Welcome back to Rewatching Smallville, my weekly dive into the iconic series that explores Clark Kent’s journey before becoming Superman. Whether you’re a long-time fan or new to the show, you’re invited to join in each Tuesday as I revisit episodes and share my thoughts and observations. Be sure to share your own memories and theories in the comments below!

Last week, “Oracle” spent its penultimate-episode real estate doing something season finales rarely bother with: it slowed down to mark Clark’s nineteenth birthday, even while every mythology thread in Season Five was tightening toward its breaking point. Brainiac wore Jonathan Kent’s face to manipulate Clark into nearly killing Lionel. Lionel opened a closet full of Kryptonian writing he didn’t remember producing. And Lex, testing the vaccine he’d been developing with “Fine,” got injected with something that healed a cut on his finger instantly. The episode ended with Chloe decoding two words from Lionel’s notes, words the show was saving for right now.

This week, those two words get an answer. “Vessel,” the twenty-second and final episode of Season Five and the 110th episode overall, aired on The WB on May 11, 2006. It was written by Brian Peterson and Kelly Souders and directed by James Marshall. It’s also, as it turns out, a small piece of broadcast history: this was the last new episode of Smallville to air on The WB before the network folded into The CW that fall. The next episode, “Zod,” would be the first Smallville episode to air under the new banner. There’s something fitting about a season finale this chaotic also marking the end of an era for the network airing it.

A Light in the Field

The cold open doesn’t waste any time. The animals at the Kent farm start acting up, a bright light flashes across the sky, and at the Luthor mansion, Lex wakes from sleep clutching his head as the same light pours through the windows. He gets in his car and starts driving fast enough to genuinely worry Lana, who follows him on foot through the woods after he abandons the vehicle.

What follows is one of the show’s better “something big just happened” sequences. Lex stands in the middle of a field, tells Lana to stay back, and the ground around him erupts in a circle of dirt and light. Milton Fine appears behind Lana, almost gentle, telling her he’s “preparing” Lex. The black ship appears overhead. A beam of light comes down, and when it’s gone, so is Lex. All that’s left is a massive Mark of Zod symbol scorched into the earth.

It’s a genuinely eerie opening, and it works because the show has spent all season building toward exactly this moment without ever quite naming it out loud. We’ve watched Lex get healed of a cut he didn’t expect to heal from. We’ve watched Brainiac patiently maneuver every piece into place. Now we get to watch the trap close, and Michael Rosenbaum doesn’t even need dialogue to sell how wrong everything has just gone.

Jor-El’s Math Problem

Lana goes straight to the Daily Planet to tell Chloe what she saw, and Chloe goes to the barn to tell Clark. Clark, against Chloe’s objections, goes to the Fortress of Solitude to talk to Jor-El, because that’s what Clark does in a crisis even when everyone around him says it’s a bad idea.

Jor-El’s explanation is about as clean as Smallville mythology ever gets. The ship and Fine aren’t two things working together. They’re the same thing, a construct called the Brain InterActive Construct (and yes, this is the episode where the show finally spells out where “Brainiac” comes from, even if the word itself doesn’t get used by a character until a deleted scene). Zod’s body was destroyed back on Krypton, so for Zod to walk free of the Phantom Zone, he needs a body to walk into. A vessel. Jor-El produces a dagger and tells Clark that he has to use it to destroy the vessel, and he’s explicit that it doesn’t matter who that person turns out to be.

This is where “Vessel” earns its title twice over, and where the episode sets up the only real choice Clark has all hour. Chloe is the one who puts the pieces together that the vessel has to be Lex, since Lex is the one who just vanished into a Kryptonian symbol. Clark, predictably, refuses to even consider killing him, and Lana overhears enough of that conversation to set her own arc in motion for the rest of the episode.

What I appreciate here is that the show doesn’t pretend this is a simple decision that Clark resolves through moral clarity. Lionel, of all people, makes the case for the sacrifice almost the moment he learns about it, telling Clark that being a hero sometimes means knowing when the greater good requires an evil act. It’s the kind of line that would feel cheap from most characters on this show, but from Lionel, a man who has spent years being told by Jor-El’s voice that he has a larger role to play, it carries some weight. Clark doesn’t take the advice, but he doesn’t dismiss it either.

Lex Tells the Truth (Sort Of)

Back at the manor, Lex demonstrates his new abilities to Lana in the most Lex Luthor way imaginable: he shoots himself in the chest with a handgun to prove he’s bulletproof. Lana’s horror lasts about as long as it takes for Lex to remind her that it’s still him underneath whatever just happened, and then the scene becomes something closer to a confession. Lex tells her he couldn’t keep this from her, that he’s done hiding things.

There’s a real irony sitting underneath this scene, and I don’t think it’s an accident. For five seasons, Lex Luthor has been defined by secrets, by digging through files he shouldn’t have access to and keeping information he shouldn’t keep. And here, in what’s effectively the last conversation the “real” Lex Luthor gets to have before something else takes over his body, he chooses honesty. Lana even tells Clark later that she trusts Lex because, unlike Clark, Lex always tells her the truth. Given everything we know about Lex’s relationship with the truth across the series, that line is doing a lot of quiet, sad work.

