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!

“Labyrinth,” the twelfth episode of Season Six and the 122nd episode overall, originally aired on January 25, 2007. Written by Al Septien and Turi Meyer and directed by Whitney Ransick, the episode follows last week’s superhero-heavy “Justice” by doing almost the exact opposite. Instead of surrounding Clark with a fledgling Justice League, “Labyrinth” traps him almost completely inside his own head and asks one uncomfortable question: What if everything Clark Kent believes about himself is wrong?

It’s hardly an original premise. Television has been sending characters to imaginary mental hospitals for a long time, and anybody familiar with Buffy the Vampire Slayer will probably make the connection to “Normal Again” almost immediately. But “Labyrinth” does enough with Clark’s specific fears and desires to establish an identity of its own. More importantly, it turns one of the season’s escaped Phantom Zone prisoners into a threat Clark can’t defeat by throwing it through a wall.

For a guy who can bench-press tractors, that may be the more dangerous kind of enemy.

Welcome to Fairview, Mr. Kent

The episode wastes very little time getting started. Clark is doing chores in the barn when Shelby begins barking at something. There’s an attack, Clark hits the floor, and suddenly he wakes up in Fairview Psychiatric Hospital wearing white scrubs and surrounded by people who apparently know exactly who he is. Unfortunately, they know him as the guy who thinks he’s Superman.

Clark naturally assumes Lex has somehow captured him, possibly as part of Level 33.1, but Dr. Hudson calmly explains that Clark has actually been institutionalized for more than five years. According to Hudson, the entire life Clark remembers is an elaborate delusion. He isn’t an alien from Krypton. He doesn’t have superpowers. There was no spaceship in the cornfield. Clark Kent is simply a deeply troubled young man who created a fantasy world to cope with trauma.

Matthew Walker plays Hudson exactly the way this character needs to be played. He isn’t cackling in the corner or obviously telegraphing that something sinister is happening. He speaks patiently to Clark and provides reasonable explanations for the things Clark insists are real. When Clark tries to use his powers and nothing happens, Hudson suddenly has evidence on his side. That’s what makes him effective.

Clark has fought plenty of people who could physically hurt him by this point. Kryptonite has been around since the pilot, so even brute-force villains have occasionally found ways to level the playing field. But Hudson attacks something much harder for Clark to defend: his certainty about who he is. There’s only so much good super-strength can do when somebody convinces you that you never had super-strength in the first place.

All the Pieces Are Still There

One of my favorite things about the episode is the way Clark’s supposed delusions are explained through pieces of the hospital environment. Jor-El becomes the name of an antibacterial soap. Milton Fine is apparently a doctor being paged elsewhere in the building. “Phantom Zone” appears in print. Fortress of Solitude is the title of a book. The number 331, which Clark associates with Lex’s Level 33.1 experiments, becomes the occupancy capacity of the institution. Familiar faces such as Arthur Curry, Victor Stone, and Oliver Queen are represented by completely ordinary people who Clark supposedly transformed into superheroes within his elaborate fantasy. Are some of those references a little heavy-handed? Absolutely. Apparently Clark’s subconscious has the subtlety of a Smallville trivia night.

But I still enjoy them because they give Hudson an increasingly convincing case. If you approached Clark’s life from the outside, it would sound ridiculous. He believes his biological father is an alien scientist named Jor-El who communicates with him through an Arctic crystal fortress. His best friend is a billionaire who keeps creating secret laboratories. Various people in his life have developed superpowers through exposure to meteor rocks. More recently, Clark accidentally released alien criminals from another dimension. Try explaining all of that to a psychiatrist without using the words, “I know how this sounds.”

Hudson’s genius is taking all those impossible details and giving them mundane origins. Clark sees “Jorel” on a soap dispenser, and his mind builds an alien father. He sees “Phantom Zone” somewhere in the hospital, and suddenly he has an interdimensional prison filled with dangerous criminals. The explanations aren’t perfect, but they don’t have to be. They only need to make Clark wonder. And eventually, they do.

Everybody Gets a New Life

Once Clark escapes Fairview, the fantasy gets more complicated because familiar people still exist. They just aren’t living the lives Clark remembers. Lana is waiting for him at the Kent farm, which she and Nell supposedly purchased after Jonathan died. She and Clark have essentially been together forever in this reality, and Lex barely factors into her life. Martha, meanwhile, is married to Lionel Luthor, which is probably the single detail in the episode I have the hardest time buying even within the logic of Clark’s manufactured reality.

