Lex Luthor is a major antagonist in the Tomorrowverse.
He is the corrupt CEO of LexCorp exposed by Lois Lane in the beginning of the film, he seemingly allies with the up and coming superhero known as Superman to stop Parasite, but has his own ulterior motives.
He is voiced by Zachary Quinto in Superman: Man of Tomorrow and Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part One, and by Corey Stoll, who also played Darren Cross in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Uncle Junior in The Many Saints of Newark, in Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Three.
Biography[]
Superman: Man of Tomorrow[]
Lex Luthor was the charismatic CEO of LexCorp, an influential large corporation based in the city of Metropolis in the U.S. At some point, he set up the Luthor Journalism Scholarship to help emerging university students and became acquainted with Lois Lane, the winner, though they lost contact several months prior to the events of the film.
Luthor eventually helped fund a successful campaign for the U.S presidency in exchange for the new president underwriting billions of dollars for a supposedly million dollar space program LexCorp in a collaboration with S.T.A.R Labs. Luthor secretly knew the rockets were faulty as the true purpose was to defraud and embezzle money for his own profit. On the day of the launch of the first of LexCorp’s rockets, carrying S.T.A.R Labs sophisticated orbital telescope, Luthor was giving a press conference to celebrate the occasion and declare that humanity would finally answer if there was other life in the universe before deciding to take a question from Lois Lane, who had shown up to the ceremony.
However, Lane revealed a recording of Lex, exposing his fraudulent actions and after the rocket went haywire, Luthor was arrested and taken away, though not before witnessing with everyone else, a mysterious man stopping the rocket from crashing into Metropolis. Afterwards, Luthor was sentenced to 15 years in prison. However, he would keep tabs on the mysterious “flying man” including on his fight with the alien bounty hunter Lobo, and covertly hired Lobo via a contact as his personal bodyguard after Lobo was freed from prison by the mysterious new supervillain Parasite.
Later on, when the flying man, now calling himself Superman, requested a meeting with Lex in the prison, Lex quickly deduced that Superman derived his powers from the Sun, which was why Superman needed Lex’s help to launch him into space. He exploited the opportunity to get himself released from prison with a “day pass” and headed back to his lair with Superman. After Superman informed him about his confrontations with the mysterious Parasite, who had absorbed nearly all his strength and left him drained, Luthor revealed to Superman that going to space was a flawed plan seeing as how Superman was untrained and in a fragile state and would most certainly die. Instead, he hacked security camera footage from Superman’s fight with Lobo and figured out that the S.T.A.R Labs janitor, Rudy Jones, was Parasite, having been infected with an organic matter bomb that absorbed everything in its path and melded with Jone’s DNA, turning Jones into a energy hungry monster. Lex revealed to Superman that since Jones sought to absorb everything in his path, whatever person or substance absorbed, he would also absorb the weaknesses of them and after Lobo arrived and revealed his Kryptonite ring, Lex set into motion his plan to defeat Parasite by blasting him with Kryptonite.
He had himself, Superman, and Lobo travel to the Metropolis power plant, where Lex shut down all power to the city and supercharge the plant to draw Parasite’s attention for Superman and Lobo to confront. Despite Superman and Lobo’s best efforts, Lobo’s ring was ultimately ineffective in stopping Parasite, leading Lex to deduce that there was a limit as to how long Parasite could retain Superman’s powers and weaknesses, bearing witness with Superman to Lobo getting caught in Parasite’s grasp and blowing himself up in an attempt to stop Parasite.
However, Parasite survived without a scratch and despite the U.S military’s attempts, he continued to advance towards the plant, only getting stronger by absorbing the missiles power. Lex made a call to stop the military’s offensive yet told Superman that they needed to stop Parasite before he got to the plant as Parasite would too powerful to stop if he did. As Superman distracted Parasite by letting Parasite absorb his power, Lex recovered the Kryptonite ring from Lobo’s hand and grabbed a LexCorp pulse rifle. As Superman called out to Lex to take down Parasite with the gun, Lex showed his true colors, revealing to Superman that he was playing him all along as he saw both Parasite and Superman as powerful threats, but by having the Kryptonite ring, he was the most powerful one at the moment, plugging the ring into the energy gun as a power source and after debating who was the more dangerous threat, he decided to enslave both of them. He blasted Parasite and took the monster down, but just before he could do the same to Superman, the long thought dead Martian Manhunter emerged from invisibility behind Lex to destroy Lex’s rifle and take him down, saving Superman.
