Smallville/Characters/High

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk)

Clark's Love Interest from Seasons 1-8. Lana's parents were killed in the meteor shower that accompanied Clark to Earth, leaving her to be raised by her Aunt Nell. She originally dated Whitney Fordman until he went off to join the Marines, then went on to have an on-and-off relationship with Clark. In Season 5, after breaking up with Clark (again), she begins dating Lex.

In Season 6, Lana finds out that she's pregnant with Lex's child, becomes engaged to Lex and (finally) learns Clark's secret; she is about to leave Lex at the altar until Lionel blackmails her into going through with the wedding. After marrying Lex, Lana finds out that her pregnancy was faked by Lex to get her to marry him (according to Word of God). She fakes her own death, only to return to Smallville and get back together with Clark in Season 7, at the same time seeking Revenge against Lex, which causes some friction between her and Clark until she decides to tone it down.

Lana is later attacked by Brainiac and left in a comatose state until Clark defeats Brainiac and she recovers, then leaves town (in reality, she was kidnapped by Tess Mercer). She returns yet again in Season 8. Thanks to LuthorCorp technology, Lana gains superhuman powers along with the ability to absorb Kryptonite radiation. Lex, in a major Xanatos Gambit, forces her to choose between saving Metropolis by absorbing Kryptonite radiation from a bomb or walking away; she chooses the former, thereby absorbing enough Kryptonite radiation so that Clark can't come within an inch of her ever again. She then leaves Smallville for good.

