It’s the walking dread!
Smallville is in for some big trouble now that The Walking Dead‘s Michael Cudlitz is (bald) heading to Superman & Lois as supervillain, Lex Luthor. This isn’t the first time the iconic character created chaos on The CW. Luthor was previously played as Musk-like madman in the Arrowverse by Jon Cryer on Supergirl. This time, however, he’s getting the more-grounded S&L treatment, it seems.
The official description states that Lex “is known to the world as the visionary billionaire behind LexCorp. But the criminal underworld knows who Lex truly is: a brutal psychopath who terrorizes anyone he crosses paths with. It’s been years since he dropped out of the public eye and he’s re-emerging hellbent on correcting a personal injustice by enacting revenge on the two people he feels have wronged him.”
You guessed it. Those two are Superman (Tyler Hoechlin) and Lois Lane (Bitsie Tulloch). And as you see in TV Insider’s exclusive clip above, they are well aware of the man’s vendetta.
“You’ll have to see how that unfolds,” exec producer Todd Helbing told us at the beginning of the season. “We don’t wanna spoil anything, but we wanted to present a different version of Lex for the fans, you know?” Helbing’s co-showrunner Brent Fletcher added that the show’s mantra has always been, “if we’re gonna do this, let’s find our own version of it,” since the Superman story has been told so many times. “So we did the same thing with Lex…and we’re super excited.”
TBH, so are we. Cudlitz is always fantastic, as is this damn show!
As for why the incarcerated Luthor is so singularly focused on destroying DC Comic’s First Family, or even when he’s set to strike, the guys are keeping those twists locked up, as well. “We wanted his introduction to come at you sideways,” Fletcher continues. “And so we build it sort of slowly, but there’s a story point underneath why the build is slow, so that it really motivates him and his actions when he does finally appear.”
Superman & Lois, Tuesdays, 8/7c, The CW
