Welcome back to Smallville, everyone! We return three weeks after the events of the finale to find that Clark is trying to shed his humanity so that he can embrace his Kryptonian destiny. What he has managed to get rid of, though, are his famous red and blue clothes, having traded them in for broody black hand-me-downs from Angel. He prowls the streets of the city, rescuing people, posing dramatically against the sky, and burning the Superman S-shield on walls. Vandal.
He still can't fly, because Lois's five thousand pounds of hair are weighing him down, or he's attached to her, or something. She returns from her trip to the future by mysteriously being zapped onto a train in Metropolis. She's followed by a female assassin with funky blue eyes. Naturally, a fight ensues. Clark saves the train and Lois winds up at the hospital, unaware that she's been gone for so long. Turns out Green Arrow has also been MIA, working out his self-loathing issues by drinking and getting physical with well-muscled half-naked men in some kind of grungy Fight Club.
Newcomer Zod (a major, not a general, at this point) has been holed up at the Luthor mansion with a bunch of his Kryptonian soldiers. For some reason they don't have any of their super powers, which makes them all paranoid and turn against Zod for a while before eventually kneeling to him. Tess has been tortured for information that she doesn't have. She tries to play Zod and his men against each other but it doesn't work because Zod's English accent proves too inspirational for the soldiers to resist. Also new to the show is John Corben, who's the Daily Planet's newest hire. He clashes with Lois, because everyone clashes with Lois, and flirts with her for the same reason.
Chloe, meanwhile, is at her Watchtower apartment, which ends up getting funding from Dr. Emil Hamilton. Chloe asks Clark to take a trip back to the past to save Jimmy/Henry, but he turns her down because messing with destiny is bad. At some point in there, he fights the blue-eyed assassin who was just using Lois to get to him. The assassin politely apologizes for… something, just before she dies. Oh, and Clark apparently has one year to prevent the end of the world. It probably has something to do with Lois's episode-ending visions of the future, which include fighting, Kryptonian symbols, dead Chloe, and nookie with Clark. Yep. Sounds apocalyptic to me.