  • Action Girl: Tries hard to become one, especially in Season 8.
    • Dark Action Girl: In early Season 7, Lana, traumatized by her treatment from Lex, seeks revenge against the Luthors, and attempts to become this trope for a while (including one moment where she smacks Lionel in the face with a shovel), culminating in "Wrath", when she absorbed some of Clark's powers and became Drunk with Power, before being downgraded back down to her usual self.
  • Alliterative Name
  • Bookworm: As Clark observes in Season 1, when the world starts to disappoint her, she retreats into books.
  • Broken Bird
  • Butt Monkey: Supposed to be The Woobie, but really comes off more like this.
  • Corrupt the Cutie: After Season 3, Lana came back from Paris Darker and Edgier. Gradually, over the course of the middle seasons, Lana seemed to embody this trope more and more, especially following her relationship with Lex.
  • Darker and Edgier: Upon returning from Paris with a revamped wardrobe at the beginning of Season 4, we meet the "new" Lana. And again in Season 8, when The Bus Came Back and we meet the "newer" Lana, after her Training from Hell.
  • Designated Girl Fight: With Tess, in Season 8.
  • Designated Victim
  • Damsel in Distress: For most of Seasons 1-7, despite her near-episodic protests to the contrary.
  • Doom Magnet: Between frequent bouts of Stalker with a Crush, Lionel and Lex's manipulations, and people out to hurt Clark through her, she probably counts.
  • Easily Forgiven: In one episode, Lana decides to snoop around Chloe's computer and browses through her private files, viewing some pictures with very heavy emotional significance for Chloe. At first Chloe gets upset... but then she very quickly forgives Lana, and even declares that she's going to consider Lana her sister from now on (going as far as to add her to the family tree project she makes for a school project). This was just one of many occasions where Chloe easily forgives Lana despite Lana treating Chloe badly.
    • In early Season 7, she makes off with $10 million from Luthor Corp, bashes an elderly man in the face with a shovel (granted, it was Lionel, but by that time he'd reformed), shoves Lois Lane through a glass door with super-strength and injures her, and comes close to murdering Lex. It takes just one episode before she is firmly back on everyone's pedestal.
    • She also emotionally manipulated Clark constantly for virtually the entirety of her run on the show (although you could make a case for her being more innocent in Season 1), constantly stringing him along, demanding that he allow her to invade his privacy, and doing incredibly passive-aggressive things just to spite him. Through it all, Clark kept coming back for more, and continued putting Lana on a pedestal.
  • Even the Girls Want Her: Christ but doesn't everyone!
  • Girl Next Door: Literal to Clark and figurative in how down to earth she is supposed to be seen.
  • Grand Theft Me: In Season 4, thanks to Margaret Isobel Thoreaux. See Isobel's entry for more on that.
  • Horrible Judge of Character: Dated Whitney, Adam, Jason, and married Lex, while distrusting Clark. And oh yeah, mistook Bizarro Clark for the real thing.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: With Whitney and later with Clark.
  • Hypocrite: She complains constantly about Clark and Lex hiding things from her, but the minute she has a secret (the black spaceship, the fact that Lex is still alive, etc.), she goes out of her way to hide it from Clark.
    • Which also makes her Too Dumb to Live, since in those situations Clark is probably the first person she should be talking to, as he actually has a proven track record of saving her from these situations.
  • Important Haircut: In Season 8, when she sheared off most of her hair, leaving it much shorter, after escaping from Tess.
  • It's All About Me: Dear Lord, Lana, it's not all about you for crying out loud! Sadly, the other characters seem to happily indulge Lana's It's All About Me mentality. They continually shower her with unwarranted praise and apologies, and elevate Lana's desires above everyone else's.
  • The Load: In the early seasons; somewhat mitigated by Seasons 7 and 8.
  • No Sympathy: Especially for Clark, but Chloe gets hit with this a lot as well. Basically due to Lana's It's All About Me mentality.
  • Out-Gambitted: Season 8. She believed that stealing the Prometheus skin graft from Lex would a) leave him to die of his injuries while b) allowing her and Clark to be together. Instead, it allows Lex to infect her with Kryptonite, permanently ending her relationship with Clark.
  • The Ojou
  • Princess Phase: Her first scene of Smallville shows her as a child of 3 years old, pretending to be a fairy princess. Throughout Season One, the townspeople still view Lana as some sort of princess archetype, and treat her accordingly.
  • Put on a Bus: And the Fandom Rejoiced...
  • Race Lift: Is a red-headed Caucasian in the comics, but portrayed by Kristin Kreuk, who's Asian-Canadian (albeit with Dutch ancestry, as well).
  • Really Gets Around: Has dated more men than the rest of the female cast combined. Whitney --> Clark --> Adam (sort of) --> Jason --> Clark --> Lex --> Clark. She's almost never without a relationship, in fact. Co-dependent much?
  • Revenge: Wants it on Lionel and Lex at differing points.
  • Secret Keeper: starting on late Season 6.
  • Stepford Smiler: Outwardly very sweet and friendly, but hides a lot of emotional baggage.
  • Training from Hell: Had a former Special Forces trainer teach her to lose her Damsel in Distress status. It involved things like dunking herself in ice and holding burning hot steel in her hands.
  • Too Dumb to Live: On the trope page itself, after listing several generic actions as examples that a generic character is this, there is simply: "Being Lana Lang." No further explanation necessary.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Between Seasons 7 and 8, courtesy of Training from Hell. It doesn't put her on the level of the other characters, but it does make her marginally more useful... at least, until Lex's Xanatos Roulette comes into play and results in the kryptonite poisoning...
  • Unwitting Pawn: Of Lex, frequently.
  • Waif Fu: Season 3 and onward. A trait often mocked by the fans. Especially since she managed to beat the snot out of a large goon after only one lesson from Lex. Mind you, Lex is the guy who keeps getting knocked unconscious in every episode, so how he managed to train Lana to be this effective after one lesson is anyone's guess.
  • Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?: Oh my, Lana was the queen of this trope. Let's recap:
    • First she was a coffee shop waitress.
    • Then she co-owned and was the full-time manager of the Talon, while still a freshman in high school (which really begs the question: if Lana and virtually every worker we saw were all teenagers, and Lex maintained a strictly hands-off partnership, how exactly did the Talon stay open during school hours?)
    • Then in Season 3, she got bored with being a small business owner and suddenly decided to be a professional artist, and even got accepted into a famous art school in Paris, despite having no experience or any prior artworks that she could have used in her portfolio during the application process.
    • Then she forgot about her ambition to be an artist and started training to be a freaking astronomer.
    • After tiring of this, she took a year off to live on the Luthor fortune, before starting a foundation dedicated to helping meteor freaks to live normal lives the following season.
    • As of now, Lana is apparently working as an undercover operative for the Justice League.
  • Woman Scorned: To Clark and Lex on alternate occasions (and multiple occasions in Clark's case).

Whitney Fordman (Eric Johnson)

Lana's boyfriend during Season 1. A football jock who torments Clark after seeing him with Lana, Whitney later makes peace with Clark. After his father dies of a heart attack near the end of the first season, he decides to enlist in the Marines and asks Clark to look after Lana while he's away. He gets Killed Off for Real in Season 2 while fighting in Indonesia.

Pete Ross (Sam Jones III)

Clark's best friend since childhood. Pete finds out Clark's secret in Season 2 after he finds Clark's spaceship in a cornfield. Near the end of the third season, his parents divorce and he moves away from Smallville with his mother when keeping Clark's secret becomes too much of a burden. He returns in Season 7 and gains temporary superpowers which he uses to try and be a hero, only to get into trouble. Once back to normal, Pete leaves Smallville again.

