James Gunn Confirms Lex Luthor Holds All the Cards in the DCU

Luthor himself may still be in prison (for now). But clearly, Lex and his cronies are now entwined with the government. Rick Flag made a deal with the proverbial Devil. And those deals tend not to work out well. At the Q&A, a question was posed by Comic Book Resources, who said, “Flag seems to be in charge or at least in a position of power, but once you enter into any kind of deal with Lex Luther doesn’t, he tends to be the one holding all of the cards?” Gunn was quick to agree, saying the following:

Yes, yes. Rick is dumb. I love the character of Rick Flag, but he thinks he’s way smarter than he is, and we see it continuously. He just thinks he’s smarter than he is and he thinks he can do with Lex, and there’s just no way he’s going to be able to deal with that. That’s not going to be great for him.

So how will this play out in the future? Certainly, Rick Flag will need to rely more on more on Lex Luthor and his expertise as the world’s second smartest man. (Batman is the first, by the way.) We have a feeling that by Man of Tomorrow, Lex Luthor will be on some kind of prison release program, working directly for Rick Flag and ARGUS. They’ll need his help in dealing with the Salvation dimension, and mass deporting all these metahumans. But Lex Luthor is not one to take orders, and we are pretty certain that before long, he’s going to turn the tables on Flag, and ARGUS will be under his control.

There is, of course, precedent in all this in the pages of DC Comics. For a long time, Luthor ran LexCorp, and essentially was the most powerful man in Metropolis. At least, until a certain Kryptonian hero appeared on the scene. Luthor tried to kill Superman for years, and always found a way to cover his tracks. It’s not hard to do when one is a multi-billionaire. But eventually, his ego and hubris were his downfall, and he exposed himself as a criminal. He argued in court that he didn’t commit all those crimes; his evil clone did. This secured his release. He then ran for President on an anti-alien platform, gaining back all the power he’d lost, and then some. We see a similar career path for the DCU Lex. It’s just a matter of when.