| “ | I'm not a villain. I don't want to kill Supergirl, I just want her to experience the same hurt she inflicted on me. And soon enough, she will. | „ |
| ~ Lena to Hope on her plans for revenge on Kara. |
Lena Luthor is a major character in the 2015 CW series Supergirl. Once one of Supergirl's allies, she turns on her as soon as she discovers Kara's secret and becomes the one of the two secondary antagonists (alongside Lex Luthor) of Season 5.
She is portrayed by Katie McGrath. When she was young, she was portrayed by Camille Marty, Samantha Davis, and Lucy Loken.
Her Evil Ranking[]
Her Villainous Deeds[]
- Even before she turned evil, Lena was a grey zoned hero with committed morally questionable acts. One of them even resulted in the permanent death in a volunteer when experimenting with black kryptonite.
- While she engages in simulations to avoid falling into madness, this is rendered ineffective because Lena still shows some mental instability as she goes on to do unreasonable actions while justifying them with her twisted logic.
- Lena planned to reveal Supergirl's true identity to the world when she learned Kara's secret, which would have endangered her and possibly everyone she knew. She only backs off at the last second when Kara tells her the truth and decides to use her powers for her own needs.
- Had her AI named Hope takeover Eve Teschmacher's body after kidnapping and detaining her for a while.
- To understand the Q-Waves a little bit better, Lena had Supergirl steal Lex's journals with research on mind control.
- She sends Malefic J'onzz to her laboratory by modifying Brainy's Phantom Zone Projector, she forges an alliance with him by promising him that she would help to get revenge on his brother if he helped her with her research. However, she later goes back on their deal and brainwashes him instead.
- She threatens to kill Russell Rodgers to obtain her former friend Andrea Rojas's medallion. This was after she helped her break into the D.E.O. to get him and worse, Russell did absolutely nothing to her.
- Her taking the medallion would cause Leviathan to finally take action, leading to Rama Khan's attacks.
- When she accompanies Supergirl to the Fortress of Solitude to find a weapon that can stop him, she steals Myriad, a mind controlling device that could brainwash the entire world population.
- When she finds out about her true nature, Lena turned the Fortress' defense system against her and trapped her in kryptonite ice.
- Attempted to brainwash the entire world to enforce her will upon the population, essentially achieving world domination.
- Given that Myriad can kill people if set to its highest frequency and implied by Alex Danvers' words about how Lena is threatening the world's safety, it's possible that she might have wiped out the human race simply out of her delusional belief that she is "saving" them.
- Lena initially rejects redemption even after Kara apologizes to her.
- When the police are called to her lab to arrest her, she throws Hope as Eve under the bus by pining the blame for her actions on her to save her own skin.
- After the Anti-Monitor Crisis, she retains her memories and her grudge against Kara, and eventually, she decides to partner up with Lex.
- Under the guise of friendship, Lena manipulates Andrea to hand over the computer lenses, even going so far to sabotage her.
- When Kara threatens that she will treat her like a villain if she continues to go down her dark path, she dismisses it as Supergirl and her friends not understanding her goal.
- When she discovers that Supergirl is using Myriad (something she is forbidden from), she assumed she was trying to interrupt her experiments on prisoners (when in reality was trying to locate missing people) and trespasses to the Fortress. She hypocritically chews her out using it when she claimed it was too dangerous for anyone to use, despite Lena herself lying to Supergirl previously to obtain it, highlighting her egotism.
- Indirectly causes a prison riot when Project Non Nocere fails.
- Even though Kara eventually reconciled with her, she had a hard time forgiving Lena for deceiving her and abusing her trust greater than she ever did.
- It is implied that her emotional pain when she found out the truth about Kara (combined with her painful experience of previous heartbreaks) had severely damaged her view on reality. Despite this, and the fact that she denies she is evil, Lena still understands what is right and wrong as she blames Supergirl for all her crimes and lashes out at the former for lying to her despite to the very same thing to her, showing that not only she is delusional, but also completely hypocritical.
- Even if she truly has lost her moral agency due to her insanity as she (presumably) loses control of her emotions and is unable to think rationally, she gains her senses when she realizes what she had done and apologizes to Supergirl.
- While Lex was far more dangerous than her, at least he had numerous moments where he is quite laughable. Lena almost lacks any comedic traits her brother has, and while she has some moments of humor, she is still taken completely seriously as a threat. In a way, she stooped to his level and became just as delusional, if not, even more deluded as him.
