| “ | Dad, you have no idea what I'm capable of. | „ |
| ~ Lex to his father, Lionel. |
| “ | I am the villain of the story. | „ |
| ~ Lex Luthor to the Kent Family. |
| “ | This is Smallville! Meteor freaks, alien ships, cryptic symbols! These threats are real. Someone had to take control! Someone has to protect the world! | „ |
| ~ Lex to Clark Kent. |
Alexander "Lex" Luthor is the main antagonist of the WB/CW TV show Smallville.
Unlike most adaptations where he and Superman are enemies from the start, Lex started off as a generally heroic character and a close friend to Clark Kent. But as the series progresses, Lex and Clark's friendship ended to the point where they become bitter enemies. He also ended up making enemies of other heroes, such as Green Arrow, Aquaman, Mera, Black Canary, Cyborg, and Impulse.
He was portrayed by Michael Rosenbaum (who also portrayed Zod in the same series, another version of Lex Luthor (when possessing The Flash) in Justice League Unlimited, Adina/Adam in Sorority Boys and voiced Drago in Jackie Chan Adventures, Johnny Charisma in Batman: Arkham Knight, Lieutenant Franzee in Justice League, and Ghoul and Terminal in Batman Beyond), as Matthew Munn, Wayne Dalglish, Lucas Grabeel (who also played Conner Kent in the same series and Riff Raff in The Rock Horror Picture Show and voiced Mist in My Adventures with Superman) and Connor Stanhope played the character young. Whilst disfigured, he was played by Kevin Miller as Matt Adler provided his voice.
Biography[]
Background[]
Lex was born in 1980, the oldest son of wealthy businessman Lionel Luthor and his wife Lillian. From a young age, he had to endure his father's emotionally abusive behavior. When Lex was twelve, his mother gave birth to his brother, Julian. Tragically, Lillian killed Julian in his crib to spare him a life of being raised by Lionel, whom she feared would make their sons compete for his affection.
Knowing his father would potentially kill his mother if he learned the truth, Lex took the blame for Julian's death and eventually believed for most of his life that he had actually killed his brother.
In 1989, when Lex was nine years old, he accompanied his father on a business trip to Smallville, Kansas, where Lionel was due to buy the Ross Creamed Corn factory. As their helicopter started to land, Lex became scared and shut his eyes, drawing his father's stern criticism that Luthors weren't afraid of anything.
Moments later, while Lionel worked out his deal with the Ross brothers, Lex wandered into the nearby cornfield and came across Jeremy Creek, strung up like a scarecrow. He begged for help before meteors began striking Smallville, and one of the meteors landed dangerously close to Lex. Fortunately, Lex survived the encounter. The Kryptonite radiation of the meteor gave Lex a heightened immune system, but resulted in him losing his hair. In his teens, Lex attended Excelsior Academy, where he was bullied by Oliver Queen and was best friends with Duncan Allenmeyer. Sadly, Lex and Duncan's friendship ended badly when Lex brutally attacked and beat Duncan, who then wandered into the street and was hit by a car.
In 1999, Lex took Amanda Rothman to Club Zero, knowing she would see her fiancé Jude Royce flirting with other girls. When Jude attacked Lex, Amanda shot and killed him. The incident was covered up with help from the Metropolis Police Department and he never spoke to Amanda again.
Smallville[]
In 2001, at the age of twenty-one, Lex was sent to Smallville by his father to run the town's LuthorCorp Fertilizer Plant No. 3 and turn it around financially (something Lex saw as a punishment for not living up to his father's expectations). While driving his car, Lex ran over a roll of barbwire and ended up hitting Clark Kent then crashed into Elbow River. Clark saved him, and the two became close friends, despite the fact that Clark's father Jonathan hated the Luthor family.
Lex started off as a good person, fighting against his father, but due to a harsh childhood and bad parenting, he envied Clark and often tried to find out his secret. Their friendship crumbled completely by Season 5, and Lex was set on the road to evil. He would use and abuse people with meteor powers, just as his father would do, and he eventually murdered Lionel when he refused to reveal the identity of The Traveler (Clark) to him.
In the seventh season finale, Lex finally discovered Clark's secret, and he and Clark confronted one another inside the Fortress of Solitude. Deluded into believing that he would save humanity from Clark, Lex used a Kryptonian device to cause the Fortress to collapse and Clark lost his powers with himself and Clark still inside.
