In this episode, Tess kidnaps Lois to learn about what’s to come from her dealings with Zod. She has Stuart, super-nerd, hack into Lois’s brain through these awful looking kryptonite-tipped needles that puncture her temples. Ouch! But it is through this development that we see finally where Lois disappeared to at the end of Season 8 and what these awful visions are foretelling.
Zod must have liked Clark’s look as the Blur, because he adopted it for all his henchmen. They wore long black trenchcoats over black t-shirts that bore the crest of the House of Zod. I guess they wanted to amp up The Matrix look because their coats were leather. The effect of the solar tower making the sun turn red has also given Zod and the Kandorians back their powers. It has also caused some terrible green screen effects, especially in the final battle. When Lois is caught wandering the streets of Metropolis, she is taken to the new human concentration camp: the Kent family barn. It’s not often we see a wide shot of that barn, but tonight it looks like it can house a few hundred people. Among them is a powerless Clark Kent who has been kept alive to bridge the gap between the Kandorians and the human resistance.
Clark and Lois are brought before Zod, who has set up court in Luthor Mansion to do some mergers and acquisitions. Or rather murders and executions. (Any chance I can get to make an American Psycho reference in a Smallville article, I will take it.) Tess gets sworn in as First Lady of a Barren Wasteland, and even gets some sweet House of Zod dogtags of her very own! Zod and Tess are about to top off the evening by lopping off Lois and Clark’s head, but they get interrupted by the resistance. Green Arrow fires off some green arrows as well as tough-as-nails Chloe. How cold is she? She fires an arrow into Tess’s stomach because “she had the shot.”
Even though it is only a year into the future, this future Chloe is not the sweet girl sidekick. She has progressed to someone who can be compared to Sarah Connor, the only difference being that she has no one that she is actually fighting to protect. In the future, Clark leaves her, Lois goes missing, and Oliver is really the only one around to keep her grounded. This is the first of many things we hope will be repaired back in present time.
And so, now with Lois and Clark into the fold, Chloe decides it’s time to open Watchtower up and send a virus into the solar tower Zod built. With the tower disabled, it will bring back the yellow sun and restore Clark back to full power. During all this, Lois discovers that Clark is the Blur, Oliver is Green Arrow, and Chloe is even smarter than she once thought. Lois and Clark have a bit of a Skinimax moment and the next day, the plan is set in motion. And that’s where it all goes downhill. Chloe is killed by Alia, the Kandorian assassin, Green Arrow has one last brave moment facing down several hundred Kandorians, and even though the tower is corrupted, Zod runs Clark through with a Kryptonite sword. After that, Lois jumps to the past where we first saw her in “Savior”.
Unfortunately, once Lois is returned to the hospital, all she knows is that she has hypoglycemia. However, both Tess and Clark were able to see what happened to her, by using that awful needle device. Tess sees what would happen if she follows through with helping Zod. But she also sees Chloe kill her with no remorse. Will she want to try and kill her future killer, like she saw it happen in a Flash Forward? I would not put it past her. Also, Clark starts accepting what Jor-El told him before he died. “Save him.” Clark figures that if fighting with Zod is going to bring about the end of the world, then maybe he should try diplomacy. What he doesn’t count on, is having Zod and all of the Kandorians kneel before him. “He has come. Kneel before Kal-El.”
All in all, it was a pretty good episode. I liked how we had a chance to see the alternate future. I am certain that Clark won’t let it get that bad. I am very interested in seeing where they are taking the character of Chloe Sullivan. She is getting darker by the day. Finally, we get a chance to see Lois and Clark as a happy couple. I’m not sure how long it will last, but it’s funny to hear Lois give all sorts of conditions of their new relationship. She has obviously thought about this quite a bit!
