- NOTE: This article is about the incarnation of Maxwell Lord from the Arrowverse. The mainstream version can be found here: Maxwell Lord (DC).
| “ | Human, alien, super... If you go up against me, you will lose! | „ |
| ~ Maxwell Lord |
Maxwell Lord is one of the two secondary antagonists (alongside Indigo) in Season 1 of Supergirl.
He is a tech genius and tycoon who owns his own company, Lord Technologies. Just like anyone else in National City, Lord has taken a shine to Supergirl and has now made it his life's mission to uncover her secret identity.
He was portrayed by Peter Facinelli.
History[]
Lord Tech[]
Maxwell Lord is at first seen giving an interview after Supergirl accidentally made a container ship spill its oil into the bay while trying to save it from a fire. Lord, who has pledged a cleanup fond, claims that Superman's arrival in Metropolis quadrupled the city's maintenance budgets and that National City does not need these kind of problems as well.
At Lord Technologies, Lord and a team of scientists plan a SuperTrain for National City. While planning, he is kidnapped from his laboratory by Reactron, who needs a nuclear physicist to repair the core from his suit. Reactron at first intends to take one of Lord's workers with him but Lord volunteers. At Reactron's headquarter in a scrapyard outside the city, Lord is saved by Supergirl. He later attends Cat Grant's party for the special issue of CatCo Worldwide Media's monthly magazine, dancing with Cat Grant and trying to find out how she got an exclusive interview with Supergirl. However, Grant reveals nothing. When Reactron crashes the party Lord is once again saved by Supergirl.
Testing Supergirl's abilities[]
At one point, Kara realizes that she is followed by a drone while flying through National City. She pursues and takes down the drone. Later, she saves people from a crumbling building which has been destroyed by a bomb.
As the technology from the drone is from Lord Tech, DEO agents Hank Henshaw and Alex Danvers pose as FBI agents and meet Lord. Lord reveals that he knows nothing of a drone and that the building blown up by the bomb belongs to him. To protect Lord, Henshaw leaves Alex with Lord. While at Lord Tech, security calls Lord and Alex down to level 3 where a bomb was found. The building is evacuated but Lord remains, intending to defuse the bomb himself. Alex stays with him. Eventually, Lord cuts a wire and it initially seems that the bomb is defused but seconds later the countdown goes down even faster, with only a minute remaining. To save the building and their lives, Alex calls her cousin Supergirl who arrives at Lord Tech. Lord hands the bomb to her, revealing that the Bomb would destroy the entire city should it blow up. Kara flies towards the ocean to save the city from the blast. Although she is affected by the bomb, the city is saved.
At the launch of Lords super train, Lord meets the son of Cat Grant, whom Kara was supposed to be babysitting. He and the boy enter the train, which is targeted by Ethan Knox, a former employee of Lord Tech. Once the DEO finds out that Knox was the one to blow up Lord's building and realize that Knox is at the launch site, Supergirl enters the driving train. In there, she tells Maxwell Lord to bring the civilians as far away from the bomb as possible while she uses her ray vision to locate Knox. She eventually locates Knox, who does not seem mad but sad and who claims that he did everything for his daughter. Meanwhile, the DEO locates another of Knox' bombs at the airport. The DEO evacuates the airport and defuses the bomb. At the train, Kara uses her laser ray to separate Knox' compartment from the rest of the train. Knox's department drives on and is eventually blown up by the bomb.
During an interview Lord gives later, Kara realizes that Lord was the one who hired Knox to blow up the building and the train in exchange for lifelong medical treatment for his daughter. Lord would have been able to deactivate the bombs with a kill switch should Supergirl not have been able to stop them. With this knowledge Supergirl faces Lord at his apartment and while Knox doesn't confess he claims that the man responsible would have done these things to test Supergirl. The drone was to test her speed, the bombs to measure her strength and also that there would have been another bomb which would have tested her speed. He also reveals that it is quite interesting that Kara chose to save hundreds on the train instead of thousands at the airport, deducing that there was someone on the train Kara cared about and that this person was the key to uncover her identity. Although Kara is not able to directly link Lord to the crime, she claims that she will be watching him and that things weren't over yet. While she flies off, Lord claims that he agrees and that the fun is yet beginning.
