Bad news for Superman, but maybe good news for fans of Superman & Lois: Lex Luthor is coming to the show in its third season—but there’s a twist, depending on how closely you follow The CW’s superhero shows. According to Entertainment Weekly, the noted Metropolis businessman with an unfair reputation for being a supervillain will be played by Michael Cudlitz from The Walking Dead and not Jon Cryer, who played the bald bastard on Supergirl and Crisis On Infinite Earths. That is because, as fans are aware, Superman & Lois is explicitly not part of the Arrowverse, despite the fact that stars Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch were first introduced as Superman and Lois on the Arrowverse shows.
EW says that this version of Lex is “a brutal psychopath who terrorizes anyone he crosses paths with,” and when he first appears on the show, he will be “hellbent on correcting a personal injustice by enacting revenge on the two people he feels have wronged him.” (This is a DC show, so there’s no Marvel No-Prize for anyone who can correctly guess who those two people are.) This version of Lex Luthor is also a billionaire businessman, because every Superman story somehow finds a way to make Lex Luthor a famous billionaire and an evil terrorist… which does kind of make sense, since that’s basically how it works in the real world.
Though this technically isn’t a re-cast, season three of the show will feature a re-cast: Michael Bishop will now be playing Jonathan Kent, replacing Jordan Elsass after he decided to leave the show out of concerns for his mental health (he later said he might quit acting altogether). The third season of Superman & Lois will premiere on The CW on March 14.