what’s kind of aggravating about lex luthor, defender of the human race, is that his trajectory to see himself as a protector for earth is there, it’s used so often to begin with! he wants to protect people against lionel, if clark comes to him for help, he always does find a way to protect and look after people. lex luthor would rather let himself die than other people, for most part. like, look, the word protect is kind of -- one of the most important words in lex’s vocab since s1.
so him seeing himself as the chosen protecter, like he theorizes about sageeth being the only one who can fight against naman, it’s... there.
but! i’d also feel like it’s half-baked.
yeah, i think the show does an okay job at lex gradually getting disillusioned with aliens, i think it’s fairly good at lex being xenophobic bc like. he keeps on being taken advantage of, clark, brainiac, zod, etc.
what i can’t quite figure out is when he decides that it’s... kind of okay to make humans expendable to. why it becomes okay to treat lana like shit.
(and yes, fine, he does say that a lot of it was to protect her, luthors will do morally dubious things to protect people, clark will do a lot of damaging things in order to protect people/himself, but this goddamn show and it’s double standards about x can have secrets but no one else can, and then y comes along and tries to do the exact same thing, and they’ll get into an argument and not get a resolution, and the choice about secrets, agency and respect never fully do come in alignment bc someone is gotta be in control, and who that is, and who the right person is, is never given a good reflection on tbqh, and they will always, always use the whole but i was protecting you argument which feels like bs, after a while.)
you’d think it would be when he joins luthor corp, both dismantling his father’s projects, and then also creating his own projects. bc, i do think he could have had an arc similar to ken’s in dirk gently’s holistic detective agency, ymmv, but, i enjoyed how the more he read up on the company files, the more he was like. invested in what else his company had to offer, what else he could change. so when bart tells ken that the voice (instinct? higher power?) says that she should kill him, he understands, but he’s almost so rationale about it that it doesn’t matter, she’s locked up, and he’s in control of a company that will continue to do more and more experiments bc he’s fascinated by what results can be gained. always gutted this show did not get a s3 tbh. but basically, lex’s fascination could have maybe been given more depth, in this sense, but it felt too offscreen and like i’m supposed to give more merit to a couple of lines here and there than i actually do.
but i’m just. finding it kind of difficult when trying to find the part where lex does ultimately think that in order to protect humanity, the more extreme decisions he makes, where humans do get hurt, is worth the risk. in order to protect humanity, he must sacrifice humanity.
bc like, he should still be protective over meteor infected people. they are humans, infected or not. they are citizens of the world, that lex should believe that he has the right, the chosen role, to protect. metahumans, he should protect them as well. they’re all earth born.
clark and kara, tho. on the other hand. are not.
in the world where lex believes himself the hero of the story, and clark and kara and others are the enemy, the invaders... why shouldn’t he turn against them? he is not the villain in this version that exists in his head.
and i’m just not convinced the show quite got there, but the threads are there.
