‘Smallville’ Reinvented the Superman & Lex Luthor Dynamic

The Big Picture

• Smallville explored the complex and nuanced relationship between Clark Kent and Lex Luthor, who started as friends but eventually became enemies.
• Clark’s strong moral compass and influence from his parents shaped his journey towards becoming Superman.
• Lex’s struggle between light and darkness, and his genuine friendship with Clark, made him one of the most compelling characters on the show.

Nearly fifteen years after its end, Smallville is just as popular as ever. As former series stars Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum (best known for their portrayals of Clark Kent and Lex Luthor respectively) continue their rewatch podcast TalkVille, we’re reminded that it’s the Clark and Lex dynamic that made the series great. Of course, these two were always destined to be enemies. Clark would don the red cape and take flight as Superman, while Lex rose above his father’s shadow, ultimately becoming the “greatest criminal mind of our time.” We knew where these two were headed from the get-go, though we couldn’t quite look away. From that fateful moment on the bridge, Clark and Lex’s fates were intertwined, but what we didn’t know way back when the series premiered in 2001 was just how the two of them would get there.

‘Smallville’ Gives Clark Kent and Lex Luthor Complexity

In Smallville‘s early years, the relationship between these two “frenemies” was often explored through the lens of the Kawatche legends Naman and Sageeth: two heads from the same body, each representing good or evil. Naman was said to be a powerful being from the stars who could shoot fire from his eyes and had “the strength of ten men.” It was also told that Naman would save the world, which Clark, admittedly, could never have foreseen himself doing. In contrast to Naman was Sageeth, the hero’s former best friend, more like a brother, and eventual betrayer who would ultimately become a “bearer of darkness.”

While the Kawatche people held to a particular view of Clark’s role as Naman, the young farmboy never felt comfortable with that kind of pressure. Throughout Smallville, Clark is known as a “true, blue boy scout,” while Lex is often seen as a darker extension of his father, but there’s actually a lot more nuance to their dynamic and their own respective roles throughout the series. We might be used to a “boy scout” version of Superman who flies around and saves kittens from trees, but that isn’t the character we see on Smallville.

Likewise, Lex isn’t a one-dimensional enterprising mogul like the Gene Hackman or Jesse Eisenberg interpretations. Here he’s given a lot more depth. Sure, a lot of this can be chalked up to spending a lot more time with these characters than we have with any other incarnations previously or since, but some of it is also due to the shades of gray that either lighten or darken these icon’s respective stories.

Family Is a Big Part of ‘Smallville’

Unlike most interpretations of the Superman/Lex Luthor dynamic, Smallville takes the time to make these characters friends, even best friends, and explores how their lives would change because of their influence on each other. Clark’s journey towards his destiny shows this incredibly well. From the beginning, we know that Clark is a morally good person. He’s a teenager to be sure, but he ultimately strives to do the right thing regardless of the personal consequences that befall him. This is seen time and again throughout the show when he misses spending time with his friends Lana Lang (Kristen Kreuk), Chloe Sullivan (Allison Mack), or Pete Ross (Sam Jones III) because he must deal with the latest meteor freak to wreak havoc through their small town. Although the “with great power, comes great responsibility” is classically a Spider-Man trope, it certainly applies here.

But ultimately, Clark is most influenced by his parents Jonathan and Martha Kent (played masterfully by John Schneider and Annette O’Toole) who raised him to think about others before he was to think about himself. These are the values that had been instilled in him since the moment he landed on Earth, and they would stay with him well beyond his time in Smallville. Without the Kents, Clark wouldn’t have become Superman, but rather something else entirely. Season 10 episodes “Luthor” and “Kent” further explore what would have happened had Clark been raised by Lionel Luthor (John Glover) instead of the Kents, and if the alternate Clark Luthor teaches us anything, it’s that there’s a clear-cut reason why Lex turned out the way he did.

‘Smallville’s Clark Kent Isn’t Always Right

Yet, even the Kent-raised farmboy wasn’t too keen on his own moral code at times. Much like Lex, who often battled against his own family name, Clark also wrestled with doing the right thing, and, at times, chose not to. As early as the Season 2 finale “Exodus,” we see Clark purposely expose himself to Red Kryptonite, which releases him of all his inhibitions as well as his moral compass. In the moment, Clark does this to ease the pain of his previous mistake (destroying the spacecraft he arrived in, which caused his mother to miscarry), but what makes matters worse is his refusal to remove the Red K ring and return home. It’s not until he’s forced away from the Red Kryptonite by his father that the young farmboy is finally held accountable for his actions. If this sounds more like something Lex Luthor would do, skirting responsibility in favor of pleasure, then you’d be right.

Lex Luthor Is a Bad Influence on Clark Kent

Smallville is full of episodes, as early as Season 1, that feature Lex hoping to get away with some dark secret or scheme he’d been hiding. While Clark had been warned about Lex early on, he didn’t realize just how much the young Luthor would rub off on him during his teenage years. But Clark’s teenage years weren’t the only times we saw his dark side come out. Besides other Red Kryptonite benders, which included nearly strangling Lex to death, Smallville‘s Clark wandered into darkness more often than many Superman fans may like, though never to the levels of something like Injustice.