However, Parasite had now awoken from being incapacitated to resume his rampage and in the chaos, Lex grabbed the Kryptonite ring and seemingly attempted to flee, only for Martian Manhunter to track him down and knock him out and tie him up. After waking though, Lex revealed to Martian Manhunter that he should have let him shut the plant down as the power plant began to undergo a meltdown, with Metropolis ultimately being saved by Jones sacrificing himself to absorb the power, disintegrating him. Lex was then presumably taken back to prison.
Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part One[]
Luthor deceives Dr. Anthony Ivo, a genius roboticist, into creating an adaptive android; as Ivo was suffering from a degenerative premature aging disease, transferring his mind into an android seemed to be his only choice to survive. Ivo creates Amazo, which had a design that would allow the android to not absorb and replicate consciousness, but super powers, intelligence, and combat skills. Luthor, however, betrayed Ivo, added a subroutine program that would make Amazo obey his commands. Ivo programmed Amazo to ensure the sanctity of life, which Luthor twisted to stealing powers from meta-humans, with the deception that the gathered energy would be used to save human lives.
Ivo contacts the Justice League, warning them, although Amazo reaches them before the warning would be useful; Amazo drains the meta-humans of the League, while Luthor arrives in a mech suit, so the stolen powers could be channeled into his machinery. After Ivo sacrifices his life to one of Amazo's attacks, which causes the android immense distress, both due to being a failure to follow his programming, and his own emotional sentimentality over the death of his "father." Amazo turns on Luthor, absorbing the powers back and restoring them to the heroes, while the League and he together cooperate to dismantle Luthor's mech suit; Luthor is defeated and taken into custody.
Amazo is invited to join the Justice League, but he politely refuses, hugging his creator's body, while noting that he will travel the universe to better understand his purpose and place in it.
Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Three[]
On the Monitor's satellite, Psycho-Pirate influenced Supergirl so that, in her rage and grief, she used heat vision to blast the Monitor, causing fatal injuries; when the Monitor died, billions of years of energy was released from his body, transmitting to the tuning towers on each Earth, then teleporting the surviving multiverse and satellite to a realm outside of existence known as the Bleed. Being in the Bleed allowed 8 months of safety from the Anti-Monitor, but the dimension's unstable nature triggered frequent natural disasters on the Earths.
Lex Luthor had founded a group of supervillains known as the Legion of Doom, sometime prior or during the Crisis. Luthor had kidnapped Psycho-Pirate and kept him imprisoned within the Legion of Doom headquarters' prison cell; Luthor would periodically torture the Pirate as to establish contact with the Anti-Monitor. Luthor would pretend to be loyal to the Anti-Monitor by giving coordinates for Earths in the Bleed for the entity to annihilate, however, when the Anti-Monitor breached the dimension long enough to destroy a universe, Luthor would analyse it to learn its powers and potential weaknesses.
Luthor allied with the heroes on the satellite, offering his expertise, and nonchalantly confessing to his regular sacrifices of multiple Earths; the heroes realised that they couldn't imprison or stop him, as the Crisis was the priority, and the pragmatic fact that they needed Luthor to survive it. Luthor explained that the Anti-Monitor still held a vulnerability to light, like the shadow demons that constituted its body, however, the light needed was more powerful than even a star. Luthor realised a solution, which was owed to the Earths bringing their own Suns that continue to exist in the same location in flux, yet the energy of 52 Suns could be absorbed by a creature that metabolises sunlight. Lois Lane angrily realises that Luthor wanted Superman to sacrifice himself for the plan out of a grudge, although Luthor claimed it was necessity with the likely death of his adversary being a bonus; despite Lois's anger, Superman agreed to Luthor's plan due to understanding there was no other option.
There was still the problem of breaching the Anti-Monitor's armour, but it was amended by the arrival of Warworld, which appeared via Zeta Waves courtesy of Adam Strange, while Martian Manhunter piloted the planet with some assistance from Lobo. Warworld's previous ruler, Mongul, had powered the planet with fear, but any strong emotion on a grand scale could be harnessed for energy. Martian Manhunter visited the imprisoned Psycho-Pirate, and after some reluctance, the villain is convinced to generate the feeling of hope across the entire multiverse.
