PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*
"Exodus" for the most part delivers on the major conflict established in Season 2: that a computer-intelligence dwells in the star-vessel and that it has plans for the Last Son of Krypton.
The least consequential subplot of "Exodus" is the outcome of Chloe's antagonism toward the Clark-Lana romance. She witnesses the two of them kissing in secret, and because they put off revealing the truth, Chloe has a major blowup at Clark and later goes to Lionel to accept his offer. Parenthetically, this tumult somehow keeps her normally alert journalist's ear from hearing about big developments at the Kent Farm.
B-Plot Number Two concerns the Lex-Helen relationship. Lex confesses that he did break into the good doctor's office and steal the sample, though he returns it to her with the claim that he didn't have the blood analyzed. Helen initially refuses to forgive Lex and the wedding seems in peril. Later she seems to make her peace with Lex and the two fly off in a plane to elope. But in the cliffhanger ending, Lex finds himself alone in a plane plummeting to a seeming doom, prefiguring the revelation that Doctor Bryce is not so nice.
Lionel seems to mostly forget about his son's impeding nuptials due to his investigation of the cave-glyphs. In fact, he's so inordinately pleased with his next gambit that he atypically brags about it to Clark, despite suspecting that Clark is a potential enemy. Lionel somehow figured out, when he had possession of the Kryptonian Key, that it might unlock the caves' secret. Having lost the real key to a member of Clark's family, Lionel jury-rigged a duplicate, one made from some of the kryptonite in his possession.
And finally, Plot A. Clark descends into the cellar, and the ship talks to him the way the Fortress of Solitude talked to the 1978 Superman: through an AI based on the consciousness of the long dead Jor-El. The computer voice confirms earlier suspicions: the Jor-El AI expects the Last Son of Krypton to become the ruler of the lesser mortals of Planet Earth.
Clark, tormented by fears of somehow endangering his family, resorts to stealing Lionel's duplicate key in order to destroy the super-powered ship. This proves to be a true "Oedipus at the Crossroads" situation, for the very effort of trying to prevent catastrophe causes it, injuring both parents and causing Martha to lose her baby. The Kent farm is destroyed and the ship seems to be gone. Yet the Jor-El AI still proves able to communicate with Clark, possibly through the "S" sign that the ship tattoos upon the young man's chest. The episode ends with Clark trying to anneal his pain by donning a red kryptonite ring, getting hold of a motorcycle from somewhere, and riding off into the sunset. He leaves behind an uncomprehending Lana, after having given her a "don't-touch-me-I'm poison" routine. This interaction strangely echoes the way Lana was literally poison to Clark as long as she wore the necklace of meteor-rocks.
I frankly have no memory of how the AI's mission was explained or dispelled in future seasons. That future plotline may or may not have a good mythic payoff. But the setup certainly has one. Most SMALLVILLE viewers would have been fully aware of the way the Jor-El AI in SUPERMAN '78 works to set the hero on his lofty, self-sacrificing mission. Now, not only do the SMALLVILLE producers invert that trope by having the AI urge the Last Son to become a tyrant, they have the ghostly father voiced by Terence Stamp, who played the world-conquering Zod in the first two Chris Reeves movies. Additionally, though a lot of episodes only required Tom Welling to look earnest or fearful, he did a fine job of capturing Clark's juvenile turmoil, though at age 26 he wouldn't have too many more years where he could credibly play a high school student.
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