A few weeks later, Lord helps the D.E.O. to take down the rogue military combat android Red Tornado. Although initially refusing to help, he contacts Agent Danvers and reveals to her that Red Tornado is not sentient, but still controlled by its creator Dr. Morrow.
When an earthquake hits National City, Lord is one of the first ones to go out to help the people. While doing so, he is interviewed and rants about Supergirl (who is not able to help because the fight against Red Tornado temporarily drained her powers).
Investigated by Supergirl and the D.E.O.[]
Lord Tech is eventually attacked by Astra's men led by Non. They are confronted by Maxwell Lord who uses a futuristic gun to shoot one of them in the face, melting his entire head. Non demands to know whether Lord is a champion of earth and then easily defeats him. However, the arrival of D.E.O. agents prevents Non from killing Lord and he merely lunges Lord away to assist his men in fighting the D.E.O.. After Non's men are defeated and Non has fled, Lord forbids the D.E.O. from remaining to search for clues, preferring to handle things himself. In an interview, he later claims that the chaos at Lord Tech was created by a malfunction, completely concealing the attack of the Kryptonians. This makes James Olsen suspicious and he visits Lord Tech to find out what Lord is hiding. He finds out that Lord is planning a move against the Kryptonians, including Kara, and decides to break into Lord Tech at night to find out details. However, while infiltrating the facility he is knocked out by one of Lord's security guards on Lord's orders.
James is then strapped to a chair in the facility's basement. Lord enters the room and demands to know who helped James infiltrate Lord Tech. When James refuses to talk, Lord beats him up. However, he then allows Lord to leave after telling him that no matter whether alien or human, who goes against Maxwell Lord will lose. After finding out what Lord did to James, Kara furiously plans to set out and kill him, seeing him as evil. However, James and Winn manage to calm her down. Nonetheless Kara decides to find out what Lord's plans are and to expose him. The same time at Lord Tech, Maxwell Lord is told by one of his scientists that the "test subject" he requested was found.
To find out what Lord is up to and to draw him out of his lab, Alex agrees to a date with Lord. While Lord is out, Henshaw uses his shape-shift powers to take Lord's shape. Inside Lord Tech, he finds a young woman, the test subject that was brought to Lord earlier, as well as the analysis of Red Tornado technology. He is however captured on camera and the footage is later shown to Lord, who is surprised to see that someone who looked like himself broke into the building.
By a camera he secretly attached to Alex's handbag during their dinner, Lord finds out that Supergirl is Alex's sister.
Creating his own Supergirl[]
Over the course of weeks, Lord manages not only to awaken his test subject from her coma, but also scientifically changes her appearance to make her look like Supergirl. By using DNA of Supergirl from the Red Tornado arm Alex at one point showed him, he also manages to give the woman the same powers as Supergirl. Now having his own Supergirl at his disposal, he grooms her into seeing the real Supergirl as a threat which must be eliminated. During an accident in which Supergirl saves a group of civilians, she is attacked by Lord's Supergirl. After realizing that Supergirl is saving the people, the fake Supergirl, named Bizarro by the media, returns to Lord, claiming that Supergirl is not evil as Lord claimed. Lord convinces her that sometimes, things that seem to be good are in truth very bad.
Alex later confronts Lord in his office. Although, again, only hypothetically admitting that he's responsible he hints that she is aware of Alex' relationship to Supergirl and threatens that things would get very ugly should she continue to go down that path. While Alex leaves the room, he claims that Bizarro exists to protect him and the city from Supergirl and states that the "best girl" would eventually win. During another fight with Kara, Bizarro is shot by fire Kryptonite bullets from the D.E.O.. The Kryptonite somehow degrades her and disfigures her face. After loudly exclaiming her hate for Kara, she flies off again. She returns to Lord, who tells her that Supergirl made her a monster and, would he be in her place, that he'd kill everyone Supergirl loves.
After Bizarro sets off again, Lord is visited in his office by Alex and two D.E.O. agents who arrest him. When he threatens to expose to the world that Kara is Supergirl should Alex not release him, she slams his head onto the table before taking him with her. Lord is brought to the D.E.O. and imprisoned in one of their cells. When Kara visits him, claiming that he will never hurt anyone again, Lord asks whether she means people like her foster mother Eliza, revealing that he knows where Eliza lives.
