(Season 8, Episode 13, “Power”)
Last week, I pondered what was Lana’s endgame. One of my theories was that she wanted to destroy Lex and his empire from within, and that she may be working with Oliver. Some of you left comments saying that maybe she was working with Martha Kent or even Lionel Luthor, or that Lana was pregnant and fled to hid her pregnancy and deliver the baby, while others wondered what Imra/Saturn Girl meant when she said that in the future Lana would be well-known.
Well this week’s installment of Smallville gave us a lot of answers and left us with a Lana 3.0 who deems herself to now be Clark’s equal! Why is it that everytime Lana is concerned, the show jumps a shark?Before I explain why I think the show once again jumped the shark with Lana, let me list what we learned about her this week:
The episode, directed by first-time director Allison Mack, wasn’t that bad as it had a lot of action, reveals and a badass Tess! But the ending totally blew it for me. Are we to believe that Lana is now a superhero and that’s why she’ll be well-known in the future? Come on! I’m willing to accept a lot of the changes the Smallville people make to the characters and storyline but making Lana a superhero is a ‘jump the shark’ decision in my books.
Having Lana get the suit to go after Lex would have been more believable as the Lana we’ve seen in the last seasons was bitter, whiny and hated Lex for all the things he did to her. I don’t buy the sudden change of heart/attitude in Lana. She acts like a badass (escapes, undergoes torture, etc.), wants loads of power and warns Tess over and over again that Lex is evil, yet her ultimate goal is to bring peace and love and not get revenge at all? Yeah, right!
Next week’s episode marks Kristin Kreuk’s last appearance this season; let’s hope that she’ll somehow lose the Prometheus suit and accept the fact that she cannot have all the power she seeks. It would be more acceptable in my book if she is remembered for going after Lex than being a superhero.
Clacked by Isabelle Carreau 
on Jan 30, 2009 @ 16:00 EST5EDT
Sure she’ll lose the suit. That’s what always happens to people who aren’t supposed to have powers. They lose them.
This time Lana just didn’t lose her power instantly because of the long-winded setup for her newfound courage. If they hadn’t shown that part I guess everybody would have said that it’s unbelievable after all the whining about Lex last season.
Anyway, let those two have their dream for a week and then we’ll see how it all goes to hell :-)
Isn’t it a sub-dermal suit? That’d be kinda hard to lose.
You are right – I guess I’m easily confused by the red leather thing she’s wearing all the time.
Sub-dermal suit though – is that really a suit? I’d call it a bodily change…
This is all a long wind-up to their crazy pitch on Lana leaving the series. I thought the direction on the episode was alright (go Allison :) ), but overall i found the writing just super cheezy. It’s like they just wanted to sweep all the stuff that just happened to depart the Clark/Lana storyline under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen, just to get some sort of closure/ending for Kristin’s departure from the show, before they move on to the Lois and Clark stuff. But I really think they’re stretching it too much this time.
Every beat of the episode felt like them trying to hit us on the head with what they were trying to accomplish. ‘Remember that part where lana left and said she didn’t want to get in your way anymore? we lied.’…’Oh, and remember how she wanted to get revenge on lex? oops, nope.’ It just appeared to me to be pandering. like some guy came in and told the writers that they have all these people upset that they ended the lana/clark storyline without any ending, and that they needed to somehow go back and fix it. And voila, tangled web weaved, and people aren’t buying it…or, at least, i’m not.
Anyways, I really hope they get back into their groove soon. I felt at the beginning of the season that Lana had already overstayed her welcome on the show, and that it needed to move on. It appeared they were doing so until Bride. Let’s hope they figure it out and get on with the main storyline again.
Having a character proclaim something to be true, as Lana did in this episode, doesn’t mean that it IS true, or that the show has ‘jumped the shark’. Her belief may be that she and Clark are now equals, just as any random villain may believe that he/she now rules the world. Absolute statements like this always seem to turn out to be wrong, don’t they?
I love the fact that LANA finally has powers to defend her self without CLARK having to rescue her all the time. And honestly u can only take a character getting captured and knocked out so many times. Atleast with these powers she can get into the action because the whole martial arts thing dosent cut it, when ur in the SMALLVILLE universe, sorry LOIS guess u take LANAs place atleast now ull get the superhero stud.