Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
In this television version of Clark Kent’s early years, the 1989 meteor shower leaves Smallville with strange cases as well as the boy Jonathan and Martha Kent adopt. Clark’s strength, speed and other abilities keep developing, but his parents teach him to hide them; Pete Ross and Chloe Sullivan remain his friends without knowing what he is. Lana Lang is the girl he cares for, while her boyfriend Whitney Fordman complicates their closeness. Clark also befriends Lex Luthor after saving him, even as Lex tries to make his own choices under the pressure of his father, Lionel.
The season moves between Clark’s efforts to stop people changed by meteor fragments and the Kent and Luthor families’ conflicts. Chloe’s reporting draws her toward Smallville’s unexplained events, while Clark’s secrecy makes trust difficult with those closest to him. Lex resists Lionel’s control when Lionel closes the local plant; Lex tries to keep it operating through an employee buyout, putting their already tense relationship into public view. Whitney, facing his father’s illness and death, leaves for the Marines. At the spring formal, Clark arrives with Chloe, but a tornado pulls Lana’s truck into danger. Reporter Roger Nixon has found Clark’s spacecraft and learned his secret; Jonathan pursues him as the storm hits, while Lex must decide whether to save his trapped father. The finale leaves those emergencies unresolved for the next season.