Why She Doesn't Stand Out?[]
- She fails the high heinous standards of the Arrowverse for two reasons:
- Because of her standards against killing or hurting people (even if they hurt her, as shown in her interactions with Malefic and Lex in the new universe) she holds back on her resources and refused to be as evil as she can be, also failing the individual capability. Examples include:
- When she gained powers of mind control, she could have gone on a rampage and brainwash as many people as she can like Malefic did, but instead she just uses them to render him docile.
- At Mount Norway, when her hideout started to launch kryptonite cannons, she had the potential to finally kill Supergirl, but she shuts them off due to her moral code.
- When she partnered up with Lex, she would have got numerous people killed to get what she wanted if she had just asked him, but instead she makes him promise not to harm people.
- She's not even that bad when it comes to personal villainy, as any personal impact she had on her was quickly undone by the 100th episode, as she decided to just deal with Lena if necessary.
- Some of her crimes rely on Fridge Horror:
- Her bodyjacking of Eve with her A.I. Hope, while quite disturbing, was not confirmed to be painful at all. She even she said herself has she wouldn't feel a thing, although Eve panicking as Hope surrounds her would likely say otherwise.
- Her committing genocide using Myriad was only implied as it is unknown if she set it the maximum frequency, where it could make people's heads explode. It's also likely she didn't know that Myriad was capable of doing so.
- It isn't confirmed if any of the prisoners were killed during the riot she indirectly caused.
- Because of her standards against killing or hurting people (even if they hurt her, as shown in her interactions with Malefic and Lex in the new universe) she holds back on her resources and refused to be as evil as she can be, also failing the individual capability. Examples include:
- She also fails the standards compared to her brother Lex, as the two of them had similar resources and yet he manages to do worse since he actually uses them and does the maximum evil he can do, unlike Lena. He is more personally evil since he got Jeremiah Danvers, Kara and Alex's father, killed though Eve.
- She is an anti-villain and a well-intentioned extremist, as she only did what she did to prevent people from abusing each other. She even told Hope and Lex that she only wanted to not take away everyone's free will (although technically she is).
- This also makes it ambiguous whether or not Lena is evil, because while she did some unquestionably evil acts, she genuinely has good intentions for what she did.
- Lena has some trust issues, as her misanthropy and hatred is the result of being betrayed countless times, showing she has some insecurity.
- Despite mostly being hostile due to her bitter hatred and mostly faking politeness, she is genuinely affable to the few people she cares about:
- She still loves her dead mother, as Lena always looks up to her. She wanted to get the medallion because it felt important to her, and once ran a simulation of them playing together.
- She cares about about her A.I. Hope, as she was the only thing she can trust and be open with, and also refused to lose her during her plans to "save" humanity. Despite this, she still allows her to take the blame for her crimes.
- Finally, knowing what it's like to lose a parent, she gave Kara her condolences on Jeremiah's death, and gave her a book on how to deal with grief.
- This was in spite of where she could've just mocked or insulted her about her father's death. but instead chooses to be nice to her, even calling her Kara instead of Supergirl for the first time in the season.
- This also shows that deep down, Lena still cares for Kara, no matter how broken their relationship might be. Aside from that and the fact that she saved Kara from kryptonite lasers, she also looked sadly at a picture of them together at her home, and initially wanted to partner up with Supergirl after the Crisis.
- She started as On & Off, because during the Anti-Monitor Crisis, she helps the Superfriends (while still hating them) save billions of lives. She was also disgusted at how Alex thought she would let billions of lives die at the Anti-Monitor Crisis out of her petty grudge against her, Supergirl, and the rest of the heroes.
- She is ultimately a scapegoat. Lena only wanted to bring peace to mankind, but she ended it doing it the wrong way and got manipulated by Lex into causing more harm and into assisting his and Leviathan's plans to kill nearly half of humanity.
- She eventually redeems herself. When she found out that Lex was using her, she felt a huge amount of guilt for what she's done and went to Kara's apartment to apologize to her. Lena would then help Supergirl take down Lex and Leviathan.
Trivia[]
- She used to be Inconsistently Heinous, but was demoted to a Villainous Benchmark when it became clear her worst crimes suffered from Fridge Horror.
External Links[]
- Lena Luthor on the Villains Wiki
- Lena Luthor on the Heroes Wiki
- Lena Luthor on the Inconsistently Admirable Wiki
[]
 Villainous Benchmarks
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