So I’ve been a more or less loyal fan of Smallville for years, and while I was saddened when I learned that this season would be it’s last, even I can see it’s time for the show to move on, it hasn’t been of Smallville for some time. But that doesn’t mean the 2 hour series finale needs to be this, this mess!
We loyal fans are trying very hard to keep DC and all it’s pals afloat. I grant you Green Lantern should give them a big boost, but usually it’s just Batman carrying more or less the entire load for them, so we kind of expect the evolution of Smallville and Superman to take awhile. So we wait, more or less patiently, through painful awkward high school years with Clark Kent and his Lana Lang obsession, the trials of Jor El, and his complicated relationship with Lex and the Luthors. Many years later, Tess Mercer is riding the Luthor name and flipping between good guy and bad guy, but let’s face it, she’s still no Lex. The show is often rich with character development beyond the main character ofClark, and I always loved that. So what’s up with this last episode then?
It’s a two hour finale, I got that. The entire first hour was devoted to whether or not Clark Kent and Lois Lane really should get married, the whole thing. Now I know, the whole Lois and Clark thing is a longstanding love story, and Erica Durance and Tom Welling do have great chemistry onscreen. But come on. We had to sit through Lana Lang, Chloe, and a whole host of other female love interests for Clark Kent before he finally settled with the character he’s fated to be with, and then this. Yes, they should be in love and get married, can we get on with it? There’s a planet called Apocalypse, or however it’s spelled, being propelled by Darkseid and his minions, right for Earth that only Superman can stop!
Which brings us to the second hour. Yes, there were a lot more action scenes and confrontations and whatnot. But…the biggest confrontation, which I expected to be Lex Luthor inhabited by Darkseid against the ultiumate Superman, turned out to be not. The literal last five minutes of the show has Clark being confronted by Darkseid, sure, in Lionel Luthor’s body. And right after that Clark speeds off to stop the apoc-whatever planet. Then we get a flash forward seven years in the future, where apparently Lois and Clark still haven’t exchanged their rings, Chloe has a son but we don’t see Oliver, and Lex Luthor’s become president. Oh yeah. Does this mean we loyal fans might have a sequel show somewhere off in the future? That would be nice.
I wanted more. We fan-atics deserved more. Especially given the commercial length injected, we actually got maybe 45 minutes worth of what I would consider actual show ending. Now let us all lobby for the return of Metropolis or Superman, a sequel show we can all adore just as much as we did Smallville!