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Three young people from the future show up to give Clark a history lesson (from their point of view) and instead end up learning a lot themselves…

In the aftermath of Chloe’s disastrous wedding to Jimmy Olsen, which ended with Doomsday destroying the barn and nearly killing Jimmy, an assassin from the future appears and tried to murder Clark with his super-axe. Luckily, three super-powered beings from a thousand years from now, calling themselves the Legion, show up to save the man who will one day inspire them to become superheroes. They’re about to leave when they learn that history has been altered, and they want to help set things straight, but the only way to do that appears to be killing Brainiac’s host: Chloe. In the end, Clark refuses to give in to desperation or allow the Legion to do it, and they team up to defeat Brainiac and save Chloe simultaneously.

I knew as soon as I saw that the great comic book writer Geoff Johns wrote this episode that it would be enjoyable—for me and fellow comic geeks, anyway. I just wasn’t sure how the show would play for the average viewer, considering they’re introducing still more superheroes from the Superman mythos, this time super-powered teen aliens from the 31st Century. I think it was handled pretty well, with enough “insider” references (such as “Brainiac 5”) to keep those in the know happy while not going overboard and alienating those who are only watching because they see the show as One Tree Hill with some weird additions.

I really like the idea of people coming back from the future to meet a legend and being disappointed, since I’m nearly positive that’s how it would go down for any of us if we could travel back and meet our heroes. We tend to build up people in the past whom we admire so much that there is no way they could live up to our expectations, especially if we met them before they went on to greatness. It’s nice that Clark actually inspired them with his “humanity” rather than with any flashy powers and costume.

The most enjoyable thing for me about the episode was the way the Legion members were surrogates for viewers of the show who have been longtime comic readers, wondering where the glasses, cape and tights were, why Clark couldn’t fly, and who the hell Chloe Sullivan is, since we’d never heard of her. Since I’ve never been a huge fan of the Legion of Superheroes, I can’t say how fans of Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, and Saturn Girl liked their Smallville incarnations, but I thought the characters were handled well.

In an unusual twist from the past couple of seasons, I don’t really have any complaints about this episode. It did feel a bit strange, since it’s apparently book-ended by the two Doomsday eps, almost as if they decided to slip it in later on. The last show felt like the buildup to the inevitable big battle between Clark and Doomsday, then this one took it down quite a bit (although there was a battle with Chloe-Brainiac), only to bring it back up again next week.

The show’s still not back to its former glory, but it’s sure a lot better than it’s been in a while, and bringing on writers like Geoff Johns is definitely a step in the right direction.

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