SUPERMAN & LOIS Team on Season 1’s Big Bad, That ‘Iconic’ Easter Egg

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the SUPERMAN & LOIS series premiere.]

There’s a new Luthor in town.

The final moments of the SUPERMAN & LOIS premiere revealed that the stranger (played by Wolé Parks) who was after Superman (Tyler Hoechlin) wasn’t quite so mysterious—it was Captain Luthor.

“When Greg [Berlanti] and I first started talking about this, we wanted an iconic villain for Superman, we want an iconic role,” showrunner Todd Helbing said during the show’s TCA panel. “It was our opportunity coming out of CRISIS to tell a new story and bring the audiences this new journey with somebody that they feel like they’ve known. You know, obviously Jon Cryer’s on SUPERGIRL and he’s done this crazy, amazing job with Lex Luthor. But our show is different. We wanted to tell a new story. There’s a lot of twists and turns—secrets are revealed and mysteries unfold in the way that this version is going to feel fresh and new and completely different than anything we’ve seen before.”

“For me, the thing is…yes, we’ve seen this character a lot before, but the difference between this one and the other ones is his backstory,” Parks added. “As the season plays out, the thing I appreciate as an actor is, I understand where he’s coming from. I’m a big comic nerd. I watched Justice League, I read the comics back in the day…But as far as I’m aware, we’ve never covered this kind of stuff on TV before…The thing I appreciate is he’s not just the bad guy for bad guy’s sake, because we need a bad guy, There’s a reason why he’s doing these things.”

Which means Parks is hoping some fans will at least understand his character’s plight.  “Every bad guy is the hero of his own story. And this guy has legitimate reasons [for his actions], and I think people will, hopefully, empathize with why he’s doing what he’s doing.”

Outside of a classic villain, the SUPERMAN & LOIS premiere also had a throwback to an iconic Superman costume.

“There’s a classic Action Comics cover, one of the first with Superman saving this green car,” Helbing said. “We sorta upgraded the car, made it a little bit more contemporary. But that—in the montage at the beginning—was something that we wanted to do. I love doing Easter eggs and I love doing comic book covers if we can recreate them. So that just felt like such a great, perfect beat to put into this montage in telling the beginning of our story, and setting up the show. The suit…it’s so iconic. It was one of the first and to see Tyler in that was pretty cool.”

“There’s something about putting on the one that we wear most of the time up here—it’s great,” Hoechlin said. “But there was something different about that [retro suit]. I think it’s just a connection to really where this all began…I remember putting it on [and] just laughing, ’cause it was crazy to really feel that effect of how long this character has been around. To go back to where it started, and then to be where we are now creating something new.”

SUPERMAN & LOIS, Tuesdays, 9/8c, The CW

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