Waller walks out of the room and closes the door behind her. Tess is waiting in the hall outside. Waller greets her: "Agent Mercer, it's been a long time." Tess says nothing. As she turns to follow Waller, we see Mercer's badge identifying her as a member of Checkmate. Ominous music! Close-up of the chess piece symbol! The end.

As a standalone, this "movie" was pretty fun and engaging, for the most part. But as a part of Smallville, it's a bit problematic. We're 11 episodes into possibly the last season and they're just now introducing these huge plots. The show already does a crap job of showing what Zod and Tess are up to on a regular basis (instead, we just hear about it after the fact) and now there's Amanda Waller and Checkmate to add to the off-screen goings-on. You know what this means? Get ready for even more exposition where characters talk about interesting-sounding things they've done but that we never actually get to see. But, like I said, it was mostly fun, which is rare these days for this show. So... thumbs up.

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Tippi Blevins wrote this entire recap in a gruff voice. You can reach her at b_tippi[at]yahoo.com or on Twitter.