Supergirl: The Villains We'll See In Season 1

We’ve known about many of the characters who are going to populate the Supergirl universe and there’s plenty of information regarding the pilot available online. However, although we’ve known for a while that Owain Yeoman and Faran Tahir are playing villains, we didn’t know what else we could expect from the drama in terms of big baddies. All of that changed on Saturday at Comic-Con when three big villains were announced. Reactron, Livewire and Maxwell Lord will be the main villains during Season 1 of Supergirl.

”facinelli

Of the three big character castings, Maxwell Lord is probably the most exciting. During Saturday’s big Warner Bros. TV panel, executive producer Sarah Schechter announced Maxwell Lord will be a part of the new series, and an actor has already been cast. Twilight actor Peter Facinelli will take on the big role, and while Maxwell Lord has played both a good guy and bad guy in DC Comics in the past, in the context of the conversation, it seems as if he’ll be a villain for sure. Warner Bros. official press release says Maxwell Lord will be a rival of Cat Grants with an unquenched interest in Supergirl herself. In addition, Executive Producer Greg Berlanti told us that Maxwell Lord will be Kara’s “main human foil,” and it’ll be interesting to see how that pans out.

”Reactron”

Also announced was New Earth villain Reactron, a character whose origin story saw him get injured while on duty with the Army. He was then given a special suit to keep him alive. In the comics, he later took on Supergirl, which is his connection to the TV series. So far, no actor has been signed on to play the character yet.

”Livewire”

Which brings us to Livewire, who is a little different. Traditionally a Superman villain, Livewire is a mean-spirited and loud-mouthed individual who likes to bash the Kryptonian hero on the radio. Depending on the version of the character, she later is able to manipulate electricity to achieve her own ends and take on Superman. This time around, it looks as if she will battle Supergirl.

This totally makes sense, considering Greg Berlanti noted earlier on Saturday that Supergirl will battle some of Superman’s foes, also explaining that it makes sense to include Superman villains in this TV story.

You will see some Superman villains, which I think is interesting. You know, because he exists in the universe, and it’s not going to take much for them to look at the sky and go, ‘She’s wearing the same ‘S’ as this other guy and she can fly, too.’ And so, it’s interesting to bring some of those characters over.

Executive producer Ali Adler didn’t give us a timeline for when we will see the new villains, but she did say we can expect them to appear early on in the network TV season, so we’ll let you know as soon as more casting information breaks. In the meantime, here’s everything else we know about Supergirl.

You can catch CBS' Supergirl when it hits the schedule on Monday, October 26 at 8 p.m. ET.

Jessica Rawden
Managing Editor

Jessica Rawden is Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. She’s been kicking out news stories since 2007 and joined the full-time staff in 2014. She oversees news content, hiring and training for the site, and her areas of expertise include theme parks, rom-coms, Hallmark (particularly Christmas movie season), reality TV, celebrity interviews and primetime. She loves a good animated movie. Jessica has a Masters in Library Science degree from Indiana University, and used to be found behind a reference desk most definitely not shushing people. She now uses those skills in researching and tracking down information in very different ways.