In the Season 6 episode “Combat,” Clark kills a Phantom Zone prisoner in an illegal cage match, albeit one who was about to murder Lois Lane (Erica Durance) and anyone else he could find. Before this, Clark had never willingly taken a life, and this moment rocked him to his core. Unlike Lex, who had ordered plenty of folks dead by this point in the series, Clark learned from this mistake and refused to take a life again. It’s this moral code that Clark would reference in Season 8’s “Legion,” where he reminded a group of heroes from the future that “there’s always another way.”

But there are other moments of gray in Clark’s journey that keep him from walking the “straight and narrow.” After Jimmy Olsen (Aaron Ashmore) is killed, Clark turns his back on his human identity, declaring that Clark Kent was dead (“Doomsday”). While this only lasted a few months, his willingness to turn on mankind is a pretty dark pill to swallow, especially given that he walks away from his grieving best friend who had just lost her husband. On a smaller scale, Clark once did the same thing to Lex by turning his back on his friendship, and while it would take years for that to truly manifest, Clark was eventually left wondering if they had ever really been friends at all (“Nemesis”). Lex’s own distrust of others, including the Kents, had rubbed off on Clark, and seeing Lex’s dark side only made him more distrustful going forward.

‘Smallville’s Lex Luthor Has a Good Side

While Lex’s influence in Clark’s life might’ve given him more agency to rebel against his parents or choose his own self-centered desires over the greater good, Clark’s influence on Lex did the exact opposite. Because of his friendship with Clark, Lex saw a way out from under the Luthor legacy and his own internal battle against his dark nature/nurture became one of the most compelling parts of the show. Truthfully, had Lex Luthor not been a part of Smallville from the beginning (and the majority of its run), the show wouldn’t have survived as long as it did. His struggle between light and darkness, becoming more like the Kents or embracing his title as a Luthor, was one of the most compelling arcs on television at the time. Although we knew where Lex would end up, we all hoped he’d never actually get there. His own words in Season 2’s “Ryan” would ring truer of him than anyone knew, “… in life the road to darkness is a journey, not a light switch.“

In the show’s first few seasons, Lex often supported, encouraged, and uplifted Clark, even likening our teenage hero to Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird (“Hug”). Their friendship was genuine, and Lex grew to see Clark as the younger brother he never really had. Lex even began to help others outside of the Kents, including Lana and Chloe, though he gained nothing from doing so. While he originally thought his “banishment” to Smallville was a curse, Lex came to love the small Kansas town and the people in it. After witnessing Clark’s strong moral compass in action, Lex is inspired to fight against his father on behalf of the workers of Smallville’s LuthorCorp plant (“Tempest”). He also would keep Clark’s secret safe (“Asylum”), pay for the Kent’s poisoned cattle (“Obscura”), and often come to the aid of the Kents during various legal matters.

Honestly, early seasons Lex seemed to always come through, and although he had his own dark secrets that he worked to keep hidden (not that unlike Clark’s own secret, albeit with more sinister implications), his time in Smallville felt like a way out. This notion would be further explored in the Smallville Season 5 episode “Lexmas,” where the young Luthor would see a glimpse of the life that he truly wanted. A life full of love, friendship, and meaning well beyond corporate greed and power. While Lex ultimately chooses the darker path, it’s telling that his fantasy included all those things he worked so hard for in the earlier seasons of the show. It was essentially the life that Clark already had.

Superman and Lex Luthor Wouldn’t Exist Without Each Other

Years after “baseless accusations” and mutual betrayals, Clark and Lex would end up trapped underground together in a Kryptonite-laced tunnel system (“Nemesis”). Although he thought about leaving Clark there to die, Lex chose to do what Clark did for him and save his life. In this same episode, the two lament their friendship, with Lex admitting that Clark was the only true friend he ever had. A season later, Clark entered Lex’s mind and met the last good part of his former friend, a young boy named Alexander (Connor Stanhope). Alexander reminded Clark that there was still good in Lex, and although Lex would snuff Alexander out after murdering his own father (“Descent”), this last good part of him continued to fight until the end after promising Clark that he would. There’s no doubt that Clark rubbed off on the Luthor heir, it’s just a shame that Lex wouldn’t further embrace the light.

In their final moments together in the series, Lex makes it clear that both of them will be great men because of each other. It’s true that there is no Lex Luthor without Superman, and, oftentimes, there is no Superman without Lex Luthor either. These final moments together (before Lex’s memories are wiped) lament the friendship between them, as they have both stepped into their respective destinies (“only on different sides”), yet, it’s in their last scene together that the old Lex breaks through, albeit briefly, hoping to inspire Clark to save the world from destruction as Superman. Of course, Clark does, but not before first apologizing for not saving his former friend. As the audience, it’s hard not to wish that as well, and we hope that one day Clark is finally able to bring Lex back into the light. One can dream anyway.

Smallville is available to watch on Hulu in the U.S.

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