Superman features several heroes and a surprisingly long list of villains. While Lex Luthor will be the movie's primary big bad, he'll be joined by Ultraman, the Engineer, and even his girlfriend, Eve Teschmacher. The LuthorCorp CEO also has an unwilling ally in Metamorpho.
Ultraman has been shrouded in secrecy, with theories about his identity ranging from a Superman clone to a new take on Parasite. Many fans have even suggested that he could be an early iteration of Bizarro, a character it's easy to imagine filmmaker James Gunn having fun with down the line.
Entertainment Weekly asked Gunn if Ultraman is Lex's "Superman," to which he replied, "I think that's close. Ultraman is sort of Lex's thug, and is pretty powerful."
"There are some characters that are really almost saintly, like Superman," he elaborated. "There are some characters who are almost pretty terrible, like Lex Luthor. But I don't think Lex is all bad, and I don't think Superman is all good. All those people in between, the Guy Gardners and the Jimmy Olsens of the world, are even more complex in their moralities and what they think is okay."
That will seemingly be the case with Metamorpho; like his comic book counterpart, Superman's Rex Mason can change his body mass into any natural element, including Kryptonite. However, Luthor needs to find a way to force the metahuman to do what he wants.
"You're in a situation where it's having to hurt someone, having to be an agent of the bad guy," actor Anthony Carrigan explains. "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."
We have good reason to believe that Baby Joey has something to do with that, and as Gunn puts it, "Lex is connected to everything. There's nothing bad happening in Metropolis during this movie that doesn't have some connection to Lex Luthor."
Angela Spica/The Engineer, meanwhile, uses nanotechnology to alter her form, and according to María Gabriela de Faría, her relationship with Lex is a complicated one.
"I imagined that Lex and Angie had this work relationship where they respect each other so much," she mused. "Angela highly believes in Lex's idea of making the world a better place. She's practically given her life to Lex for this greater good. But at the same time, I feel like there's an element of an underlying relationship going on between the two of them. It's not in the movie..."I feel like these guys f***!"
Teschmacher is Lex's actual girlfriend, and she's portrayed by Sara Sampaio. She's less of a villain, though, and simply seems to be enjoying Luthor's wealth, hanging out in the background of scenes as an influencer (explaining why we saw her taking a selfie during Superman's Metropolis clash with a Kaiju).
"She's just very for herself and her content," Sampaio teased. "She's sometimes out of notion with what's happening or what's appropriate, but she does have a heart. At the end of the day, everything is just so exciting for her. She's just in a whole different world."
It's an intriguing group of characters, and while we expect Metamorpho to join the "Justice Gang," the Engineer's future is less certain, seeing as The Authority movie has been sidelined by DC Studios. Time will tell whether Ultraman is a one-and-done villain (it all depends on who is under the mask), but we'd bet on Lex's story continuing beyond this movie.
Superman arrives in theaters on July 11, 2025.