Smallville is certainly sexing things up this season, because Lois Lane (Erica Durance) is prancing through Luthor Manor dressed as a French maid, complete with feather duster. She’s looking for information about Chloe’s whereabouts when Tess walks in and the two have a heated exchange of words. I smell a world-class catfight in their future. Tess has Lois escorted out of the building.
Speaking of Chloe (Allison Mack), she’s being held in Montana and the government is running tests to study just how powerful her brain is. It turns out she’s smarter than a super computer, and the government agent offers her a choice: spend the next year using her gifts to help get back into the good graces of the United States, or spend 20 years in jail.
The Justice League is back at Oliver Queen’s apartment, trying to track Clark. Dinah wants to give up, suspecting he might be dead, but Oliver vows to keep looking. We also learn Cyborg and Impulse are searching the southern hemisphere, which is code for those actors not being available to appear in this episode.
Where is Clark? He’s doing manual labor in Russia, of course. He’s paying off a debt for rescuing him, but for some reason, he’s not simply using his super powers to escape. Clark (Tom Welling) tries hijacking a jeep, but gets stopped and beaten up by his captor. The Russian, sporting one of the worst accents ever, warns Clark, “You try that again Johnny Appleseed, I’ll be not so nice.”
In Montana, the government agent wants Chloe to crack an algorithm to find three cell phone numbers used by terrorists. She gets the first one, and we then see Lex’s goons capture Aquaman, who’s in the middle of a shower in Norway. Congratulations Smallville on the season’s first piece of gratuitous male hotness. The second cell phone number Chloes cracks belongs to Black Canary, who is captured in Greenland. Halfway through the final number, Chloe realizes it’s Oliver’s and discovers she’s not a prisoner of the government, but of LuthorCorp. She tries to escape, but gets re-captured by Regan.
Clark is still getting his butt kicked by the Russians when Oliver shows up, posing as some rich kid who wants to buy some black market caviar. He stages a fight with Clark, then demands he get to take the prisoner to finish him off. Once safely aboard Oliver’s private jet, Clark exposits that his powers and the Fortress are gone, and that he is wary that Lex may have also survived. Oliver has discovered Chloe wasn’t arrested by DDS, leading them to assume Lex’s people have her. Miraculously, Oliver deduces she must be in Montana, because it’s the only LuthorCorp compound his Justice League has yet to invade. Black Canary and Aquaman are MIA, but they still vow to bust in, even though Clark is now useless.
In Montana, Regan interrogates Black Canary and Aquaman, who are tied up. They put some pants on Aquaman, but decided to leave him without a shirt. They get nothing, but Regan goes back to Chloe and injects her with some mind control serum developed from Chloe’s meteor freak mother’s spinal fluid. He orders her to finish the last phone number, and they learn Oliver is already in the building. So is Clark, who somehow bumps into Lois, who’s posing as a guard to bust Chloe out herself.
Lois and Clark find Chloe safely, and then Clark goes back for Oliver. Unfortunately shortly after finding his Justice League buddies, Regan injects Green Arrow with the mind control serum and orders him to find out what happened to Lex. When Green Arrow finds Clark, he asks, and when Clark refuses, he fires a warning arrow into Clark’s shoulder. Green Arrow asks again, and with no response, he shoots an arrow right through Clark’s chest.
Green Arrow recovers from the serum and laments his action. Chloe shows up and tries to use her healing power, but it doesn’t work. Clark is dying and his life flashes before his eyes, or at least Lana and his parents do. Just then, Martian Manhunter (Phil Morris) appears and flies Clark’s body into space.
Clark wakes up at the Kent farm and learns Martian Manhunter took him to the sun to rejuvenate his powers, meaning Clark’s super powers have returned. But on the other hand, the sun has the opposite effect for Martian Manhunter, so he is now powerless. I’m assuming that’s on a time delay, otherwise there’s no way he could’ve made it back to Earth. Clark also uses his near-death experience to realize he needs to separate from the past, so he’s giving up the farm.
Tess has taken up residence in Luthor Manor, and while there’s no sign of Lex, her team did find a mysterious foot print and a shining Superman logo-shaped crystal. At the Talon, Chloe and Jimmy (Aaron Ashmore) reunite and, with some time to think, Jimmy says he may have rushed the proposal and withdraws it. Chloe says “Yes,” but not to his withdrawal. She realized in captivity that he’s perfect for her, so she says “Yes” to the proposal.
Clark meets up with the Justice League to go over the fact that Lex is still out there, and since LuthorCorp has seen their faces, they all decide to split up and look for Lex on their own. Black Canary also suggests Clark get a form-fitting homemade outfit to go along with his double identity like the rest of them.
Finally at the Daily Planet, Clark and Lois talk about their acts of heroism in Montana. She’s shocked to discover that Clark actually filled out the job application and is now a reporter for the Daily Planet.