It was eventually revealed that Lex had survived the Fortress' collapse but was left severely injured. He had to rely on life support machines, his face was partially scarred and had to wear a mask, and he wore a Kryptonite ring with an "L" insignia. He still knew what was going on through cameras that he watched on monitors.
In "Requiem", Lex used Winslow Schott to assist him in his revenge against Clark, Lana Lang, Tess Mercer, and Oliver. He killed all of his previous board members when he attempted to murder Oliver at LuthorCorp with a toy bomb. Later, watching a viewscreen connected from Schott's puppet eye, Lex monitored Schott's setup of a Kryptonite bomb on the roof of the Daily Planet.
Knowing Lana had stolen his Prometheus suit, he set Clark and Lana up so that she would have to absorb the Kryptonite radiation to diffuse the bomb and, as a result, never be able to go near Clark again. Just when Clark was about to confront Lex, one of Schott's toy bombs (which Oliver placed inside the truck Lex was using as a mobile base) caused an explosion, killing Lex. Lex's remains from the charred truck were later scattered by Clark as a sign of respect for the man he once considered his best friend.
In Season 9, Lex was mentioned by Doctor Fate as being Clark's ultimate opponent in the future. Clark questioned this, believing Lex had died, to which Doctor Fate did not respond.
In the Season 10 premiere "Lazarus", while in a spiritual world seen as a cornfield with a green sky, Lex was seen by Clark among the stalks of corn. He then disappeared while Clark returned to life. Afterwards, it was discovered that Lex used Cadmus Labs to create many clones of himself with the intent of using the clones' body parts and organs to heal his own injuries, including an unstable one named LX-13.
Unknown to anyone for some time, Lex took his failed clones' best pieces to create a perfect, composite clone designated "LX-Ø". Unfortunately, he was unable to successfully duplicate a heart at the time. After Lex's masterwork was discovered by Lionel Luthor (Earth-2), Lionel's bio-medical research company Preclox tried to locate Conner Kent for a heart to give to LX-Ø, but Tess' efforts to hide Conner forced Lionel decide to use Tess instead as a last resort.
When Apokolips was approaching Earth and after Tess shot Lionel and escaped, Lionel desperately crawled toward Lex and Darkseid appeared. Lionel and Darkseid made a deal: Darkseid would give Lionel's heart to Lex while Lionel surrendered his own soul to Darkseid in the process. Thus, Lex was completely restored.
Lex met with Clark at the ruins of the Luthor Mansion and told his former friend that he had embraced his destiny as Clark's arch-nemesis and that he was aware of Darkseid and Apokolips. When Clark vowed to always be there to stop him, Lex replied that he was counting on it. After Clark apologized for failing to save him and left, Lex simply smiled. Sometime later, Lex was calmly sitting in Tess' office at LuthorCorp, where he was met by Tess. He revealed that he knew Tess was his half-sister all along. Lex then told Tess that he loved her, and the two siblings embraced. He then used the moment to stab Tess with a knife.
As Tess lay dying in his arms, Lex explained that he was saving her from becoming like him, to which she said Clark already had. Tess then rubbed a neurotoxin on Lex's face and told him that he had 30 seconds until all of his memories were completely wiped out. As Tess died, Lex forgot everything that happened throughout his life in Smallville. Lex then looked out of the office window at Apokolips while its chaotic damage damaged the LuthorCorp logo atop the building, leaving behind the name "LexCorp" in its place. In 2018, Lex is elected President of the United States and continued his run throughout 2019 as well.
Personality[]
Initially, Lex is introduced as arrogant yet charming and intelligent, holding a great deal of inner pain. Lex had set out to be a great man - a person out to do good, unlike his father.
Lex's personality traits stem from his mother Lillian Luthor's loving care and his father Lionel Luthor's neglectful, unfulfilling upbringing. As a child, Lex was very close and protective of his ailing mother yet fearful of his emotionally and physically abusive father. His father would criticize him harshly whenever he showed the slightest weakness. After losing his red hair thanks to the first meteor shower, Lex was teased mercilessly by other children for being bald. Despite his parents' contradicting methods, he was a quiet yet kindhearted little boy. After his mother's death, Lex became a calloused, alienated, and self-destructive young man. In his young adult years, he partied hard, got arrested, and was a general source of embarrassment and disappointment to his father.
