Smallville: Lana Lang versus Lois Lane

 

If you've never seen Smallville, you may be surprised that Clark Kent/Superman had a strong possibility of ending up with Lana Lang.  If you're familiar with the story of Clark Kent before he became Superman, you would know that Lana was the girl in high school that Clark had a crush on, became friends with, and dated before moving to Metropolis.  It is hard to imagine that the great Superman would end up with anyone other than the intrepid reporter, Lois Lane.  But, as with all stories birthed from the 2000s and on, fans became interested in creating "ships" between two characters unlikely to end up together.  Whether or not the writers actually intended to continue Clark's interest in Lana as long as they did because of the Clana fans or not, it does become obvious how much the quality of writing declined on the show because of this relationship.

The one thing Smallville did flawlessly was write perfection across the board with Lois Lane.  On top of that, Erica Durance's performance was incredible.  Instead of first meeting Lois at the Daily Planet in Metropolis as the original story went, Smallville wrote her to be the cousin of Clark's best friend, Chloe Sullivan.  She was introduced in Season 4 and even went to Smallville High School for a short time before moving to Metropolis for college.  It was exciting for fans of Superman to see this huge character brought onto the show before Clark had even graduated from high school.  Yet, for whatever reason, she was forced to take a back seat to the Clark-Lana romance that lasted, arguably, about 8 seasons.  Yes, out of the 10 seasons, Lana remained a love interest in all but the last two.  

Let me tell you a bit about how Lana Lang was written to give you some backstory.  The show starts out as it should, with the bumbling Clark Kent crushing on the cheerleader, Lana Lang.  Besides his awkwardness and clumsiness around her when she's wearing a kryptonite necklace, she also has a boyfriend.  Now in this show, Lex Luthor begins as a good friend to Clark but I will go over that relationship in another post.  Lex's influence with Clark gives him the motivation to put himself out there.  Eventually Lana and Clark begin a relationship.  How does this happen?  Clark loses his powers.  One would think he would be looking for a way to get them back but instead he decides he is better off without them just so he won't have to lie to Lana.  Yes he was just a teenager then so I suppose that's forgivable but it's an important fact in this argument.

When Clark dies (should I have mentioned there will be spoilers?), he ends up getting his powers back and things start to go downhill with Lana.  Since she constantly preaches how she wants honesty above all else and he cannot share his secret with her, she feels she cannot trust him.  What does she do then?  She breaks up with him, feeling like she has no one, decides to die for a minute with the help of kryptonite liquid just to see her dead parents.  Irresponsible, dangerous, yet somehow redeemable?  Sure, I'll give her this as well then.  

The problem I have with Lana begins with an obsession with finding the truth about the meteor shower that killed her parents that brought her and Lex Luthor together.  Again, I'll have a whole post about Lex Luthor at a later time.  However, since Clark couldn't tell her his secret, she was easily persuaded by Lex with his promises to always tell her the truth.  This eventually led to Lana forming a relationship with Lex Luthor.

Let's say that all of my issues with Lana meant nothing prior to this point and that everything started here.  As a teenager, I can write off all her previous "issues" as excusable.  At this point, she is an adult and thus becomes responsible for her own actions.  It is so apparent how quickly her loyalties blind her to realities by how easily she changes.  I'm not going to lie, if the writers had written Lana to be Lex's cohort, I think that would have been fantastic!  It would really have elevated the show!  Instead, she gets all the way to agreeing to marry Lex and then finding out Clark has superpowers...on her WEDDING DAY...to decide that she would rather have Clark.  She manipulated that situation to uncover his secret on her own and whether or not the truth made everything in her life finally make sense, she had still agreed to marry Lex. 

She had gone through a whole relationship with Lex.  This is why I am throwing my first fact into the ring.  Lana is obsessed with power.  Lex was a powerful figure for her that she knew she could manipulate to do whatever she wanted.  She finds out that Clark is physically the most powerful and now she wants him.  (Not to mention her high school boyfriend was the most popular, head of the football team and when he decided to join the military, she broke up with him...just before finding out he had died in action...seriously?)

Now that Lana Lang is Lana Luthor thanks to some blackmailing by big daddy Luthor (Clark, you dodged a bullet, my dude), she has access to money and the power that comes with her new title.  Added to that, her want of Clark makes her very disloyal to Lex.  And Clark being so in love with Lana is still unable to let go.  To think he was about to when she married Lex but she got his hopes up with promises of running away together.  (You'd have to see the episode to understand this whole mess).  

