5 Things I Want To See In The Smallville Finale

 

With the two-hour series finale of the CW’s Smallville now announced for May 13th, it’s time to start looking ahead to just what to expect from those fateful final moments of the show. Will Clark finally realize that “The Blur” is a stupid superhero name? Will Lana return one final time, to prove that hotness is no way to gauge acting ability? And, most importantly of all, will somebody finally save the guy who sings the opening theme music?

I’ll admit it: After losing faith with Smallville far later than I should’ve — thankfully, before Lex was written out entirely, but definitely somewhere around the fifth season or so — I’ve found myself not only watching the occasional episode in the last few years (it was, honestly, part of my job), but actually enjoying them (not necessarily part of my job). Maybe it was the fact that they’d realized that they were coming somewhere close to a conclusion, and so could have some fun with the characters, maybe it was that losing Lex and Lana opened things up so that the plots didn’t seem so overwhelmingly repetitive every single season, but something seemed to have changed, and the show seemed… well, more fun, if not really anything that I could describe as great. With that in mind, here are five things that I hope we’ll get before the show finishes for good:

Clark As Superman
This is the obvious one and there’s got to be no way that they can not do this, right? The show has teased Clark’s more famous alter ego on numerous occasions, whether it’s been glimpses of the cape or multiple references to his destiny: We need some pay-off to all of that before the show finishes, and if that pay-off isn’t wearing red, yellow and blue, then I’m going to be really pissed.

The Return Of The Real Lex Luthor
Talking about characters’ destinies, didn’t Lex have quite a few leading futures left ahead of him, before he disappeared/died/whatever actually happened to him? Michael Rosenbaum shouldered a lot, if not almost all, of the show’s dramatic weight when he was a regular, so I can’t really blame him for bailing before the series was finished — especially when it looked like it might go on forever — but a Lex-less finale really won’t be the ending that people have really been looking forward to.

Martha Returns
This final season, Pa Kent made a comeback, despite being dead (It was a fantasy sequence, I think? Or a ghost? It wasn’t exactly clear, it has to be said), but Ma Kent? Nowhere to be seen, even though she’s still alive in Smallville World. What’s with the bias, Smallville producers? Can’t mothers have any influence on their sons, or is that just deviating a little too much from the Joseph Campbell thing?

A Batman Cameo
Yeah, like you wouldn’t want to see Bruce Wayne show up for a couple of scenes, even if it’s just to frown in the background and make some kind of comment about, in his experience, criminals being a cowardly and superstitious lot …

A Clear Message That This Isn’t Going To Fit Into The Superman Mythos As We Know Them
Superboy, as a “Superman … as a kid!” concept, wasn’t built to last ten years, and by the time Smallville finishes, so much will have happened to Clark, Lois and the rest of the familiar characters (and, specifically, to Clark and Lois as a couple), that there’s no way that they can easily slot into where people would expect them to, in time (and place) to start Superman: The Movie. So why try? Instead, bring the story of all the regulars to a satisfying close, even if it’s not the close. The series has been ongoing for a decade: while ending with a “to be continued” should be expected — Superman fights the “never-ending” battle for truth and justice, after all — it’s got to be the right “to be continued” for fans not to have feel like they’ve wasted so many hours of their lives.