Two of the most central characters to the TV show Smallville – Kristin Kruek’s Lana Lang and Michael Rosenbaum’s Lex Luthor – won’t be returning next year, the show’s eighth season, according to TV Guide’s online edition. While they are negotiating how many episodes they will actually appear in, in season eight, neither will be weekly regulars after this strike-shortened season comes to an end.

Since TV Guide’s Michael Ausseillo is generally more reliable than life insurance quotes, the question now remains whether the show can maintain its popularity without two of the show’s “core four” returning.

The “core four” for Smallville have been Clark, Lana, Lex and Chloe for the past seven seasons; that list used to include a fifth, Pete Ross played by Sam Jones III, who exited after the third season. While the show can theorhetically survive without Kruek’s Lana – who, after all, is not Superman’s bride in the comics, and the show already has her replacement, Erica Durance’s Lois Lane, in place for the past several seasons – but replacing Rosenbaum’s Luthor could be the real problem.

From the debut episode, the emotional core of the show has been the almost brother-like friendship between Clark and Lex, and the devolution of that friendship into a bitter enmity that sets them up as future rivals. There is no established replacement who can play the foil to Clark at the same level that Rosenbaum’s Luthor is able to, setting up the potential for the show to become, once more, a “villain of the week” melodrama, much as it was in the first season.

Of course, the show has survived multiple exits; John Schneider’s Johnathon Kent was written out via a character death in season five, while Annette O’Toole’s Martha Kent has been largely absent throughout the current season, the show’s seventh. Yet with only Chloe Steel and Clark Kent surviving from the first season to next fall’s eighth season, it appear more likely than ever that next season could be the show’s final bow.