Episode 1.21
With a name like Tempest, you expect something to be altered. And the season finale certainly delivers.
Right from the get go, Lionel lands at the LuthorCorp. plant and announces that it’s being shut down due to management issues, blaming it on Lex even though they’ve seen a profit for the first time in awhile. It is Lionel’s way of dragging Lex kicking and screaming back to Metropolis.
But Lex won’t take it lying down. Lex decides to fight back, orchestrating an employee buyout. Employees will have to mortgage their homes but they will be minority owners.
This has an adverse effect on the town, especially Chloe, whose father head up the plant. With their future uncertain Chloe seems determined to enjoy the spring formal that Clark asked her too.
In another tumultuous turn, Whitney announces to Lana that he’s planning to enlist in the Marine Corps. He also asks Lana to wait for him. Lana can’t give him an answer.
Suddenly though it seems as if Chloe and Whitney would be out of their lives.
In yet another angle, Roger Nixon, the reporter who tries to please Lex, discovers Clark’s secret and even finds his way down into the storm cellar where he finds Clark’s ship.
And all this goes on while a tornado is coming.
Well the slam bang of it is, the tornado comes down while everyone is at the spring formal except for:
Lana who drives Whitney to the bus station where he goes to enlist, they share a final embrace and she gives him her necklace. Then she drives off crying right into a twister.
The Kents go to their storm cellar and discover Roger Nixon, who runs off into the storm with some damning evidence.
Lionel Luthor comes to admonish his son’s efforts at staying in Smallville when the storm rips through the mansion and pins Lionel under a heavy column with a sharp beam hovering above his chest as Lex watches and tries to figure out whether he wants to save his father or not.
Clark rushes off to find Lana in the storm and sees her getting ripped into the air truck and all so he rushes into the eye of the storm to save her…and we cut.
All in all a very exciting, fast paced episode with a lot of moving parts that does a good job setting up the second season.
A-
References:
Ok, I admit this one is a stretch, but there was surprisingly little to work with.
Lana: “One day he’s worried about his English paper, and the next he’s putting on a uniform and saving the world. ” – yes it’s about Whitney, but look at the broader picture!