A prediction of the future from season 1 of Smallville came true in the Arrowverse crossover “Crisis on Infinite Earths”. While Lex Luthor actor Michael Rosenbaum declined to be in Crisis, the show still found a way to address his fate: Lex has become President of the United States.
In the Batwoman episode of Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) sent The Flash’s Iris West-Allen (Candice Patton), Earth-38’s Superman (Tyler Hoechlin) and Lois Lane (Elizabeth Tulloch) on a mission to find “the paragon of truth” who could help them save the multiverse. Their search led them to Earth-167 and the Kent Farm, the home of Smallville’s Clark Kent (Tom Welling). As it turns out, Smallville’s Clark gave up his powers to have a normal life with his version of Lois Lane (Erica Durance). Later, Earth-38’s Lex Luthor (Jon Cryer) arrived and expressed disgust when he saw that Clark was willing to give up being Superman.
During his conversation with Lex, Clark mentions that he wasn’t expecting a visit from the President, which confirms that Smallville’s Lex Luthor did indeed become President at some point in Smallville’s timeline, and continues to hold the office. In a scene that took place in the distant future in the series finale, Lex was shown as the President-Elect in the year 2018, but Crisis on Infinite Earths offers explicit confirmation that it happens. However, this direction for the character was on the cards long before the finale. The idea that Lex Luthor would become the President in Smallville’s continuity was actually set up in one of its first episodes.
In just the sixth episode of the series, “Hourglass”, Clark and Lex met an old blind woman named Cassandra who could see a person’s future just by touching them. After touching Lex, she saw him dressed in a white suit at the White House. He was surrounded by flowers, but the beautiful sight turned into dark, grisly image of dead bodies everywhere, and blood raining down from the sky. Cassandra died immediately after seeing the vision, presumably due to shock. This was Smallville’s first major hint that the good-natured Lex would eventually take a villainous turn to become his comic book counterpart. In the comics, he is not only Superman’s greatest enemy, but in some stories, Lex is the President of the United States.
In the seasons that followed, Smallville dropped other teases about Lex becoming president. Lex would occasionally make jokes about his presidential aspirations, and there were other moments in the show that foreshadowed Lex taking this step as well. Regardless, Crisis still paid off a prediction that was made nearly 20 years ago and concludes the arc for this version of Lex Luthor. On the other hand, what Cassandra saw for Clark, which was a sad, long life of watching everyone around him die, was undone by Crisis on Infinite Earths.
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