Episode 4.17: Onyx

When an experiment involving kryptonite goes wrong at Luthercorp, it splits Lex into two, one good and one evil. The evil Lex locks the good Lex up in his wine cellar the goes around causing all kinds of trouble. He makes an advance towards Lana then threatens to sell the Talon when she pushes him away. Then he challenges his dad to a sword fight, using it to bring Lionel's dark side bubbling back to the surface. He tries to kill Clark and Chloe, which reveals Clark's secret to him. And finally, using a kryptonite ring, he tries to force Clark into joining him in taking over the world. Clark eventually succeeds in bringing the two Lex's back together but some of the damage that evil Lex caused cannot be undone. Lionel has gone back to the dark side.

I love this one! We get to see Lex go full-on comic book level of villainy. The scene where he brings Clark to his knees with the kryptonite ring feels like it was ripped straight out of the pages of DC's Superman comics. And we get that great line, "I am the villain of the story!" Rosenbaum is definitely having fun in this one and it really shows. But with evil Lex we also get good Lex, which tells us that there is most definitely as much potential for good in the man as there is to do evil.

One of the most painful things about this episode is seeing good Lex starting to forgive and help his father, only for evil lex to come along and take a great big dump on it all, to the extent of bringing Lionel back to his evil self. Every time redemption seems just within reach of these two men, fate, the universe, or whatever you want to call it, seems to have other ideas. The fencing match between Lex and Lionel feels like a callback to one they had in the first season, only this time the power dynamics have shifted, with Lex commanding the floor and Lionel having something at stake.

Something I noticed about this episode is the fact that there are none of the usual subplots. There are usually several different stories going on at once. For instance, there is no Jason or Genieveve in this one. Everything that happens is directly related to the two Lex's. It makes Onyx feel both highly focussed and much more self contained than the average episode. It would have made a great idea for a feature length Smallville movie if they'd have decided to flesh it out some more. That's not to say that it isn't already well developed but I can't deny the idea of them developing movies based around the show would have got me excited.

I did roll my eyes a bit when, once again, they use the old faithful "memory loss" trope to bring everything back to the status quo at the end. Everything except Lionel that is! And I find it amusing that Lex only makes black kryptonite through a very carefully calibrated heating up of the meteor rock yet Clark creates it in a second with his heat vision. Even so this remains a classic episode.

10/10