But since he moved to Smallville, Lex's personality underwent many changes despite being forced to move there by Lionel. While struggling to overcome Lionel's ruthless and uncaring reputation, Lex was honest and kind, willing to use his wealth to help others. He also stopped being self-destructive, and worked hard to become a productive, valuable citizen. While Lex occasionally showed signs of the evil man he would become, his friendship with Clark helped to keep this at bay, but the evil within him was inescapable. Desperately seeking the love of a family, Lex constantly sought his father's approval and was envious of Clark's relationship with his own father Jonathan Kent. He also thought of Clark as the brother he never got to have. Additionally, his romantic relationships are intense, as he married both Helen Bryce and Lana Lang after relatively short courtships. Lex has indicated that he possesses some sort of spiritual beliefs, as he is well-versed in the Bible and has mentioned on more than one occasion that he prays.
With an extensive knowledge of the world and many skills in corporate business, certain sciences, and efficient street skills, Lex is highly intelligent and intellectual, as he quotes a variety of historical figures and often uses scholarly and literary facts to illustrate his point of view. Also, Lex is an accomplished classical piano player, enjoys fast cars, scotch, chess, pool, fencing, swordsman, marksman, and an effective hand-to-hand fighter, owing his skills to years of private tuition.
After Lex became LuthorCorp's second CEO, he began to abandon truth and justice in search of power and control, abusing his company's assets and resources to fund questionable and illegal scientific research on cloning and alien intelligence, and abandoning the company's agricultural roots and converting it into a leading military contractor, had developed prisons or laboratories on which he experimented or controlled metahumans. While Lex has killed people in the past, he became much more willing to kill or torture someone simply for making him angry or if they fail to cooperate.
While his thirst for power had become stronger and his relationship with Lana intensified, he seemed to focus more on obtaining power than Lana's difficult pregnancy (which he had faked to get Lana to marry him). Because of his thirst for power, Lex purchased the Daily Planet (Metropolis' main newspaper) and named himself CEO where he used his authority to kill stories, monitor employees' computer usage, and fire reporters.
Clark has accused Lex of being a coward, And this has been proven on several occasions.
Lex desired companionship and family in some form, but it became impossible as his deeds continued to cause those closest to him to hate him. Lex's friendships and relationships were dominated by his desire for control. He attempted to control people by offering them help, but only on his own terms. This included finding out the "truth" about people he suspects of having secrets, often investigating them without their knowledge. He couldn't abide it when people hid the truth from him, as it prevented him from achieving the control that he so greatly desired. As long as he could control someone through gifts and obligation, he would do anything in his power to protect them. As soon as he could no longer control someone, they quickly become his enemy.
As Lex continued to discover more and more of the truths that were hidden from him and his relationships continued to deteriorate, he devolved into a ruthless, cunning, manipulative, power-hungry and controlling man. Ultimately, he has become a man of pure evil. Completely devoid of inhibitions, conscience and humanity, and has been mentioned to be worse than even Lionel was before he turned good.
Lex's desire to protect people went beyond individuals. Lex viewed himself as a great man who is on a search for truth, and who wants nothing more than to help people and humanity. He was blind to the idea that his help is purely conditional: if the person he's helping doesn't completely depend on him or reveal the entire truth about their background to him, he will turn on them completely and make them his enemy. He often blamed others for not coming to him right away with the truth, or for not asking for his protection.
Lex had a narcissistic belief in his own importance and saw himself as a victim: in his mind, his relationships would have been successful if only other people trusted him or came to him for protection. He was oblivious to his own role in this dynamic, and how his desire for control consistently turned friends and lovers into enemies. The people who grew to despise him the most were Clark, Lana, Lois, and Chloe. As Lionel attempted to mend his ways, even he became increasingly disturbed by Lex's growing ruthlessness and even resented himself for having put him on that path. When Lionel discovered that Lex had his late brother Julian cloned, Lionel confronted Lex in disgust for such a twisted perversion.
As the mutual animosity between Clark and Lex grew, Lex's hatred toward Clark even became encoded in his DNA; some of his clones displayed this trait.