  • Black Best Friend: To Clark.
  • A Day in The Spotlight: "Duplicity" and "Velocity". Sadly, his much trumpeted return appearance in Season 7 was more about Kara than him.
  • Deadpan Snarker
  • The Generic Guy: Was originally the laid-back one to Clark's angst and Chloe's enthusiasm, but once Lana came along, he was relegated to this status.
  • I Just Want to Be Special
  • Keeping Secrets Sucks: Pete's attempts at keeping Clark's secret absolutely torture him.
  • Power Trio: With Clark and Chloe. The three are initially seen as a trio of three nerds, despite Pete's best efforts. Eventually, they all gain popularity.
  • Product Placement: For Stride chewing gum in Season 7's "Hero".
    • And before that there was Season 2's "Hey Clark, check out the new Talon Mix!" *camera dwells on the CD for a few seconds* Clark: "Wow, I'll have to check it out!"
      • And before that, there was the most infamous line of the Season 1 finale: Pete: "Yeah! Remy Zero!!!"
  • Put on a Bus
  • Race Lift: Is Caucasian in the comics, but is portrayed by Sam Jones III, who's African-American.
  • Secret Keeper
  • Superpower Silly Putty
  • Three Amigos: With Chloe and Clark of course.
  • Token Minority
  • What Could Have Been: Considering that Pete becomes Lex's Vice President (and thus, Clark's ally in the Luthor White House) in the comics, there was so much potential storyline that could have been done to develop Pete towards his future political career. If he'd stayed on, perhaps he could have helped with Jonathan's campaign in Season 5 and subsequently worked for Martha once she became Senator. Sadly, all we got was a brief throwaway line during Pete's last episode in Season 3. Even worse: Apparently the reason Pete was written out was because the writers couldn't figure out how to fit him into the Love Dodecahedron they had planned for the next few seasons.

Chloe Sullivan (Allison Mack)

One of Clark's closest friends since the eighth grade, Chloe begins the show as a wannabe reporter with a huge crush on Clark. From Seasons 1-4, she works as a reporter at the Smallville Torch, the high-school school newspaper, and helps Clark uncover information about the Freak of the Week. As of late Season 4, she becomes a Secret Keeper for Clark and begins to play a much more important role in his life; in Season 5, after graduating high school, she starts working at the Daily Planet.

Season 6 sees major changes in Chloe's life. Supposedly having gotten over her crush on Clark, she enters into a relationship with Jimmy Olsen, with whom she had a one-night stand between Seasons 1 and 2. She also discovers the secret identities of Green Arrow and most of the Justice League, and becomes Watchtower, their Mission Control. In Season 7, Chloe leaves her job at the Daily Planet to be Watchtower full-time.

In Season 8, Chloe marries Jimmy, a relationship that ends tragically when Doomsday, who views her as his Morality Chain, murders him. Season 9 sees her withdraw from humanity in much the same way as Clark and Oliver do. Living in the center of a stream of information, she becomes someone who just watches the rest of the world go by. Entering into a relationship with Oliver helps her overcome some of this, and when he is captured by Rick Flag and the Suicide Squad, she dons Doctor Fate's helmet and uses it to exchange herself for him. She returns to free the League from the Vigilante Registration Agency's clutches mid-way through Season 10.

  • Adorkable: One of the most adorkable, if not the most adorkable character on the show.
  • Back from the Dead
  • Badass Normal: She may not be a great physical combatant, but her fearlessness in the face of danger and willingness to throw herself into it definitely qualify her.
  • Break the Cutie: Gets absolutely tortured over the course of the series, Seasons 3, 7 and 8 in particular. In the aftermath of Season 8's finale, she actually cuts herself off from humanity, and becomes a Basement Dweller (only in the figurative sense; the Watchtower loft is one of the highest points in Metropolis), spending days at a time locked away with her computers. Finally, Oliver helps her find her way back.
  • Canon Foreigner / Canon Immigrant
  • Character Development: Her crush on Clark grew to insane levels in Season 2, till the point where, in a fit of Woman Scorned, she rashly made a deal with Lionel Luthor to spy on Clark. She regretted it, and it led to a season-long Break the Cutie storyline, but she came out of it a much stronger person. She also used to be obsessed with reporting on the "meteor freaks". But in Season 4, both the revelation of Clark's powers and the killing of Alicia by a meteor freak hater causes her to change her ways.
    • Arguably, she is one of the best-developed characters on the series, especially after her Break the Cutie ordeal in Season 3.
  • The Chessmaster: Becomes this in Season 9.
  • Clingy Jealous Girl: Towards Clark, in the early years. She gets over it though.
  • Control Freak
  • Cool Loser: Arguably lampshaded in Season 4's "Spirit", where Chloe is nominated to be Prom Queen (and later wins). A bewildered Chloe is informed by Clark that she is actually a lot more popular than she ever realized, and it's even strongly hinted that the only reason why people had been afraid to openly hang out with Chloe before was because of the resident Alpha Bitch ruling the school by intimidation. Apparently, once the secret ballot afforded by the prom election came up, the Silent Majority of Smallville High seniors were quite happy to voice their support for Chloe.

