(First post of two [I hope], since my comment was apparently too long.)
This is powerful and moving and very, very beautiful. Brainiac reappearing brought them full circle, which seems only right, and I loved Lex keeping a cool head and thinking to activate the cave wall to protect Clark. (It also feels very right that that's how this Lex would lose his hand -- protecting Superman, rather than protecting himself from Superman.) And the Clark/Lex confrontation is wonderful.
“If you had told me,” Clark continued – and here was all his grief, raw in his voice and on his face – “I could have salvaged something. Even bits and pieces of Krypton. Instead it’s all gone.”
Lex swallowed, like drinking acid. “I didn’t trust you.” There it was, the truth of his heart, the worm that had burrowed inside him all these hard seasons. He’d told himself that Clark would never trust his judgment, never agree to the necessity of using the Eradicator, and that was probably true. But truer was that Lex hadn’t dared to ask. He hadn’t given Clark the chance to believe in him or betray him, and so he’d exorcised the ghost of a world, even though its son still needed to hear its stories.
Personally, I see this as the flip side of Clark never having trusted Lex with the truth of his identity, so I can't bring myself to blame Lex for it. Neither of them trusted the other enough when he should have.
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This is powerful and moving and very, very beautiful. Brainiac reappearing brought them full circle, which seems only right, and I loved Lex keeping a cool head and thinking to activate the cave wall to protect Clark. (It also feels very right that that's how this Lex would lose his hand -- protecting Superman, rather than protecting himself from Superman.) And the Clark/Lex confrontation is wonderful.
“If you had told me,” Clark continued – and here was all his grief, raw in his voice and on his face – “I could have salvaged something. Even bits and pieces of Krypton. Instead it’s all gone.”
Lex swallowed, like drinking acid. “I didn’t trust you.” There it was, the truth of his heart, the worm that had burrowed inside him all these hard seasons. He’d told himself that Clark would never trust his judgment, never agree to the necessity of using the Eradicator, and that was probably true. But truer was that Lex hadn’t dared to ask. He hadn’t given Clark the chance to believe in him or betray him, and so he’d exorcised the ghost of a world, even though its son still needed to hear its stories.
Personally, I see this as the flip side of Clark never having trusted Lex with the truth of his identity, so I can't bring myself to blame Lex for it. Neither of them trusted the other enough when he should have.