I understand what the writers are doing. They’re taking pieces of Clark’s existing anxieties and rearranging them. Martha and Lionel have grown closer since Jonathan’s death, so the Phantom uses that possibility against him. Still, Clark’s subconscious apparently looked at Lionel Luthor and thought, “Yep. Mom would marry that.” Even Clark should know himself better than that.

Lex’s alternate life works much better. Clark discovers that Lex lost both legs in the car accident that originally brought them together. According to this version of events, Clark jumped in front of Lex’s car during one of his delusions, Lex swerved to avoid him, and the crash left him permanently disabled. Instead of becoming Clark’s best friend, Lex understandably despises him and wishes he had simply run him over.

It’s a nasty little inversion of the pilot. In the real world, that accident began one of the most important relationships in Clark’s life. Here, Clark’s supposed illness destroyed Lex’s. And unlike the Martha/Lionel marriage, I can absolutely see why that version of events shakes him.

Lana Lang, Once Again

Then we arrive at the episode’s emotional trump card. Lana.

The Phantom understands that simply convincing Clark he has no powers isn’t enough. It needs to give him a reason to want the fantasy to be real. So it gives him Lana Lang. In this world, there is no Lex and Lana relationship standing between them. There’s no secret Clark has spent years refusing to explain. There’s no Kryptonian destiny pulling him away from Smallville. According to Lana, they have loved each other since childhood, and all Clark has to do is accept treatment if he wants to live happily ever after with her. And I understand why that almost works.

Clark’s desire for normalcy has been one of the fundamental conflicts of Smallville from the beginning. He has repeatedly wished he could simply be an ordinary guy on a farm with the girl he loves. Give him that life and tell him everything painful about the real world was merely a symptom of mental illness, and of course some part of him is tempted. My problem is that we are six seasons into this show. I am tired.

The Clark and Lana relationship has been stretched, broken, repaired, stretched again, broken again, and then dragged behind the series like a romantic emergency brake. We’ve now had Lois Lane living in Clark’s orbit for more than two seasons. Clark and Lois aren’t remotely a couple yet, and they shouldn’t be at this point, but everyone watching knows where that story eventually leads. So continuing to present Lana as the ultimate prize Clark might surrender his entire identity to obtain feels increasingly backward-looking. It makes sense for Clark. That doesn’t necessarily mean I need to enjoy watching it anymore.

Chloe Believes Him

Chloe’s role is considerably more interesting. She appears in the alternate reality as another escaped psychiatric patient and immediately tells Clark that he isn’t crazy. Everything he remembers is real. His powers are real. The people trying to “cure” him are lying. For a while, she becomes the only anchor Clark has.

The episode also uses Chloe’s family history to make the situation particularly cruel. Clark learns that this version of Chloe has been institutionalized herself, and considering what we already know about Chloe’s fears surrounding her mother’s mental illness, that is an especially painful piece of the Phantom’s construction. Eventually, Chloe is shot by guards and dies in Clark’s arms while insisting she isn’t crazy. That’s the moment Clark finally starts giving up.

What I appreciate here is that none of this requires romantic subtext between Clark and Chloe. I’ve never really bought that from Clark’s side of their relationship, and by this point I think their friendship works exactly as it should. Chloe is the person Clark trusts to believe him when everything else becomes impossible.

After Clark escapes the illusion, he tells her that she was the only person in his dream who believed him. Chloe asks what else happened to her, and Clark wisely leaves out the part where she was institutionalized. Good call, Clark. There are some dream recaps you can safely summarize. That one can stay in the vault.

Normal Again

The comparison to Buffy the Vampire Slayer is unavoidable here. “Normal Again,” the seventeenth episode of Buffy’s sixth season, aired in March 2002, almost five years before “Labyrinth.” In that episode, Buffy is poisoned by a demon and begins experiencing a reality in which she is actually a patient in a psychiatric hospital. Her life as the Slayer may be an elaborate delusion, and the people around her encourage her to reject Sunnydale and accept the “real” world instead.

The similarities are obvious. Both heroes are offered a mundane explanation for years of supernatural adventures. Both are told that the people they love are products of mental illness. Both are tempted by versions of reality that offer them something their heroic lives cannot.

