For ten seasons,Smallvilleteased us with Clark Kent’s (Tom Welling) destiny as Superman while simultaneously dropping similar hints about the path ofMichael Rosenbaum’s Lex Luthor. The two were, in many ways, the bedrock ofSmallvillethroughout its lifespan, and many stuck with the show until the end simply to see how their story would all play out. But there was a third member of the show’s main cast who acted as a driving force throughout the show’s initial years:Kristin Kreuk’s Lana Lang. Sadly, her story went entirely off the rails at the beginning of the show’s fourth season.
Season 4’s Witch Plotline Took ‘Smallville’ in a Strange New Direction
The final high school year ofSmallville, Season 4 had a lot of interesting ideas intersecting at once. Lex’s quest for the three Stones of Power, Lionel Luthor’s (John Glover) time in jail and budding redemption story, the introduction of Lois Lane (Erica Durance), and Chloe Sullivan’s (Allison Mack) eventual discovery of Clark’s secret all took place this season. There are a lot of great standalone episodes of Season 4, and it had lots of promise as the last romp before graduation.
Unfortunately, that promise only went so far. One of the more hatedSmallvillestorylines by fans was the Season 4 witch arc, which centered around Lana Lang and her 17th-century ancestor Margaret Isobel Thoreaux. Isobel had been burned at the stake alongside her allies by Duchess Gertrude (Jane Seymour), a direct ancestor of Lana’s current boyfriend Jason Teague (yes, the character played byJensen Ackles). But after her summer in Paris, Lana returned to Smallville with a magical tattoo on her back and a witch attached to her soul – and it didn’t get much better for her from there.
Isobel returns to possess Lana on three separate occasions, using the magical Mark of Transference tattoo she received from Isobel’s tomb and the witch’s spell book as a gateway into her descendant’s bones. This first happens in the aptly-named “Spell” (where Isobel’s allies possess Chloe and Lois also), followed by her returnwhen Clark and Lanaare in China looking for one of the Stones of Power in “Sacred” (at the same time as Lex and Jason are in the country doing the same). The last timeIsobel shows up is to take her revenge in the extended season finale, “Commencement,” where Isobel has Lana kill Jason’s mother, Genevieve (Seymour), in self-defense while protecting one of the alien stones. If you didn’t think a show about alien invaders, meteor-freaks, and the small Kansas town at the center of them could get any stranger, the witch plotline would prove you wrong, and it didn’t do Lana any favors.
‘Smallville’ Struggled To Find Good Material for Lana Lang
WhileSmallvillehad a few dud storylinesover the years, none were as strange, out-of-place, and just downright terrible as the Lana-is-a-witch plot. WhileSmallvilletried to weave it all into the Stones of Power arc (which the Luthors, Teagues, and Kents were all after), it never landed well.Every attempt to bring back Isobel from the grave felt extremely out of place, and it wasn’t compelling or interesting (especially given there was so much else going on throughout Season 4). What could have been a solid senior year for Lana — allowing her to come into her own and discover what she truly wants out of life — just proved that the show had run out of ideas for her character.
Adding insult to injury, this story only gave birth to a snowball effect of bad decisions for the character that would take Lana from obsessing over the existence of aliens (which doesn’t seem too outlandishafter you’ve been possessed by a witch, but hey, to each her own),marrying Lex, diving head-first into the Luthor lifestyle, and then giving her superpowers in order to take revenge on her ex-husband.
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Lana Lang is a character who went from innocent girl next door to controversial and secretive, with this plotline clearly serving as the moment that things began to shift. Previous seasons involved more down-to-earth, small-town, and personal dramas for Lana to work through, including discovering the identity of her biological father, becoming a small business owner, or realizing that there’s more to life than cheerleading. But the witch plot always felt out of left field.There was nothing tying it directly to the Kryptonian Stones of Power(except for Isobel’s apparent obsession with them) or the rest of the pre-established plot carrying over from Season 3. It was the only new development in Season 4 that felt massively out of place. While there are a few redeeming qualities (namely that it made Jason a bit more essential), most were happy to forget about it after the second meteor shower,which kicked offSmallvilleSeason 5.
Kristin Kreuk Deserved Better on ‘Smallville’
The real tragedy of Lana’s declining arc onSmallvilleis thatit wasn’t the fault of Kristin Kreuk, who is a phenomenal actress who always gives her all to the role. Even when Lana’s stories are a bit out of nowhere or terribly uninteresting, Kreuk commits to them in full force and should be praised for her dedication. That said, by the timeKreuk left the show after Season 7(only to return briefly in Season 8), it was clear that Lana Lang had grossly overstayed her welcome.
Perhaps Lana should have stuck around in Paris all those years ago, having moved on forever from the Kansas hometown that both gave and took so much away from her. If we ever do get aSmallvillereunion (it could still work!), it would be interesting to see where the character ended up after all these years, hopefully making a difference in a way that her wicked ancestor could only dream.
Smallville
A young Clark Kent struggles to find his place in the world as he learns to harness his alien powers for good and deals with the typical troubles of teenage life in Smallville, Kansas.
