We cut to what must be the aforementioned Cadmus Labs, filled with racks of glass jars containing globular, gooey, and generally gross-looking specimens. Tess Mercer is lying on a table in the middle of the lab, her body covered from the bosom down with a rumpled sheet. Her eyes blink-blink and she sits up with a start. She turns toward the camera and we see her full face for the first time, the left half of which is covered with what looks like rubber vomit. She touches her cheek and rushes over to a glass case to look at her reflection. She starts peeling at her face like she's in Poltergeist. Beneath the rubber vomit she finds her usual peaches-and-cream complexion and not the burnt horror Zod left her with. She touches her face in disbelief, then catches sight of one of the jars in the case, its "Cadmus Labs" label obviously familiar to her. She puts on a lab coat and starts toward a door, pausing when she sees shadowy motion beyond. She runs out into a hallway where there's a row of glass and steel chambers. Liquid burbles inside. She wipes the condensation off one chamber. A deformed human face presses against the glass. She jumps back. The body inside has an umbilical cord and stunted limbs. The chamber is labeled "Lx4." She hears something shuffling across the room and follows the sound to a metal door. If it had been me, I would have gone running in the other direction, but Tess opens the door. A child hides in the shadows within. "I won't hurt you," she assures the child. "What's your name?" He moves slowly out of the shadows, his red hair glinting in the dim light, and says, "I'm Alexander." Dun, dun, DUN.
Tess leads the adorable little Alexander by the hand through the hall of horrors. He explains that they're all his brothers. He holds his hand up to one of the chambers and his misshapen sibling within mirrors the gesture. Tess realizes they're all Lex clones. "We were made to heal the Creator," little Alexander explains. "Just like we healed you." Tess touches her face. Alexander lifts up his pajama top and shows her a big bandage on his abdomen, beneath which a palm-sized square of flesh is missing. "Not all of us turned out okay," Alexander goes on to say. "Some of us came out sick. Some of us aged too fast." He turns back to the chamber and holds his hand up to his brother's again. The twin, a grown man, has wisps of red hair in an otherwise bald scalp, and terribly sad eyes. It's all so horrible and so beautiful. Why couldn't the whole episode be this? Tess hears insistent knocking coming from another cell and goes to open it. Alex calls out, "No, that's where they keep the bad one!" But the door's already open and a wiry arm snakes out to grab Tess around the throat. An older, Nosferatu sort of Lex emerges and shoves Tess up against one of the chambers. He recognizes her, calling her by name. He has all of Lex's memories, he says, and all his emotions, too. "I know how much you care about me," he whispers creepily in her ear. Blood drips from his nose. When he reaches up to wipe it off, Tess elbows him in the face and tells little Alexander to hide. Crazy old Lex grabs a gas tank and sets the lab on fire. "There can be only one Lex Luthor," he says. Tell that to Michael Rosenbaum.
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Clark doesn't get to see what's coming, but we do. High atop the building where Zod and Clark's fight took place, where the Kryptonian crystal console is still sitting out in the open for any old person to find, a dark mist swirls along the ground. It condenses into a cheesy sort of gassy Darkseid. Let's hope this ends in a better fight than the whole Doomsday thing.
The closing shot is of the inside of the Fortress. Inside a crystalline closet, the red-and-blue suit waits for its rightful owner. Heroic music swells and... the end. Maybe it's the aftereffects of a long, relaxing summer talking here, but that was not a bad episode. Maybe I'm the one who's hallucinating.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see what other superbeings have crossed Clark in our guide to the Heroes and Villains of Smallville! And see what our vlogger thinks about the show, below.
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Tippi Blevins is cautiously optimistic. Or hallucinating. You can reach her at b_tippi@yahoo.com or http://twitter.com/tippib.
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