Kristin Kreuk's Lana Lang played a significant role in The WB's Smallville. From her first appearnce in the pilot episode to Season 7, she was a consistent series regular. However, Lana slowly began to disappear from Smallville in Season 8, only appearing in five episodes. Let's look at how Lana Lang was written off of Smallville, and why Kreuk decided to leave the series.
How Smallville Wrote Off Lana Lang
Lana was a popular cheerleader at Clark Kent's high school. At the beginning of Smallville, the two started out as friends, but eventually, Lana became Clark's first real girlfriend. However, the two still had a rocky relationship for the first six seasons. Clark's understandable secrecy around his hidden identity caused problems for the couple, and they ended up having an on-again, off-again relationship. Eventually, Clark confided in Lana about his Kryptonian heritage in the Season 6 finale.
At the end of Season 7, though, Clark received a video message from Lana that informed him she was breaking up with him and leaving Smallville. This was the catalyst for Kreuk's departure, and while the actress did return for a few episodes in Season 8 to fully wrap up Lana's storyline, her time as a series regular was over. It was later revealed in the show that Lana didn't willingly break up with Clark -- she was forced to by Lex Luthor's men after being kidnapped by Tess Mercer. Unfortunately, even though Lana and Clark were reunited at the end of Season 8, she left once again -- this time, for good.
Why Kristin Kreuk Left Smallville
Kreuk appeared in Smallville for a total of seven years, and in a 2008 Metro interview, she explained that her decision to leave the show after Season 7 had a lot to do with that. Though she loved Smallville, she noted that she'd been playing Lana for her "whole adult life" and wanted to move on. She would elaborate, saying, "I love the people and it’s a wonderful show to work on but I realized there were things I couldn’t do due to the schedule on Smallville. Lana has changed so much since the first season so she was always fun to play. I just wanted to try something else."
As it turns out, the same interview that saw Kreuk open up about her departure from Smallville was also detailing her feature film debut, Partition. After leaving the fictional Kansas town behind, she would go on to star in plenty of films, including Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li and Vampire. Kreuk has since returned to TV and currently stars in the Canadian drama Burden of Truth.