'Smallville' - Cast and Characters

Martha Kent met and fell in love with Jonathan Kent while she was a college student, and while she never questioned her commitment to Jonathan, Lionel Luthor was able to correctly discern a desire in her to be more than a farmer's wife. Drawing her into Luthorcorp as an executive assistant, Martha discovered Lionel's files on Clark and his hoarding of refined Kryptonite. Her singular devotion to Jonathan and Clark held the family together even in the darkest times, but when Clark was old enough to stand on his own she took Jonathan's place as a state senator and eventually went to Washington (and is not seen after season 6). Annette O'Toole played Lana Lang in Superman III.

Pete was Clark's exuberant, dependable best friend, and with Chloe formed a bad-guy-busting trio. But in season 2 Pete found out Clark's secret, and had difficulty accepting the fact that Clark had lied to him all this time. While he came to accept Clark being an alien, the pressure of keeping the secret and the feeling of inferiority it gave him eventually became too much for him, and he left Smallville for good at the end of season 3.

A regular in season 4, Jason met and fell for Lana in Paris and followed her back to Smallville, taking a job as a football coach to be near her. They kept their relationship a secret, since Lana was a student, but Lex found out and got Jason fired, later offering him a job himself. It turned out the Teagues were hunting a mysterious alien stone, and the elaborate web his mother weaved meant even his meeting Lana was no accident. Jason is killed during the second meteor shower at the end of the season. The following season, Ackles, who had been the runner-up for the role of Clark Kent, turned up as Dean Winchester in Supernatural.

Whitney is riding high at the start of season 1, a popular football player with the equally popular Lana Lang as his girlfriend. When he suspects Clark of horning in on Lana, he makes Clark the victim of an annual prank in which a freshman is tied up overnight in a cornfield. The lingering illness of his always-strong father causes problems for Whitney, and taking care of his father's store causes him to miss out on prospects for a football scholarship. In the end he decides to create a new future for himself by joining the Marines, leaving the series at the end of season 1 (though a couple of notable guest appearances followed). Eric Johnson later went on to play the lead in Flash Gordon.