Previously on Smallville:

Jonathan and Martha Kent raised a cute little boy who came from outer space in a firestorm of meteors. That boy grew up to be Clark Kent, who was even mopier than the average teen. It was one day as he was moping on a bridge that sexy bald Lex Luthor hit him with his sporty Porsche. Lana Lang asked a befuddled young Clark "So what are you, man or Superman?" in one of the show's very first cheese bludgeonings. Clark inadvertently floated over his bed one morning, then spent the next ten years not flying. A computer version of his birth father told him he was the Last Son of Krypton (except for all the other Kryptonian dudes we met over the years). Jonathan Kent died. Six years ago, Clark met a Lois Lane who oddly looked ten years older than she does in the present day. Clark got a job at the Daily Planet during their "hire a nobody off the street and let them be a journalist" career fair. Clark's friend Chloe called him a superhero. Lex proclaimed himself the villain of the story. Lex made a bunch of mostly icky clones of himself just before he died in a fiery explosion. Lionel Luthor came from a parallel universe and taunted his daughter Tess Mercer and wreaked general havoc. Clark sent Zod and the Kandorians through a portal to another world and inadvertently allowed a gaseous Darkseid passage to Earth. Darkseid infected a bunch of people with "darkness" that mostly didn't change them in any perceptible way. Oliver was one of those infected but he only started acting hinky last week, thanks to Granny Goodness's control. Oliver "hypothetically" asked Clark what he would do if one of the team were infected and Clark did not respond in a particularly reassuring way. Under Granny's command, Oliver dug up some gold kryptonite that would remove Clark's powers permanently. Clark's various fathers gave him advice. Clark got tired of this and deactivated Jor-El.

Now forget almost everything you ever knew about this show because very little of it is going to make any difference at the end.

And now, the series finale of Smallville:

The episode opens with Chloe reading a bedtime story to a little blond boy. It's not Goodnight, Moon or The Velveteen Rabbit but a Smallville comic book. On the cover is an illustration of young Clark standing on the bridge, moping into the water below him, moments before he meets Lex Luthor for the first time. "This is the story of an amazing boy who grew up in the fields of Kansas in a little town called Smallville," she reads. The boy snuggles against her and gives her a big smile. His room is decorated with a solar system mobile and a bow and arrows. Chloe reads on. Clark (although he's not named in the comic as such) turned his back on his past so that he could embrace his destiny. He was such an idiot that he didn't see the darkness that was coming. (The comic book is nicer than that, but it's true.) There's an illustration of Lana and Chloe in high school, both of them more shapely than they were in real life, as well as Clark and Pete, all palling around by their lockers. It's all very cute, but wouldn't the writer, artist and publisher have to know Clark's whole story to put this together? How can he have a secret identity when anyone he went to school with is going to know it's him? How many other plaid-wearing, Lana-loving, gigantic supermodels went to Smallville High? "He was about to face his greatest challenge," Chloe reads. The boy glances up at the solar system dangling above his bed.