Michael Cudlitz will Play Lex Luthor in Superman & Lois

Television

Superman will be facing his archenemy again. Entertainment Weekly exclusively reports that Michael Cudlitz will play Lex Luthor in the upcoming season of Superman & Lois. The villain has been mentioned in the series but has never appeared, with another billionaire bad guy from DC Comics, Morgan Edge, serving as season 1’s heavy. Nowadays, Cudlitz is best known for The Walking Dead, but he’s appeared in many TV shows and movies over the years, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 24, Band of Brothers, Grosse Pointe Blank, The Negotiator, and plenty more. EW also revealed the character description for Cudlitz’s version of Luthor:

“Cudlitz’s Lex Luthor is known to the world as the visionary billionaire behind LexCorp, but secretly, the criminal underworld knows who Lex truly is: a brutal psychopath who terrorizes anyone he crosses paths with. When Lex debuts this season, 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 — Superman (Tyler Hoechlin) and Lois Lane (Elizabeth Tulloch).”

That’s a strange piece of casting. Michael Cudlitz is a fine actor, but he doesn’t strike me as Lex Luthor. He comes off more as a henchman than a mastermind. But who knows? Maybe they saw something in him when he auditioned, and he’ll surprise everyone. Superman & Lois has been pretty great in terms of casting so far. And he can’t be much worse than Jon Cryer from Supergirl, who seems to have been cast because he played Luthor’s nephew in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. At least Cudlitz probably won’t be goofy and devoid of menace like that version. (Granted, I only saw Cryer play the role in “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” but he was bad.) I like that they’re bringing Luthor into the story, though; having him sit out the first two seasons makes his appearance feel special instead of rote, like all the previous villains have been building to the greatest of them all. And since the CW is in flux, and this could very well be the last season of Superman & Lois, it makes sense to go out with a bang, pitting Superman against Lex Luthor for all the marbles.