, his heart is breaking. “Who am I to turn my back on my fellow man? Especially after you turned your back on me?” Clark being his enemy is, to Lex, like Lana leaving is to the show’s writers. What Lex means: You broke my heart, so I’m going to break you to pieces and pretend that it is destiny. That’s how you show them that you love them, if you’re a Luthor. That’s what his Daddy taught him. Lionel taught Clark that to love was to die. There was no way to avoid this, then: when you set up one son to kill and the other to die, they’re going to do their best to please their Father.

Lex plugs the Eight Ball into the crystal console, and a beam of light shoots out straight through Clark’s chest, ricocheting around the Fortress. Clark collapses and the Fortress caves in around him as Lex moves to his side. Clark is boneless and infinitely sad and wounded and pissed off. Lex is majorly in love and psychotically above it all. He cradles Clark’s body and lifts Clark’s face to his own.

“I love you like a brother, Clark.” And every sibling he ever had, he destroyed. He blamed Daddy for losing his brother. Yet how many times did he murder Julian Luthor when he brought him back, again and again, in imperfect copies named Grant Gabriel? In a world that never existed, Kara was as good as his sister, and he kept a Kryptonite bullet just for her. This is how Lex Luthor loves his family. It’s what he knows.

Lex croons when he speaks, almost blessing his friend/lover/enemy/savior. “I love you like a brother, Clark. But it has to end this way.” (Me: JUST KISS ALREADY.) And all around them the Fortress shatters and crumbles. Worst breakup ever.

Next season: major cast shakeup with the departures of the two guiding forces of the show for seven years now, Lana and Lex. While every season of the show has, so far, done its best to insert a seasonal Big Bad, most of those villains revolved around, in some way, Lex Luthor and Lana Lang—the one as an ally, the other as a victim, respectively. It’s hard to imagine a bigger, badder player inserting itself into the narrative with any grace. (This probably explains the choice of Doomsday as the pinch hitter for the eighth season. When you absolutely, positively must replace the main A-list villain of Superman’s story, why not draft the guy who, in the comics, killed him?) At least with the romance sub-plot, they have the canonical covering of Lois Lane to make up for the lack of Lana.

Predictions for Season Eight: 

• No one misses Lana Lang when Lois continues to be sweetly tolerable as the burgeoning love interest in Clark’s life.
• Kara is never rescued from the Phantom Zone because no one knows she’s there. She isn’t missed either.
• Chloe and Jimmy don’t get married. In the end, only her heart is broken by this even though he’s the one who gets dumped.
• Doomsday is weak tea against the villainy of the Luthors.
• There is no season nine. (I hope, I hope, I hope.)

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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.