Next, the only way Lana can get out of her marriage to Lex is to fake her own death and blame it on Lex.  Lex finds her pretty easily and she contemplates murdering him.  Need I say more on that.  Lex promises her safety if she returns to Smallville, which she agrees to, and immediately gets with Clark, sharing her knowledge of his powers.  Now that Clark is free of that burden, he sees no issue with a relationship with the "love of his life".

This is very important.  Lana gets Clark's powers.  Thank you well-placed Kryptonite and a well-timed electrical incident.  Understandably, Clark is concerned.  It doesn't take long for Lana to use those powers for immoral events.  Her hatred for Lex drives her to want to take him down, even if it means snapping his neck like a twig.  If it wasn't for Clark's recreation of the incident to reverse the powers situation, she would have succeeded.  Having that power began an obsession in her mind.  A craving to have it again.  She acknowledged her unstable mental capacity while powerful but that only drove her to fine-tune the next time she took it on.  Then she leaves Clark and the show for some time.  If only it was for good.

For the first time in the show, nothing is holding Clark back.  He finally begins to become the man he is supposed to be!  He begins working at the Daily Planet across from Lois and starting his reputation as the Red Blue Blur.  As a viewer, this was refreshing!  Yes we had the "Freak of the Week" thing going on and with him being a high schooler, it made sense.  Now that he's been an adult for some time, he is finally becoming Superman.  And just as he is beginning to have feelings for Lois, Lana returns.  This part of the show was hand's down the cringiest.  And we had gotten through a whole lot of cringy moments prior.  

Every aspect of the episodes including Lana in Season 8 was awful.  The writing, the directing, the producing, even the acting...cringe!  As I said in the beginning, this show was trying really hard to make Lana the love of Clark's life instead of Lois.  When Lois left, I think we all wanted to be with her.  (I mean seriously, Lana broke a really sweet and exciting moment for Clois fans!  I still cannot forgive her.)  It only gets worse, though.  With Lana back, they wrote Clark to return to his feelings for her as if Lois never existed.  On top of that, they focused so much on creating over-the-top girl power that Clark lost a lot of points of manhood.  The strong Clark/Red Blue Blur is suddenly gone.  In his place is a weak man who isn't nearly as smart or as strong as Lana Lang.  Because now Lana has stolen equipment from Lex to make her as powerful as Clark.  I'm sorry, I have to say it...it is so stupid.  Did they really have to go with literal power with girl power?  Suddenly, Clark becomes super whiney (I didn't know that was one of his powers) and kind of clingy with Lana.  It was not fun to watch and I felt bad for Tom Welling to have to portray that version of Clark.  Thank goodness Lana's supersuit made it impossible for her to be around Clark without killing him so she would finally leave!  How dare they make it such a Romeo and Juliet moment, though.  So they expect us to believe that Clark is just going to go back to Lois and start some kind of relationship and not feel like any time Lana returns that he is just going to revert back to her?  I don't think so.  The episodes were so unnecessary and dare I say stupid that I literally cannot sit through them.  Every time I go through the series, I try to be unbiased.  But these are just so BAD!  Chloe is awful, Lana is awful and Clark is awful.  The only good part of those episodes was when they weren't in them.  Hence why it's best to skip.

This proves my point, though.  Lana craved power so much and obsessed over it for so long that she needed to get more.  I don't care about the mental ability to use the power responsibly.  Shouldn't the show be focusing on how an ordinary person (male or female) can do some pretty extraordinary things?  That's why Lois is by far the better character.  And now I can finally explain why.

Lois Lane, intrepid reporter at the Daily Planet, previously a brief employee at the Smallville High School newspaper and reporter for the Planet's rival paper, the Inquisitor.  She's bold, witty and has a massive respect for the superhero making all the saves in Metropolis.  

Lois first comes to Smallville to solve the murder of her cousin, Chloe.  That's when she first meets Clark.  Their chemistry was amazing.  She would sock his jaw all the time and his responses to it made their interactions so delightful to watch.  Even if they weren't destined to end up together, they had a fun partnership and some of the best scenes.  I'm thinking about all the scenes where Clark and Lois are investigating together and I'm trying to remember if there were any similar scenes with Clark and Lana.  If there were, I can't think of any and they were very few.  Lois, on the other hand, was always getting out there to uncover what she could.  Maybe that's why there's no Lana investigating.  Lana isn't a reporter.  So I think Lois really helped Clark's interest in investigative journalism instead of just whooshing in and looking through walls.  She did put the offer out to him to join the Daily Planet.  Lois really gave Clark the opportunity for a real future.  While Lana did support Clark's secret of saving lives, I don't think she saw him as anything more than living on the farm.  Reporting, however, gave Clark the ability to hear more and do more.  

