Few things are more devastating to a television fan than finally getting the couple you’ve waited years for, only to watch the writers tear them apart. In Smallville, Lex Luthor and Lana Lang’s relationship, often called “Lexana,” briefly delivered a powerful, mature dynamic that challenged both characters to grow. Their romance embodied the “beauty and the beast” archetype, where two flawed people push each other toward something better, making its eventual destruction one of the show’s most emotionally frustrating tragedies.

You know that really amazing feeling when a couple you have wanted to get together… happens? Sometimes you’ve waited years, or in the case of television shows, entire decades… then the writers do the unthinkable and give you exactly what you want, which is those two characters together. For one glorious moment, it is all bliss. Unfathomable happiness. Then… it implodes.

No? You have never experienced that calamity devised in the mind of the sadists who write television? Well, you were never a Lexana shipper during the height of Smallville’s days of glory. The writers gave it to me, and snatched it away… but that doesn’t mean I cannot enjoy it for what it was, and love its heyday, before they crushed my soul into powder and fed it to the vultures.

Set before Clark Kent became Superman and learned how to fly, Smallville was often the story of Lana Lang and Clark Kent, which is a tough sell because everyone knows Clark Kent winds up with Lois Lane. It was a redundant plot point we cycled through every few episodes and/or seasons. They would want to be together, it would not happen, it happened, they broke up… angst. But I’m an unapologetic believer in people’s potential, and what I saw of Lex and Lana together, I liked. A lot.

Why?

It started in the episode where Lana got harassed at the Talon, the coffee shop she ran, after hours. Clark was not there to save her. That was his solution to everything—to rush in and protect people, rather than enabling them to protect themselves. But Lex did something more for Lana. Something different. He handed her the tools to empower herself. He buckled a pair of boxing gloves on her, and told her to have at a punching bag. That’s what I liked about him, and about them, as individuals and as a couple. Lana would play the victim, feeling resentment for needing to be saved, and needing to be saved, over and over again. Lex never treated her that way. He always demanded she do something for herself.

When she wanted him to save the movie theater where her parents met out of sentiment, he told her that wasn’t good enough, and to come up with a business proposal. This spurred her to create a coffee shop, which she managed for him. It gave her a purpose in life, a job, and it inspired her to be better and stronger; to become more self-reliant and ambitious. Then, he helped her learn to defend herself—not by ‘saving’ her but showing her how to kick box, so the next time she had trouble at the Talon, she could handle it herself. Without needing him or Clark.

She had a similar effect on Lex, since she urged him to be better. Lana encouraged him to rise above his petty playboy reputation and grow a moral spine. She pushed him to be honest with people. She encouraged him to be something other than what his father tried to groom him toward, which was a ruthless businessman. I liked them together, because they challenged each other, completed each other, and nudged each other out of their comfort zones, to be something “more.” She was in a rut with Clark, but not with Lex.

Which is why it upset me so much that the writers took all of that and ruined it. They gave me what I wanted, Lex and Lana as a power couple, and unraveled my heart one strand at a time with the gradual realization that Lex had been lying to her the entire time. The writers chickened out on something good, a chance to explore darkness and what it means for two people. They wanted shock value and betrayal, and ruined Lana. The girl so moralistic and determined to have an honest relationship, becomes a wrathful, vengeful person, with the idea that Lex “did this” to her through his betrayal. It wasn’t consistent with their character arcs up to that season. It bothered me to watch that potential flushed down the drain.

The tragedy of Smallville is that Lex will become a villain. It’s inescapable. He will become Superman’s greatest enemy. But I yearned to see him saved. Cheered on his moments of goodness and fretted over his mistakes. Lana was his connection to humanity, in a less preachy way than Clark. She was a voice of compassion and reason he would listen to, and he was there to help her find her own feet, her courage, and her strength. I value that in them, still to this day, because it was real.

I’ve always thought the best relationships are the ones where the two people involved push each other to become better. I’ve been blessed to see this in my own parents’ relationship. They have little in common and wildly diverse personalities, but I’ve seen how they have rubbed off and improved each other in important ways. It’s said you are most like the people you spend the most time around, and that is true of my parents. They improve each other for the better. So I look for that in relationships. It’s often a key component of whom I decide to “ship.” It isn’t just about how cute they look together, or the amount of sexual chemistry, but… do they improve each other as human beings?

I especially like the archetype of ‘beauty and the beast’ where the feminine energy softens the masculine energy and drives the man to become a better person than his previous self. This happens between Rey Skywalker and Ben Solo, where she urges him to return to his morality (and saves his soul in the process). It happens with Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester, where her goodness finds its reward in their eventual happiness (if she had given in to him, they would have come to despise each other). It happens in You’ve Got Mail, where Joe Fox gives Kathleen the tools to save her business (even though she folds) and then tries to become a better person and redeem himself, after he crushes her heart. It happens in Beauty and the Beast, where Belle breaks the enchantment over a castle and gets a spoiled prince to fall in love with her enough to let her go, when it might ruin his chance to break the curse.

Part of me romanticizes the idea of saving a bad boy, even though I have no interest in a romantic relationship. It’s a theme in my novels, where a virtuous woman tries to soften and tame an unscrupulous man. It’s my favorite trope, and “Lexana” fits beautifully into it. It does not give me the happy ending I seek, but I enjoy what might have been in the early days of their friendship. That is where it started. Friends. Little by little, creeping into one another’s lives, inspiring each other to greater heights, arguing and making up, having misunderstandings until that wonderful moment beside the fireplace where they first kiss.

No matter what happened later, I still have that perfect moment.

Written for the Lovely Blog Party.

About the Author: Charity Bishop writes historical fiction, historical fantasy, and suspense novels that explores the darkness in human hearts, and the light that refuses to be extinguished. Discover her books.