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Sometimes the most devastating episodes of a beloved TV series aren’t the ones where meteors fall from the sky or aliens invade—they’re the quiet ones where friendships fracture and people you care about pack their bags. “Forsaken,” the penultimate episode of Smallville‘s third season, is one of those gut-punch episodes that reminds you why this show worked so well when it focused on the emotional cost of being extraordinary.

After three seasons of meteor freaks, Luthor family drama, and Clark Kent’s perpetual dance around the truth, “Forsaken” serves as a reckoning for all the secrets and lies that have been building up like sediment in a riverbed. And boy, does it hurt in all the right ways.

The Burden of Truth

The episode opens with what should be a simple premise: Clark finally decides to tell Lana his secret. After 65 episodes of hemming and hawing, our boy of steel is ready to come clean before she jets off to Paris. It’s about time, you might think. But if Smallville has taught us anything, it’s that good intentions pave the road to Metropolis General Hospital.

While Clark psychs himself up for the big reveal over dinner plans, his best friend Pete Ross is playing basketball and casually dropping emotional bombs about his parents’ divorce. Pete’s decision to stay in Smallville with his dad so he doesn’t “miss out on senior year” feels like the kind of throwaway line that will definitely come back to haunt us later. Spoiler alert: it absolutely does.

The beautiful tragedy of Pete’s arc throughout the series has always been that he’s the one person who truly understands the weight Clark carries, because he’s been helping to carry it. When Pete discovered Clark’s secret back in season two’s “Duplicity,” it seemed like a gift—finally, someone who could share the burden with our perpetually isolated hero. But as “Forsaken” makes painfully clear, that gift came with a price tag nobody fully calculated.

Emily Dinsmore: The Ghost of Experiments Past

Meanwhile, lurking in the background like a fever dream from seasons past, we have Emily Dinsmore making her return. Remember her? The adorable six-year-old from season two’s “Accelerate” who aged rapidly due to Lionel’s twisted science experiments? Well, she’s back, and she’s traded crayon drawings for the ability to phase through walls and a serious case of arrested development.

Emily’s storyline serves as both monster-of-the-week entertainment and a fascinating mirror for the show’s central themes. She’s literally stuck in the past, unable to move forward, desperately trying to recreate a childhood friendship that existed only in her mind. Sound familiar? It’s basically Clark and Lana’s entire relationship dynamic, except with more murder and less moody staring contests.

When Emily kills the Talon’s new owner (RIP to the dream of “Burrito Ole”) and kidnaps Lana, she’s not just being a typical meteor-powered psychopath. She’s acting out every viewer’s frustration with characters who refuse to grow up and move on. The fact that she mistakes Mr. Kerns for Lana when he’s defending the changes to the coffee shop is almost too on-the-nose: Emily literally cannot accept that things change, that people move forward, that life doesn’t stand still just because you want it to.

Her line about how Lana “didn’t save her when she fell in the river and drowned” cuts deeper than her ability to stick her hand through someone’s chest. Emily has been abandoned by everyone—her father, the scientists, society itself—and she’s desperately trying to manufacture the connection she never actually had. It’s tragic, disturbing, and oddly relatable for anyone who’s ever felt left behind.

The Luthor Family Circus Continues

Of course, we can’t have a proper Smallville episode without Lionel Luthor pulling strings like a malevolent puppet master. His confrontation with Lex in the office, complete with the dramatic wire-ripping revelation, is peak Luthor family dysfunction. John Glover delivers Lionel’s biblical reference about Judas with the kind of theatrical menace that makes you wonder if he practices these speeches in the mirror.

The fact that Lionel gets arrested for murdering his parents by the end of the episode should feel like a victory, but there’s something hollow about it. As one review noted, you get the sense that this arrest is more of a plot device than a true resolution. We know Lionel too well by now—he’s like a cockroach in an expensive suit, and cockroaches have a way of surviving nuclear winter.

Lex’s pain as he watches his father get hauled away in handcuffs is beautifully played by Michael Rosenbaum. That moment where he closes his eyes in the empty office speaks volumes about their complicated relationship. Even after everything Lionel has done, watching your father get arrested still hurts. It’s a reminder that beneath all the scheming and manipulation, these are still family dynamics playing out, twisted though they may be.

Pete’s Impossible Choice

But the real emotional devastation comes courtesy of Frank Loder and his “enhanced interrogation” techniques. The sequence where Loder beats up Pete, demanding to know Clark’s secret, is genuinely difficult to watch. Not because of the violence—this is Smallville, after all, where people regularly get thrown through walls—but because of what it represents.

Pete has been living with Clark’s secret for over a year, and we’ve seen glimpses of the stress it causes. His confession to Clark about having to remember to say “meteor rock” instead of “kryptonite” and covering for Clark’s unexplained exits captures perfectly how exhausting it must be to constantly monitor your words and actions. The show has been building to this moment all season, showing us Pete’s increasing isolation and pressure.

