We so are! And I think it's clear that Jor-El is *not* controlling human destiny. He has visionary access to it, not complete power over it. If you actually listen to the words he says and not the 'scary all-powerful' voice he says it in, they are quite benign.
Your propaganda campaign has been successful! Though actually, I wrote this and then went and rewatched a bunch of episodes from earlier in the season and I'm not 100% sure, now, of Jor-El's benign intent--in a couple of crucial scenes he's given the same dialogue that Lionel says to Lex in "Lexmas," which is a chilling parallel that can only be deliberate on the writers' part.
The very fact that Jor-El showed Clark how to change things so it wasn't Lana, shows that even if he *does* have the power to 'take' a life (which I don't think he does), he was not hell-bent on making it the love of Clark's life. If he was really such a vindictive bully, he could have stonewalled when Clark came to him and given him the whole 'you need to accept your destiny' tirade. He really didn't.
But someone has a theory--I can't remember where I read it, in the comments on latxcvi's or khohen1's essays on this episode, maybe?--that the "reset" was Jor-El's plan all along. (He did call it "one final trial," or something like that.) And if Jor-El is still controlling Lionel in any way, he *could* have been manipulating Jonathan into a situation where he would have a heart attack.
I completely thought Jor-El wasn't manipulating things when I originally wrote this essay, but as usual after reading everyone's theories I'm now completely unsure what I think!
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Your propaganda campaign has been successful! Though actually, I wrote this and then went and rewatched a bunch of episodes from earlier in the season and I'm not 100% sure, now, of Jor-El's benign intent--in a couple of crucial scenes he's given the same dialogue that Lionel says to Lex in "Lexmas," which is a chilling parallel that can only be deliberate on the writers' part.
The very fact that Jor-El showed Clark how to change things so it wasn't Lana, shows that even if he *does* have the power to 'take' a life (which I don't think he does), he was not hell-bent on making it the love of Clark's life. If he was really such a vindictive bully, he could have stonewalled when Clark came to him and given him the whole 'you need to accept your destiny' tirade. He really didn't.
But someone has a theory--I can't remember where I read it, in the comments on
I completely thought Jor-El wasn't manipulating things when I originally wrote this essay, but as usual after reading everyone's theories I'm now completely unsure what I think!