Lois, Sam and John Henry Irons argue about the best way to proceed in the face of Superman’s apparent defection to Edge’s side. The folk of Smallville turn against the Cushings, blaming Kyle for their suffering at Edge’s hands.

There’s a small part of this week’s episode that doesn’t quite ring true to me, so much so that I went back to the last instalment just to double check I hadn’t missed something, and I hadn’t. That one small bit works to slightly lessen the impact of basically everything that’s going on, even as it tries to keep things nice and tense.

With Superman having gone off with Edge, apparently to join his ranks, we know that Lois reached out to Irons, and told him that Superman had turned. Now, she spends an entire episode trying to persuade Irons and her father against all evidence that this is all some sort of ruse on Superman’s part, that somehow he will find a way to fight back against Edge (which of course we expect) and that this is all part of some plan.

Irons and Sam of course, can’t take that chance, each for their own reasons. Sam feels the weight of responsibility of defending his country and the world as a whole and Irons still has the memory of the Superman from his world and what happened there. So there’s a lot of back and forth, big emotional speeches and appeals and declarations. It’s not bad – this kind of stuff is indeed the backbone of the series as a whole – it just feels maybe a little less interesting than the route they could have taken given the previous episode’s ending.

For Clark’s part, there’s more between him and Edge as Edge tries to force him to give in to being fully taken over by a fairly familiar personality from Krypton’s past. I have mixed feelings on that too for multiple reasons, not the least of which is that it wasn’t at all clear that this was Edge’s intent last time out and also bringing in that big hitter of a name can’t help but somewhat undermine Edge and his Kryptonian father’s place as the arch villains here. It’s no deal breaker, but it’s also a decision that I think slightly disappoints.

Elsewhere, the Cushings get a fair amount of focus themselves. The family have to draw together as they find the whole town having basically turned against them, blaming Kyle for having pushed so hard to get Edge so deeply involved in the town and its affairs and Lana for having worked for him in bringing some of them into the ‘special program’. It’s not fair of course, but then these things seldom are in small towns and what it does is give the family an excuse to really rely on one another, building the sort of strength we’ve seen every week in the Kent household, and giving us  reason for these people to actually still be together as a family unit.

It’s actually been quite the journey for the series so far as we’ve seen both Kyle and Irons develop from what we initially assumed were villains into much more complex, nuanced and sympathetic characters. In a show about a man who has the least convincing disguise for his superhero persona ever, it’s perhaps especially welcome to have characters around him who can shift and subvert expectations as the show progresses, and I look forward to more of this sort of stuff going forward.

Verdict: Small things bother me but the overall arc is still solid gold genre storytelling. 8/10

Greg D. Smith