20 Best Superman TV Episodes Of All Time

Smallville's 100th episode promised a lot of things, not the least of which was that one character would die. Shocking character deaths are a mainstay on television these days, but something like this in the untamed wilderness of 2006 was a little less common. But it's how "Reckoning" presents its death that is truly fascinating, as the episode begins with what feels like a dream.

Clark has taken Lana to the Fortress of Solitude, revealed his secret and asked her to marry him. Better yet, she accepts and later we learn that Jonathan has defeated Lex in the ongoing election for a new Kansas State senator. Everything is going great.

That is, until a series of events put Lana into the path of Lex and she is killed in a car accident. Using some traditional Smallville timey-wimey hijinks, the events are erased and the second timeline unfolds differently and in place of Lana, Clark's longtime adoptive father figure is taken instead.

It's a heart-wrenching and devastating conclusion to Smallville's centennial, as the moral compass of the show meets a tragic end. Though John Schneider would return in various forms, the loss of Jonathan in Clark's life forced him to grow up faster than he had anticipated. It was a crushing, but necessary blow that was needed to push Clark into the next phase of his journey.