Last year, My Adventures with Superman debuted on Adult Swim, with live viewers and Max subscribers later on being introduced to a Jack Quaid-voiced version of the Man of Steel who was getting started with his superhero journey and had Alice Lee’s Lois Lane and Ishmel Sahid’s Jimmy Olsen along for the ride. We’re now just days away from My Adventures with Superman Season 2 premiering on the 2024 TV schedule, and among the things fans can look forward to is Lex Luthor teaming up with Amanda Waller. While these two certainly won’t be the only threats in Season 2, the series’ creators explained to CinemaBlend why these two teaming up is worrisome.
You may recall in Season 1 how Anthony Ivo, who became this show’s version of Parasite, had an assistant named Alex, voiced by Max Mittelman. Well, it turns out that this is My Adventures with Superman’s Lex Luthor, and as seen in the Season 2 trailer, he’ll somehow make his way to Amanda Waller, who’s now in charge of Task Force X, and offer his services. During my recent conversation with creators Josie Campbell, Brendan Clogher and Jake Wyatt, I asked the trio what makes Luthor and Waller such a compelling antagonistic pair, and Campbell started off by saying:
I think Brendan should talk because he was the one really responsible for getting Lex into the show, but I think for me and for the writers, both Amanda Waller and Lex Luthor are so convinced they're right. They're the heroes. There's an alien invasion, they know it's coming and they'll do anything to prevent it. That's what heroes do. So I think what makes them such a potent pair is the fact that these are two people who will never accept that they're wrong, and if the world suffers for it, that just reinforces their beliefs. So they're flawed like all of our characters, but unlike Clark who just has anxiety, or Lois who's maybe a little too ambitious, their flaw is that they're gonna discount people who they think are weak or they discount people who they don't care about for the bigger picture, and that's terrifying.
My Adventures with Superman (which contributed to 2023 being an outstanding year for Superman fans) isn’t the first time that Lex Luthor and Amanda Waller have teamed up in a TV show. Fans of the DC Animated Universe will remember when they joined forces during Justice League Unlimited, one of the best animated TV shows of all time. But like Campbell pointed, one thing that Luthor and Waller share in common in the DCAU, My Adventures with Superman and countless other depictions is that they always believe their right, and anyone who disagrees with them is the enemy. That character flaw will surely lead to a lot of people getting hurt, and it’ll be up to Superman and the gang to try and stop them.
As for what will make Lex Luthor and Amanda Waller’s pairing on My Adventures with Superman stand out compared to the DCAU, Brendan Clogher pointed out that we’re getting a Luthor who’s much younger than Waller, and as such he’s only just getting started on his journey as a Superman adversary. In his words:
Yeah, and our Lex is on his road to becoming the Lex Luthor we all know and love. In Season 1, he was also an intern like our heroes, and now in Season 2, he's finally got the boss that's gonna let him get to the next level of his career, so to speak, through her nefarious deeds to fund his stuff for him to do instead of having to work for some other weirdo.
If Luthor had continued to work under Anthony Ivo, then he never would have been able to make a name for himself since Ivo had his own mad scientist schemes. But under Amanda Waller, the spectacled youth who still has a full head of hair can now breathe life into his own ideas with the seemingly-unlimited funding at Waller’s disposal. To go a step further, perhaps Waller serve as a mentor to Luthor during Season 2… unless of course there comes a point where he’s no longer useful to him, in which case she’d quickly toss him aside.
Another interesting thing I learned about this interview is that it wasn’t always the plan for Lex Luthor to be set up as Anthony Ivo’s assistant, that was just something that Brendan Clogher set up as a possibility. As Jake Wyatt explained:
And just so you know, Brendan sneakily backdoored Lex in. We were given a no Lex Luthor mandate for the show for Seasons 1 and 2, and Brendan said, ‘Ok,’ and then he's like, ‘Ivo’s gonna have an assistant and his name is gonna be Alex.’ And we're like, ‘Is this Lex?’ And he's like, ‘Maybe. And then our execs are like, ‘Is this Lex?’ And he's like, ‘If you want him to be.’ And then he got his way. It was so aggressive to watch, this was like a year and a half long campaign to get Lex into the show.
Well done, Brendan! Now we wait to see exactly what kind of trouble Lex Luthor and Amanda Waller will cause together in My Adventures with Superman Season 2, which premieres Sunday, May 26. Don’t forget to look through the lineup of upcoming DC TV shows and upcoming DC movies if you’re craving more content from this corner of the superhero media market.