D.E.O. Prisoner[]
After Kara has been attacked by a parasitic plant, Alex thinks that Lord is responsible and when he claims not to know anything about it, beats him up in his cell. She is stopped by Henshaw and furiously leaves the room. However, they are later forced to employ Lord's help to create a device which allows Alex to enter Kara's virtual reality.
After Kara has returned and after the death of Astra, Lord demands to see Kara. Kara agrees and is welcomed by Lord, who sarcastically claims that he had assumed his help would have earned him an early parole. Kara replies that this will not happen because Lord would reveal her identity and put her family in danger. When Lord claims that he only wants to save the planet, Kara is shocked because Lord sees her as such a threat. She storms out of the room but stops when Lord once again asks for some reward. He also threatens Kara, claiming that while he was dangerous before, she has no idea what danger he poses when he is bored. Screaming that Kara owes him her life, Lord is told in return that the world is a better place without him.
Meanwhile, Cat Grant begins to suspect that Lord has gone missing, despite the fact that the DEO makes it seem that he is still in charge of his operation and sending disciples to deal with any problems.
Lord is later freed by Kara who has realized that keeping Lord as a captive is illegal and not the right way. Although Kara tries to appeal to Lord as a person, Alex coldly tells him that the DEO has a dossier on all his crimes and that the DEO will relase the dossier should Lord reveal Kara's identity.
Red kryptonite[]
Lord is imprisoned again after it is revealed that he tried to build Kryptonite in order to defend the world when Non and his army come back. However, the synthetic kryptonite affected Supergirl who does not lose her power but turns into a hateful and evil version of herself. After Lord realizes the mistake, he started tracking Kara to find out what exactly the effect of his kryptonite was. The kryptonite even caused Supergirl to throw Cat Grant off a building. Summed up, the kryptonite turned Supergirl into the monster Lord always feared her to be.
After heading to the DEO to offer his help, Alex throws Lord into his cell again but releases him moments later when he reveals that the results on Supergirl were not his intention and offers to create an antidote. After manufacturing an antidote, he hands it to Alex who successfully counters the red kryptonite's effect with it.
Myriad[]
When Non activates Myriad, Lord is unaffected because he invented blockers after witnessing the kryptonites attacking his lab. He heads to CatCo where Cat Grant, unaffected due to blockers Lord sent her the previous night, and Supergirl. Lord reveals that the kryptonites are using his satelites to broadcast Myriad and that this was the reason why they attacked Lord Tech earlier. The three search for a solution and Max tells them that he has a plan. By detonating a bomb which would spray kryptonite dust all over the city, Lord intends to kill all kryptonians. However, he adds that the blast would kill roughly 300.000 civillians. Although Cat vehemently opposes the plan, Supergirl reluctantly agrees. Lord contacts General Lane who in turn contacts the president. After the president agrees to Lord's plan, Lord heads back to his facility to finish the bomb.
However, Cat and Supergirl later head to Max' facility and reveal that they do not agree with the bomb. Instead, they want to counter Myriad's effecty by broadcasting a positive message of hope over Non's Myriad signal. The plan works and National City is saved without use of Lord's bomb.
After everything has settled, Lord realizes that the Myriad signal is still broadcasting and has been amplified tenfold. He reveals this to Alex and Kara, also telling them that the kryptonians are increasing the signal to that extent that humans brain cannot cope with it. This would ultimately result in the death of every human on the planet. Kara decides to prevent this from happening at any cost, even her own life. Admiring her resolve, Lord wishes her good luck with her plan.
After Non's defeat, Lord obtains Non's energy source by General Lane.
Andrea Rojas eventually destroyed his company.
Personality[]
Maxwell Lord thinks Supergirl is a criminal and from an invading army trying to rule over earth. Lord is power hungry and also into high tech. He is similar to Lex Luthor, both of them have hatred of Superman and wants to kill them. He is like a mob kingpin you do not want to trust with your life. He genuinely wants to help mankind, but is willing to cross the line. Having lost his parents when he was right about the flawed protective suits left a big damage in his soul. He has expressed remorse of some of his misdeeds, though. He felt badly about accidentally making Supergirl a temporary villain with a trap that was supposed to be for Non.
Gallery[]