Perhaps Lex's most dominant trait and the one he shares in equal measure with his comics counterpart is his incredible degree of self-obsession. Lex is apparently incapable of seeing people outside of how they relate to him and believes that many, if not all, of their actions are designed specifically to hurt him. Whilst this initially seemed to simply be a result of his upbringing and playboy lifestyle, it increasingly became his main trait to the point that he saw everyone around him as extensions of himself, viewed his role as a leader only in terms of how it could benefit him and more or less believed that the world existed to serve his purposes. Conversely, Lex also has a serious inability to admit his mistakes and believe his actions are justified no matter how inhuman they are, to the point where he is almost incapable of accepting responsibility for his actions, often quick to blame his father or Clark for his own failings and accusing them of sabotaging him. This reaches its peak when he starts blaming others for his increasingly evil actions. Despite having accepted his destiny of becoming the tyrannical and ruthless leader his father originally raised him to be, Lex occasionally acknowledges the effects his thirst for power has on his ones he care about.
After having a second chance at life thanks to Earth-2 Lionel's deal with Darkseid, Lex had become a psychopath. However, he genuinely loved his half-sister Tess.
Despite having lost all of his memories thanks to Tess, Lex retained his intelligence, is seemingly still power-hungry, and does not trust Superman, seeing him as a potential threat.
Powers and Abilities[]
Lex possesses a heightened intellect. After being exposed to Kryptonite radiation when he was young, he gained a heightened immune system, as he hadn't been sick since that day. It was also revealed that he had an abnormal amount of white blood cells in his body, which allowed him to survive serious injuries.
Lex is also skilled in various forms of hand-to-hand combat, including Judo, Tae Kwon Do, boxing, swordplay, and gun handling. Much of this he first began learning when he was a young boy, as a way of defending himself from school bullies who would pick on him for his baldness.
Quotes[]
| “ | Trust me Clark. Our friendship is gonna be the stuff of legend. | „ |
| ~ Lex to Clark, discussing about their friendship. |
| “ | Friendship's a fairy tale, Clark. Respect and fear are the best you can hope for. | „ |
| ~ Lex while under Rickman's control against Clark. |
| “ | I've always been fighting my destiny. Trying to avoid becoming my father. We all have certain genes that no matter how much we want to change dominate us. | „ |
| ~ Lex explains the cause of his initial divide with Helen. |
| “ | (Martha: What do you want?) The world, Mrs. Kent. |
„ |
| ~ Lex to Martha Kent, when he was separated from himself. |
| “ | I want you to remember this day, Clark. I want you to remember that despite all your amazing powers, there was one man that beat you. | „ |
| ~ Lex when fighting Clark, when he was separated from himself. |
| “ | Well, it's not everyday one has a near death experience. And it's true, much like Ebenezer Scrooge, I realized that what I want more than anything is to live happily ever after, and do you know what the secret to happiness is? Power. Money, and power. See, once you have those two things, you can secure everything else and keep it that way. | „ |
| ~ Lex making his own realization on Christmas. |
| “ | You see, you live among us as a mild-mannered farm boy. But secretly, you're a strange visitor from another planet, plotting our demise. (Clark: That's not what I'm doing at all) It's a brilliant disguise Clark. You don't even need a mask. |
„ |
| ~ Lex confronting Clark for the first time on his secret. |
| “ | Clark Kent and Lana Lang, welcome to your destiny. You've destroyed me in every way, so now I'm going to take away what matters to you. | „ |
| ~ Lex to Clark and Lana in his final revenge on the couple. |
| “ | You know, I used to think it was our families that made us who we are. Then I hoped it was our friends. But if you look at history, the great men and women of the world have always been defined... by their enemies. | „ |
| ~ Lex's retrospective on what Clark means to him. |
| “ | Our story hasn't been written yet, Kal-El. And every villain is only as good as his hero. But, you see, that all relies on you saving us from the coming Apokolips. | „ |
| ~ Lex accepting his role as the villain while also warning him about Darkseid. |
Gallery[]
-1.jpg "Lex Luthor (Smallville)-1.jpg (13 KB)")
Trivia[]
- Zachary Levi auditioned for the role before Michael Rosenbaum was cast.
External Links[]
- Lex Luthor on the Smallville Wiki
- Lex Luthor on the Arrowverse Wiki
- Lex Luthor on the Wikipedia