With Lois, there's no weakling feeling from Clark as there was with Lana.  The banter couldn't knock how strong a relationship they had as just friends.  Lois has a strong shell but she is also very vulnerable.  In one of her vulnerable moments, she accidentally purchases some red kryptonite lipstick that will make her fall in love with the first guy she sees...Clark.  This was an amazing episode because of Lois.  Even though she did not remember the events under the influence, it showed us how she reacts to finding out about Clark's powers.  She doesn't burst out with accusations of keeping that from her for so long.  Instead there is automatic respect.  Let's say we don't count this moment because of the drugs used.  Jump to when she actually finds out (twice).  Still the same respect and admiration.  This doesn't make her less of a strong female character.  

Let's back up a bit so I can jump to another point.  Due to a series of events, Oliver Queen begins dating Lois Lane.  She doesn't know that he is Green Arrow but being a vigilante, but when she does find out, she supports him completely and doesn't want to compete with a duty that is so much more important than herself.  It is a raw and selfless moment. 

She then dates Grant Gabriel who is a great guy.  Even finding out he is genetically a Luthor made from the DNA of Lex's deceased brother, Julian, he is still a force of good.  Lex murdering Grant is the only reason Lois and Grant weren't together longer.  After Grant is finally Clark.  There is a trend with Lois being a great partner to a whole series of genuinely good guys.  (Can't forget Aquaman was on that list for an episode!  What is that...3 superheroes?  Add also the military guy from before she moved to Smallville?  The hero list is adding up.)  On Lana's side you have Whitney (good), Clark (good), Jason Teague (was good, went very bad), Clark again, Lex (very bad), and Clark a third time.  Just saying.

Before Clark revealed his powers to Lois, there was still a mutual respect between the two and it built them both up and made them both stronger.  Lois had obvious respect for the Red Blue Blur as well.  Then he became The Blur (losing his colors when Lois went missing for months)  "Lois, I died when you left."  Great line!  As The Blur, Clark begins talking to Lois in a phone booth, just beginning with the intention of clearing the air of his intentions but the most important thing came from their first phone call.  Clark asks her to ask her questions and the only thing she asks is, "I've just been wondering what it is you need."  She follows up with clarifying that saving the world can be lonely and that she's there if he just wants to talk.  Lois is SUPPORTIVE!  She doesn't know who he is but she has seen his actions and is understanding and loyal.  Without realizing it, Lois is forming a strong bond with Clark because of this.  

Then Clark tells Lois his secret.  Her response is to take a story in Egypt to clear her head.  Remember, she broke up with Oliver when she found out his secret.  Thankfully Lois has built a history with Clark and has had some really great conversations that have strengthened their bond.  This makes Clark incredibly happy.  Now let's pause here for one moment to bring up another Smallville fact.  Clark does not fly.  I should clarify.  Clark does not fly as right-minded Clark.  He has stayed grounded up until Lois.  For a moment while holding her and being the happiest he had ever been, he begins to float, unknowingly for a bit.  It's a big sign right there.

I'm coming up to my last major point.  We talked about when Lana had powers.  Now it's Lois's turn.  As an engagement gift, Jor-El gives Clark's powers to Lois for the day.  This is so inciteful.  It shows us exactly the kind of person Lois is when she has the power to do anything.  For one, she works a lot faster, writing articles, putting out fires, trying to fill the role that Clark does every day.  She quickly comes to realize how much he does and how much he has to prioritize.  Respect has increased.  When she becomes powerless again, there's no "I want to have powers again" like Lana.  Instead she is grateful to not have powers.  It is so important to be happy with the person you are!  Thank you, Lois!

Finally, Lois is the greatest partner.  She helps him to realize a way to hide his true identity and makes sure he knows that he is the most important thing to her even if he didn't have his abilities.  With all her flaws, she really is the perfect person for Clark/The Blur/Superman.  She doesn't expect to be part of the superhero club.  She only asks for honesty, especially when there's a strong possibility Clark may not make it out of a situation alive.  She sees Clark and she sees hope.  She was the only one that Darkseid could not infiltrate because of her pure hope.  

10 seasons of Smallville and looking at the characters of two women, Lana and Lois, and their relationship with Clark Kent was bound to be very lengthy.  In this case study, Lois is the clear winner.  She was written flawlessly, she is strong in who she is and an incredibly worthy partner to the most powerful superhero in the Smallville world.  Lana could not replace Lois, nor could she replace Clark (as much as the writers seemed to want to).  Lana could never be fully satisfied while Lois showed us that you could do anything you wanted and be good at what you do without needing the help of powers.  Thank you, writers, for not messing up an iconic character in the Superman universe.  Thank you, Erica Durance, for your incredible portrayal of Lois Lane.  Together you have made the best Lois Lane rendition, in my opinion.