Clark: "For the past 4 years, we've all been trying to break out of the categories and labels that we've been boxed into. And you're the battle cry."

  • Deadpan Snarker
  • Designated Girl Fight: With Lana, Tess and Black Canary.
  • Expy: For Lois Lane in the early seasons.
  • Faking the Dead: As of Season 10.
  • Friends with Benefits: What Chloe and Oliver try to be when they get together in Season 9, even though...
  • Geeky Turn On: In "Justice," when Cyborg reveals that he can hack into Luthor Corp's security system, Chloe breathlessly asks "You can do that?" and practically squees, in a tone of voice that leads one to believe that she definitely reacted this way.
  • Genki Girl: When she gets excited, she's really excited.
  • Girl Friday
  • Gone Horribly Right: A meta example: In the early seasons, the writers used Chloe as an Expy for Lois Lane. However, it was apparently a little too effective, and once the real Lois was introduced in Season 4, there was a very vocal faction known as the "Chlois Theorists" who refused to accept Erica Durance's Lois as the real thing, and clung to the idea that Chloe would inevitably turn out to be the "real" Lois. The producers, the writers, and even Allison Mack herself repeatedly stated that the Chlois Theory was never going to happen, but the Chlois Theorists adopted the attitude that the showrunners were simply "hiding the truth," as if this were some grand conspiracy, and insisted that by the time Smallville ended, the theory would come true (Super Secret Spoiler: It didn't). Eventually, though, the exasperated writers decided to make a joke out of it and spoof the idea in Season 8's "Hex", via a magical spell by Zatanna (everything goes back to normal by the end of course).
    • It got really wacky when the Chlois Theorists--in the face of overwhelming evidence that the theory was wrong (including direct statements by the writers)--came up with increasingly esoteric "evidence" in the show that they claimed supported the Chlois Theory. One memorable example was in an episode of Season 5 where Chloe and Lois were hanging out at the Daily Planet offices. The Theorists claimed that the fact that Lois was seen holding a softy, squishy globe while Chloe was sitting in front of a hard image of the Daily Planet globe engraved on the wall was a "clue" dropped by the writers to hint that Chloe was the "real" Lois. Yeah.
  • Grand Theft Me: Via Brainiac in Season 8. See his entry for more on that.
  • The Heart
  • Hollywood Hacking
  • Hollywood Nerd
  • Hot Scoop
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: With the exception of Jimmy, every important male in her life towers over her.
  • Keeping Secrets Sucks: Keeping Clark and later Davis' and the League's secrets repeatedly ruin Chloe's life. By Season 9, she's lost her ex-husband and all but cut herself off from the world in order to better serve her function as Watchtower.
  • Loving a Shadow: In Season 8, with Davis.
  • Miss Exposition: Some people on message boards affectionately nicknamed her "The Exposition Queen", until her detractors began using it to make fun of her. Krypton Site even banned the term eventually.
  • Mission Control: For the Justice League.
  • Morality Chain: For Davis/Doomsday in Season 8.
  • Nerds Are Sexy
  • Plucky Girl
  • Pride: Her Fatal Flaw, if Desaad is to be believed.
  • Power Strain Blackout: When she first uses her healing power, she collapses so completely that doctors think she's dead.
  • Put on a Bus
  • The Rival: To her own cousin Lois for a while when it came to being a reporter.
  • Secret Keeper: For Clark and the Justice League.
  • Secret Relationship: With Oliver in Season 9. It doesn't last -- the secret, that is.
  • The Smart Guy
  • Smug Snake: A rare heroic example. She may be Adorkable but her smirk and condescending attitude sometimes just make you want to reach through the television and punch her in the face.
    • Actually lampshaded in-universe in Season 10. In the episode where Desaad attempts to corrupt Clark's allies by exploiting each of their greatest character flaws, Desaad (who can read minds) notes that Chloe's greatest character flaw is arrogance. That being said, Chloe is usually nice enough that it's forgivable.
  • Techno Wizard
  • Took a Level in Badass: By Season 9. She still gets her ass kicked by Tess, but the fact that she doesn't die inside of about a minute says a lot about how far she's come. And by Season 10, she's holding her own against the likes of armed thugs and FBI Agents.
  • Unlucky Childhood Friend: To Clark, although it's at least partially her own fault.
  • Voice with an Internet Connection
  • Woman in White: Season 10's "Collateral" and "Masquerade".
  • The Woobie: Chloe really gets put through a lot over the course of the series.
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