Sam Jones III’s performance in Pete’s final scene with Clark is absolutely heartbreaking. When Pete tells Clark he can’t stay because “I could never forgive myself if I betrayed you,” it’s delivered with such quiet resignation that you know this decision has been eating at him for months. The goodbye hug between the two friends is the kind of moment that makes you wonder why the show ever bothered with elaborate CGI effects when simple human emotion could wreck you this completely.

What makes Pete’s departure even more tragic is that Sam Jones III found out about his character’s exit abruptly, right before a convention appearance, creating real-world parallels to his character’s sudden departure that feel uncomfortably meta.

Clark’s Growth (And the Roads Not Taken)

Throughout all this chaos, Clark goes through his own emotional journey. His decision to tell Lana his secret feels earned after three seasons of dancing around the truth. But when he sees what knowing his secret has cost Pete, Clark makes the painful but mature choice to protect Lana from that burden.

The kiss on the cheek instead of a full confession is devastating in its restraint. We can see in Kristin Kreuk’s performance that Lana knows something significant just happened—or rather, didn’t happen. She expected Clark to fight for her, to give her a reason to stay, and instead she gets a polite goodbye. As one reviewer aptly noted, it’s another example of the “yo-yo thing” between Clark and Lana that had to stop.

What’s fascinating is how this episode sets up what could have been a genuinely different direction for the series. If Clark had actually told Lana his secret, if Pete had stayed, if Lionel’s arrest had stuck—we might have gotten a very different Smallville. Instead, the show largely resets itself for season four, bringing back familiar dynamics while introducing new characters to fill the gaps.

The Technical Stuff (Because Someone Has to Mention It)

Let’s take a moment to appreciate the special effects work in this episode. Emily’s phasing ability is surprisingly well-executed for 2004 television, and the sequence where Clark uses his heat vision to topple the water tower is genuinely thrilling. Sure, there are some continuity issues (Emily’s arm position changes when she’s unconscious, and there’s a lovely typo in Lex’s letter referring to “there life insurance”), but these are minor quibbles with an otherwise well-crafted episode.

The direction by Terrence O’Hara keeps the pacing tight despite juggling multiple storylines, and the script by Kelly Souders and Brian Peterson manages to give each plot thread emotional weight. These writers would go on to shepherd the series through its final seasons, and you can see their understanding of character dynamics on full display here.

Pop Culture References and Easter Eggs

Leave it to Smallville to sneak in pop culture references even during emotional devastation. Pete’s “Uncle Fester” comment about Lex is perfectly delivered, and Chloe’s riff on the Jaws 2 tagline (“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the hallways”) shows the writers having fun even as they’re putting characters through emotional hell.

Emily’s ability to vibrate through walls is clearly borrowed from The Flash‘s playbook, which raises interesting questions about the scope of meteor-induced powers in this universe. Are we just randomly assigning DC hero abilities to guest stars now? Not that anyone’s complaining—it’s a cool effect and makes for better action sequences than, say, the ability to make really good creamed corn.

Where It All Goes From Here

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, “Forsaken” represents a road not taken for Smallville. The series would continue for seven more seasons, but it never quite recaptured the emotional honesty of Pete’s departure. When Pete returned in season seven’s “Hero,” it was a disappointment that felt more like a disposable monster-of-the-week episode than a meaningful reunion with a beloved character.

The episode’s title, “Forsaken,” works on multiple levels. Pete forsakes Smallville to protect both himself and Clark. Lana is forsaken by Clark’s inability to be honest with her. Emily has been forsaken by everyone who should have protected her. Even Lionel, in a way, forsakes his freedom for his obsessions. It’s an episode about abandonment and the prices we pay for the choices we make.

The Emotional Verdict

Twenty years later, “Forsaken” holds up remarkably well. It’s not the flashiest episode of Smallville—no elaborate fight scenes, no world-ending threats, no major mythology revelations. Instead, it’s a quiet character study about the cost of secrets and the weight of friendship. As one reviewer noted, it’s an example of Smallville “on fire” creatively, showing the confidence of a series that knows exactly what it wants to say about its characters.

The episode succeeds because it takes the show’s central premise—what if Superman had to grow up like a regular person?—and follows it to its logical emotional conclusion. Heroes don’t just save the day; they live with the consequences of their choices. Friends don’t just discover secrets; they carry the weight of that knowledge. Relationships don’t just face obstacles; they sometimes end despite everyone’s best intentions.

In a series that would eventually span ten seasons and deal with ancient prophecies, phantom zones, and parallel universes, “Forsaken” stands out for its humanity. It’s the episode that reminds you why you fell in love with these characters in the first place, even as it breaks your heart by taking one of them away.

Sure, we’d see Pete again in season seven, but that felt like visiting a grave—technically present, but missing everything that made the original special. The Pete Ross who left Smallville in “Forsaken” was a character who grew up before our eyes, who learned that sometimes loving someone means making the hard choice to walk away.

And sometimes, that’s the most heroic thing you can do.

“Forsaken” originally aired on May 12, 2004, and is available for streaming on Hulu. It remains a standout episode not just of Smallville’s third season, but of the entire series run—a reminder that sometimes the best superhero stories are the ones that focus on the very human cost of being extraordinary.