Though he’s not a primary villain for the next couple of seasons, Brainiac is still lurking in the background as he tries to find a way to regain his human form and his strength. Eventually a part of him ends up in Chloe and through her he releases yet another one of Superman’s most notorious villains – Doomsday. Brainiac is essentially a sentient supercomputer, which makes him an incredibly intelligent and cunning villain to beat.
Phantom Zone Escapees
When Clark returned from the Phantom Zone in season 6, he accidentally brought a bunch of baddies back with him. While most of these intergalactic criminals were easily taken care of within an episode, tracking them all down still proved to be a massive undertaking for Clark and Chloe. From Aldar (a wonderful guest appearance by Dave Bautista), the bone sucking menace to Gloria, whose love of plants and distaste for men might just put Poison Ivy to shame, these weekly villains proved to be entertaining villains to watch.
General Zod and His Disciples
Smallville’s take on General Zod is a little…different, but that doesn’t mean he and his disciples aren’t still powerful adversaries. A couple of Zod’s disciples first arrive in season 5, Aethyr and Nam-Ek. Unlike Zod himself and his other followers, these two weren’t sent to the Phantom Zone. Instead they survived the destruction of Krypton in a black ship (the same black ship that Brainiac arrives on) that crashes into Smallville during another meteor shower.
Zod’s followers try (and ultimately fail) to bring Zod and the others back from the Phantom Zone, despite their best efforts. Brainiac does succeed though, and brings Zod back into Lex Luthor’s body for a time. Despite Zod’s military prowess, Clark is able to defeat Lex Zod and return him to the Phantom Zone before he achieves his goals of remaking Earth into a new Krypton.
At the end of season 8, a young Zod clone is brought to life from a Kryptonian orb and becomes one of the primary villains of season 9. This clone only retained the original Zod’s memories up until the point of DNA extraction, which was when Zod was only a Major. Clone Zod doesn’t remember his role in Krypton’s downfall, only that he hates Jor-El for refusing to resurrect his son. This version of Zod also doesn’t have his Kryptonian abilities thanks to blue Kryptonite, thus begins his plan to replace the Earth’s yellow sun with a red one.
Davis Bloome a.k.a. Doomsday
In season 8 we discovered that Clark wasn’t the only Kryptonian lifeform who arrived on Earth in his ship. It turns out that Zod attached the combined genetic material of himself and his wife Faora to the ship before it left Krypton. This genetic material, which was also combined with the DNA of some ferocious monsters, eventually became a young boy who grew up to be Davis Bloome. At first Bloome didn’t know of his true Kryptonian nature, nor that he was made to be Kal-el’s undoing, but a Brainiac-possessed Chloe awakens the dormant beast within him transforming him into Doomsday. Clark eventually defeats Doomsday by using black Kryptonite to separate Davis from the monster within and burying said monster deep within the Earth’s crust.