But Buffy does something “Labyrinth” wisely avoids copying. “Normal Again” leaves the audience with just enough ambiguity to wonder whether the hospital reality might somehow be genuine. Smallville doesn’t play that game. By the end of “Labyrinth,” there is no question that Clark’s world is real and Fairview is the illusion created by the Phantom. I think that was the right choice.

Buffy already played the unsettling “what if the entire series is imaginary?” card extremely well. Smallville didn’t need to do it again. Instead, “Labyrinth” uses the premise primarily as a psychological attack on Clark, which gives the episode its own purpose.

Enter the Martian

There is, thankfully, one person inside the illusion who understands exactly what is happening. A fellow patient approaches Clark early in the episode, calls him Kal-El, and tells him he believes Clark is from another planet because he isn’t from Earth either. He’s from Mars. Subtle.

Phil Morris had already appeared briefly as the mysterious figure who saved Clark from the Phantom Zone escapee Aldar in “Static.” Here we get a much clearer sense that this is Smallville’s version of Martian Manhunter, even if Clark doesn’t yet receive the complete formal introduction that will come later. Contemporary episode listings identify Morris as John Jones/Martian Manhunter, and the character functions here as Clark’s guide through the Phantom’s mental trap.

That works especially well given J’onn J’onzz’s powers. Telepathy and psychic abilities are fundamental parts of Martian Manhunter’s comic-book identity, so having him enter this mental battlefield to help Clark makes far more sense than bringing in somebody whose only solution would be punching Clark harder. There’s even a nice nod to J’onn’s traditional weakness when an orderly threatens him with a lighter inside the illusion. More importantly, J’onn doesn’t simply rescue Clark. He keeps telling him to fight. Clark still has to choose reality.

The Hero We Really Needed

And eventually, Clark does. Thanks to Shelby.

Throughout the illusion, Clark occasionally hears barking from somewhere beyond the walls of his constructed reality. As Hudson prepares to perform the procedure that will allow the Phantom to take control, the sound finally cuts through strongly enough for Clark to recognize it. His dog is barking in the barn. That realization breaks the illusion. I love it.

Martian Manhunter is doing the heavy psychic lifting from inside Clark’s mind, and that presumably gives Shelby’s presence in the real world enough room to slip through. But when Clark finally needs something unquestionably familiar to remind him where he actually is, it isn’t Jor-El or the Fortress. It’s his dog.

Last week Clark had the Justice League. This week he had Shelby. Superman has a surprisingly diverse support system.

Clark wakes in the barn, destroys the Phantom’s hold on him, and watches as J’onn uses a crystal to capture the escaped prisoner before flying away in a streak of red. And just like that, another Phantom Zone escapee is off the board.

Why “Labyrinth” Works

I liked “Labyrinth” when it originally aired, and I still like it now. It isn’t flawless. The Lana material feels increasingly exhausted to me, and a few of the asylum Easter eggs practically wave at the camera while shouting, “Do you get it?” But the central idea works because the Phantom attacks Clark in a way most villains cannot. It doesn’t threaten his body. It attacks his identity.

The episode asks Clark to consider whether becoming ordinary might actually make him happier. No powers means no Kryptonian responsibility. It means no constant danger surrounding the people he loves. Most seductively, it means he can have the version of Lana he has spent years convincing himself he wants.

Clark ultimately rejects it because being Clark Kent means accepting all of himself, including the parts that make his life difficult. That feels like meaningful progress.

Coming immediately after “Justice,” it also demonstrates the range Season Six is finding. Last week we had costumes, secret facilities, superheroes, and an embryonic Justice League. This week we barely leave Clark’s mind, while still continuing the season-long plot surrounding the Phantom Zone prisoners. For two episodes with almost nothing in common stylistically, they fit together surprisingly well. And any episode where Shelby technically helps save Superman gets a few bonus points from me.

Next Time on Rewatching Smallville

Next week, Valentine’s Day comes to Smallville. Which sounds romantic. Unfortunately, red kryptonite is involved. So instead of chocolates and flowers, “Crimson” promises Lois Lane falling head over heels, Clark Kent losing whatever impulse control he possesses, and everybody in the immediate vicinity probably wishing he had stayed home. What could possibly go wrong?

What did you think of “Labyrinth”? Did the mental-hospital reality ever make you question what Clark was experiencing, or were you waiting for him to break free from the beginning? And how do you think it compares with Buffy’s “Normal Again”? Share your thoughts in the comments below!