'Supergirl' Season 4 Spoilers: New Villain Lex Luthor Teased in Episode 10

Supergirl introduced an alternate Kara on a Siberian military base in the Season 3 finale, and Season 4 has slowly revealed what that means for the show. The midseason premiere, “Suspicious Minds,” offers a look at alternate Kara (aka, Red Daughter) is up to and may even tease that a certain villain is already in play on the show. Lex Luthor may already be pulling the strings, even if no one knows it yet.

Spoilers for Supergirl Season 4 Episode 10 below.

DC Comics fans will recognize the alternate Kara storyline.

“The story we want to tell is inspired by the iconic DC Comics’ Red Son, which told an alternate origin story for Superman,” executive producer Robert Rovner told TVLine after the Season 3 finale.

The premise for that comic, part of that the Elseworlds series set outside DC Comics official storyline, was that Superman landed in communist Russia instead of the U.S., becoming a Soviet hero instead of the one we all recognize.

“Suspicious Minds” opens with Red Daughter training while her handlers watch. “She can be controlled?” One soldier asks. “Our friend is working on it,” another confirms. While she’s training with tanks and missiles, however, they note she’ll be fighting something else. “Train her harder,” the first man orders.

But who is that “friend” attempting to control her? The most likely candidate is Lex Luthor (Jon Cryer), who will be introduced in Episode 15.

“I think that he’s the biggest supervillain we’ve had [on] the show, and his plans will kind of touch every character and impact the entire season moving forward once he arrives,” Rovner told Entertainment Weekly.

“He just [has] a sparkle in his eye and is smarter than everybody in the room and 12 steps ahead of everyone, and just a large, delicious villain,” Queller added.

Could Lex Luthor be training Red Daughter to fight Superman? We’ve seen that Clark is a bigger part of Kara’s life recently, especially compared to Season 1. It stands to reason that Lex’s storyline will be about Clark, at least in the beginning, but will switch over to Kara since this is her show.

After all, Clark is currently off-planet. He and Lois told Kara they’d be going to Argo City after Lois became pregnant at the end of this season’s Arrowverse crossover, “Elseworlds.” That leaves Kara to deal with Lex on her own (though I wouldn’t be surprised if Clark returns to help out at some point, given the Superman/Lex Luthor connection).

If Lex’s plans are going to “touch every character,” that has to include both versions of Kara, and what better way to do that than to have Supergirl have to fight a version of herself?

Rovner also told EW that “the Red Daughter story … plays a much bigger role” and fans will “see her origin story in the second half of the season.” That lines up pretty well with the show’s planned timeline for introducing Lex into Supergirl.

Having Lex be the one behind the Red Daughter project and training would also make sense considering Lena’s current storyline. Lex’s sister is working on her own project trying to figure out a way to give people powers. Not only is she working on a questionable project like her brother (though Lex is a supervillain and Lena is not), but it’s likely that hers will play some role in whatever’s coming up with Lex.

Supergirl Season 4 airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on The CW.

Related video: Supergirl Returns in “Suspicious Minds” Season 4 Trailer