Anthony Carrigan’s Metamorpho Transformation For Superman Sounds Awful, But The Character’s Relationship With Lex Luthor Is Even Worse

Anthony Carrigan's Metamorpho in 2025's Superman movie
(Image credit: Warner Bros. Pictures)

After guest starring as The Mist on The Flash TV series and recurring as Victor Zsasz on Gotham, Anthony Carrigan is transitioning to the superhero movie space playing Rex Mason, a.k.a. Metamorpho, in James Gunn’s Superman. This will also be the first time the character has been depicted in a live-action setting, although than being a CGI creation, prosthetics and makeup were used to turn Carrigan into Metamorpho for the upcoming DC movie. Frankly though, what he went through for this transformation sounds pretty rough, but what’s even worse is how Carrigan described Metamorpho’s one-sided relationship with Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor.

Turning Anthony Carrigan Into Metamorpho Was An Intensive Process

As the Barry star detailed, it took five to six hours each day to realize Metamorpho’s unique appearance, which Rex Mason obtained when he gained the ability to transmute any part of his body into elemental compounds. He explained what this was like for him as follows:

It's things that were glued on me, but then they painted on detail, and then more things were glued onto that. I'm not kidding when I say that I was glued in, I was sewn in, I was completely enveloped. I was tied in...roped in, basically. But all in service of this incredible costume.

I would not handle this process well, as that feeling of being trapped would surely kick my mild claustrophobia into high gear. Anthony Carrigan, on the other hand, wasn’t bothered by it at all. He told EW that he’s a “big fan of practical effects” and felt that all those hours were “worth it because you can actually feel the texture of something. Your brain notices the difference.” Because he endured his two older sisters “put whatever makeup they wanted” on him during childhood, Carrigan’s now able to go into a “tranquil state,” though he admitted that the last hour is “the hardest.”

Metamorpho Is Being Forced To Work For Lex Luthor

Whatever your opinion is about how the Metamorpho makeup process sounds, at least we can all agree that it’s not tragic, unlike how Anthony Carrigan’s character is drawn into the events of Superman. The actor shared during the interview that while “certain elements” in the movie refer to Metamorpho’s backstory, we’ll meet him when he’s “in full swing of who he is,” which seems to be the same case for the Justice Gang members. Unfortunately, Rex Mason will be forced by Lex Luthor to turn his body into kryptonite to keep David Corenswet’s Man of Steel weak. As Carrigan put it:

You're in a situation where it's having to hurt someone, having to be an agent of the bad guy. And at the same time, there's this struggle to want to be good. What the film does brilliantly is it puts you in this situation of, 'Oh! He has no choice.' He has to be doing this, and you see how painful it is.

It’s bad enough that Metamorpho didn’t choose to have his powers and look the way he does, but now he’s being strong-armed to harm one of the world’s greatest superheroes. Officially speaking, we don’t know how Lex Luthor is forcing Metamorpho to do his bidding. However, there is a shot in the most recent Superman trailer of the titular protagonist holding a green baby while Metamorpho creating tendrils to grab Super. It’s being speculated by fans that that baby is Metamorpho’s son, so if that’s accurate, this is a simple case of Luthor holding a loved one hostage. As if kidnapping Krypto wasn’t bad enough!

I’ll go out on a limb and say that eventually Metamorpho will get to turn against Lex Luthor and help Superman bring down the bald baddie. And although the first movie in the DC Universe doesn’t come out until July 11, I’m already hoping there will be more opportunities for Anthony Carrigan to play this character again, as he deserves more than just one story to be explored.

Adam Holmes
Senior Content Producer

Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.

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