[J Harker]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

As iank did earlier this year i've just done a complete watch of Smallville. All ten seasons. I did it as i had never seen the final series and had it in my to-watch pile for a couple of years.



For the unfamiliar Smallville recounts the early adventures of Kryptonian Clark Kent as he adjusts to life in the fictional town of Smallville, Kansas, during the years before he becomes Superman.



The evolution in the show was gradual but huge as well, characters came and went and from the initial seasons when there were six or seven names in the opening credits montage it dropped in the final season to a mere four.



I think the reason it worked and i liked it so much was the quality of it's actors, in particular the older cast members like Annette O'Toole, John Schneider (Clark's parents) and the excellent John Glover as Lionel Luthor.



However the star of the show for me was definitely Michael Rosenbaum as the definitive Lex Luthor and it didn't seem just as rich a show when he was killed off and didn't return for the eighth season. None of the characters were unlikable which really helped and Tom Welling makes for a superb Clark Kent.



There are loads of scenarios and characters which when i first watched the series as it was initially released on dvd meant nothing to me, however in the intervening years and with the sheer wealth of DC films and series which followed in Smallville's wake ideas like Amanda Waller (Pam Grier) and the Suicide Squad, Blue Beetle, Martian Manhunter, the Justice Society and so forth resonated with me much more. As an aside it was notable how much the character Booster Gold was an influence on Antony Starr's Homelander in anti-superhero series The Boys.



It's a show which had pretty much everything - thrills, laughs, tears and it's fair share of horror. It was interesting in a way as every season was rated BBFC 15 but there was never any real gore in it until the tenth season where we saw swords rammed through people and blood spilling out but several episodes throughout the ten series were pure horror.



The tenth and final season was like a greatest hits adventure with pretty much everyone from previous stories returning in some form or other and all were welcome. The final scene as Clark runs along the rooftop and rips open his shirt to reveal the famous 'S' symbol had me almost in tears of happiness as he never wore the costume of Superman throughout the whole 217 episodes.



If there's any justice then Welling, Rosenbaum, Erica Durance's Lois Lane and Justin Hartley's Green Arrow need to feature in the DC multiverse of films.

I didn't realise the series finally ended on that reveal. With the fabulous score from John Williams too. I gave up on Smallville as it just seemed to be going nowhere and purposely dragging things out. I lost interest around series 6 or 7.

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