When Superman was on the flight path to the Suns, he was overtaken by Supergirl; his cousin revealed that she was still enhanced by the Monitor's shared power, thereby would reach the Suns before him even if he tried his hardest. Superman tried to convince Supergirl to allow him to do it; yet she expressed that she is struggling with the guilt of killing the Monitor, which complicated the Crisis further, and as such she intends to atone by enduring the likely lethal consequences of absorbing so much yellow solar radiation. Superman tried to argue it was the Anti-Monitor who was ultimately responsible for his noble counterpart's death, but Supergirl remained committed and flew into the Suns; Captain Atom held Superman back to prevent his now unnecessary risk.
Psycho-Pirate emanated hope throughout every living soul in the multiverse, which gathered into power for Warworld, with its cannon firing a beam so strong it pierced straight through the Anti-Monitor's torso. Before the Anti-Monitor could recover, a supercharged Supergirl entered the hole, then unleashed 52 Suns worth of light, which obliterated the entity. Superman searched the remains and found Supergirl, yet she had died from the strain of the attack.
Reuniting on the satellite, the involved heroes and villains witness Superman's solemn wake for Supergirl. They are interrupted by the arrival of Batman's group, including John Constantine. Batman explained that Constantine was from a universe that predated the multiverse, and it was the sorcerer who inadvertently caused the creation of the multiverse by destroying a fixed point in time. The multiverse, by its very nature, was unsustainable, with infinitely branching realities becoming so abundant that it risked collapsing existence itself. Therefore, the Anti-Monitor wasn't an evil monster, but a manifestation of the universe's cosmic immune system; while its omnicide was ruthless, it was for the purpose of ensuring all reality didn't end.
Since an immune system wouldn't be limited to one protector, this was proven true in a cosmic sense as the Bleed was invaded by an additional 10,000 Anti-Monitors, each with the same appearance and powers as the one they just barely managed to destroy. The only way for any kind of survival was determined to be using the Miracle Machine, a device with godlike powers, once attempted by Brainiac in the future, and now hidden. Due to Nightshade's teleportation powers, along with Martian Manhunter's guidance, the Machine was brought to the satellite.
The Miracle Machine appeared inert, which Luthor believed was broken, but John Stewart believed it just needed a power source; the Green Lantern attempted to use his ring to charge it, but it was unresponsive to willpower. Constantine reasoned that it needed magic, so attempted to sacrifice himself by using his sorcery to charge, but again it failed, leaving a frustrated Constantine still alive. Wonder Woman understood it was magic of a divine origin it needed, so she offered her immortal demi-god life force, ending her life but successfully providing the Machine with the power.
Since a multiverse was too hazardous, the Miracle Machine was programmed to create a new singular universe, combining everyone left in the multiverse into new versions of themselves, ensuring everyone's survival, however, at the cost of losing the memories, lives, and experiences unique to their multiversal variants. As all enter the veil to become energy that would join their new sole selves, Luthor expressed confidence that he would retain his identity, even when united with other versions of himself.
As the surviving people of the multiverse are filtered into the new monoverse, the Anti-Monitors released final waves of antimatter that erased the remaining worlds and realities from the preceding orrery .
Abilities[]
- Genius-level intellect: Lex Luthor was a highly intelligent businessman who quickly learned about alien technologies.
- Charisma: Lex was also quite charismatic and polite, being a well-known public figure.
- Manipulation: Lex was a skilled manipulator, adept at exploiting opportunities to his own ends and playing Superman until it was nearly too late.
- Marksmanship: Lex was a capable and accurate marksman, as show when using a pulse rifle against both Superman and Parasite.
- Hacking: Lex also has skills in hacking technology as seen when he hacked S.T.A.R Labs security footage to discover Parasite’s true identity.
- Robotics: Lex is able to create advanced machinery, as well as program androids. While he couldn't delete programming done by experts like Dr. Ivo, he was able to input a subroutine that exploits and redefines the original programming.
External Link[]
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 Tomorrowverse Villains
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Animated Features See Also | ||
