Okay, I understand not being a paradox then, but I do cannot follow the logic that ever allows future Clark to become Superman without a time travel component. Without that there is no Superman for Clark to go visit.

Clark becomes Superman because he visits Superman. Thats all there is to it. There has always been one timeline in which past clark has visited future superman, and this visitation has enabled future superman to exist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_tr...compossibility

That is utter garbage!

Explain to me how future Clark is able to visit his future Clark without a present Clark ever becoming Superman without a visit to the future. If that never happens then there is never a future Clark for any present Clark to go visit. If that future version is never there he can't visit a successful version to reassure him that everything can be okay. It just doesn't work!

And you can't tell, well because he did visit his future self obviously he becomes Superman because it happened. That's a plot contrivance if I've ever seen one!

Saying "a" Clark is misleading in this case because it implies there bing multiple Clarks (in multiple timelines). There is only one Clark. There has only been one Clark. There will only be one Clark. There is/was/will be only one timeline. Draw a line on the paper. Every event on that line is fixed (we get into some free will issues here, but lets ignore that). Every "snapshot" of the universe on that line is fixed. At some point X in the future, the universe snapshot contains Superman. In point Y before X, the snapshot contains a wussy Clark. There is no concept of causation, or why or how. Things are just are. In one shapshot of a point (between X and Y), there are two Clarks, past, and present (superman).

You may think this visitation is what "caused" Clark to become Superman, but really there always has been THE Superman in the future, and the past has always contains THE wimpy Clark, and THE wimpy Clark has always met THE Superman, and that is when he started changing.

There is no causation in this theory...

See, that's the part I can't get behind. To say that trip has no impact - I can perhaps buy no direct 1:1 causation - doesn't sit well with me. That trip in and of itself has to impact his path to becoming that exact person in the future.

We'll get into the meaning of impact and causation here...if it helps you feel better, without the trip, we would have a contradiction in the unique universe timeline; the trip makes things consistent (past wimp, future super) and the trip is when wimp starts becoming super, and thus the "impact" of the trip.

Fantastic episode. It finally feels like Clark is MOVING FORWARD. Great to have him see Jonathan's final moments, see Lois knowing his secret and protecting him and seeing the confident Superman version of himself. Lois was great, the flashbacks were good and I loved good Braniac. Even the floating at the end was a nice touch. Just a great episode all around. Feels like progress.

Agreed.

GREAT 200th show. Honored the past and looking toward the future.

So many awesome points in the show, love time travel - it is so goofy and cool all at the same time.