It’s also the last time this version of Lex gets to be fully himself, which gives Michael Rosenbaum’s performance in this stretch of the episode a kind of farewell quality, even though nobody in the story knows that’s what it is yet.

The Virus and the Kiss

Once Fine confronts Clark directly (after Clark refuses his “one more chance” to cooperate), Fine pivots to what he calls Clark’s real weakness: his attachment to humans. He downloads a virus into Lex’s nearby laptop, and within moments, power systems across the state start failing.

Clark meets Chloe at the Daily Planet, where she’s tracking the virus spreading toward every major city on Earth, when a car comes flying through the window. Clark catches it one-handed, shielding Chloe, and then has to be talked down from trying to personally save everyone in Metropolis. Chloe’s argument, that he can’t save everyone and has to do what he was meant to do, is the kind of thing only Chloe could say to him and have it land as support rather than a lecture.

And then there’s the kiss. Before Clark leaves to meet Lex, Chloe kisses him, in case, as she puts it, they don’t see each other again. By the show’s own accounting, this is the first time Clark and Chloe kiss without it being forced on them by some outside influence (a meteor freak, a love potion, an alternate timeline) since the Season One finale “Tempest.” It’s a small moment in the middle of a very loud episode, but it’s one the show keeps coming back to in later seasons, which tells you the writers knew exactly what they’d done here.

Thirty Thousand Feet

While all of this is happening on the ground, Lois and Martha board one of Lionel’s LuthorCorp jets. Lionel has been offering Martha favors all season, and Lois isn’t shy about pointing out what that might mean. It’s a nice bit of levity before the episode pulls the floor out from under it: the plane is being flown by a Brainiac duplicate, the surroundings outside the windows don’t match where they should be, and the cabin starts losing oxygen. Lois can’t get into the cockpit, Martha collapses, and Lois goes down trying to reach the oxygen masks.

It’s a small subplot in terms of screen time, but it’s doing real work for the season’s stakes. Brainiac isn’t just a threat to Clark’s secret or to Lex’s body. He’s actively trying to remove people from the board, and Martha and Lois are two of the people Clark cares about most.

The Barn

The episode’s climax happens where so much of this show’s biggest moments happen: the Kent barn. Lex calls Clark to meet him, and the two spar verbally before the fight turns physical. Clark wins. He draws Jor-El’s dagger and holds it to Lex’s throat while Fine, watching, eggs him on.

Clark refuses to kill Lex. Instead, he throws the dagger into Fine.

This is the loophole the entire episode has been building toward, and it’s very much in keeping with how Smallville tends to resolve its “Clark must do something terrible” setups: he finds the third option that lets him stay who he is. Except this time, the third option doesn’t actually work the way he hopes. The dagger striking Fine releases a burst of energy that opens the portal anyway, and that energy slams first into Fine and then into Lex. Fine disappears. Lex stands back up, and when he speaks, it isn’t Lex anymore.

Zod has his vessel after all. Clark just isn’t the one who put him there, even though, in a roundabout way, his choice is what made it possible.

Where We Land

The final stretch of “Vessel” is one long montage of things falling apart. Riots break out across Metropolis. Chloe gets into Lionel’s limo only for the mob to pull both of them out of it. Lana arrives at LuthorCorp exactly where Lex/Zod told her to meet him, and he kisses her, with Lana fully aware of what she’s agreeing to be part of.

And Clark, after refusing to either join Zod or watch him destroy the planet, gets pulled into the portal himself, ending up drifting through the Phantom Zone, the very prison Zod just escaped. The episode’s last image is the world going dark, with Clark suspended in space, and everyone else left to deal with the consequences of a season’s worth of choices all landing at once.

Looking back, “Vessel” is doing something a little unusual for a season finale: almost nobody gets a win. Clark’s mercy doesn’t prevent the disaster, it just changes who’s standing in the blast radius. Lex’s honesty with Lana becomes the thing Zod uses against both of them. Lionel’s information doesn’t arrive in time to matter. Even the Clark and Chloe kiss, the one unambiguously sweet beat in the whole hour, is framed as something that might be a goodbye.

It’s a genuinely bleak way to close out a season, and it works because the show has spent twenty-one episodes earning every piece of it. “Oracle” gave us the ghost of Jonathan Kent turning out to be a lie. “Vessel” gives us Lex Luthor turning out to be, for now, gone. Two season-long arcs collapse into each other in the space of one hour, and the show doesn’t soften the landing at all.

Next up is “Zod,” the Season Six premiere and the first episode to air on The CW. After an episode this dark, I’m curious what kind of show we get when the dust settles.

What did you think of Lex’s choice to come clean with Lana right before everything went wrong? And how do you feel about Clark’s “third option” in the barn, smart way out or a decision that just made things worse? Share your thoughts in the comments below!