Supergirl's Katie McGrath Shares Final Wish for Lena in Series Finale — Plus, Jon Cryer Talks Lex's 'Weird' Romance

Keisha Hatchett

The CW’s Supergirl is poised to go out in grand fashion with back-to-back episodes airing this Tuesday starting at 8/7c.

As we superspeed towards the big finale, Katie McGrath has one last wish for her character, Lena Luthor: That she finally becomes at peace with who she is as a person.

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“When I spoke to the showrunners [about the final season], I said, ‘I actually don’t mind what you do with her — she’s yours as much as mine. What I would really love is, whatever happened to Lena, for her just to be finally OK with who she is,” McGrath tells TVLine. “She’s had such a battle with being a Luthor and being a woman and having people’s expectations of her and putting her in boxes. I just wanted for her to be like, ‘You know what? I’m good. I’m happy with who I am.’”

Lena first appeared in the Arrowverse series’ Season 2 premiere as a controlled, almost-invulnerable figure fighting to change the Luthors’ reputation amid her brother Lex’s many atrocities. Through her friendship with Kara and the rest of the Super Friends over the last five seasons, and especially in the final season with her magic, we’ve seen the former L-Corp CEO evolve into someone much more nuanced and accessible.

“She’s a powerhouse to start. She walks in and she owns everything, and as you get to know her, you realize how scared she is [but] she doesn’t want to show it,” McGrath explains. “I don’t think Lena really was able to connect with anybody in the show or make any true lasting friendships until she was able to be vulnerable and show people that she is scared [and] nervous, that she’s not sure and all these things. That’s what’s been so amazing for me, is to be able to see, [from the] start of Season 2 to her last scene with Kara [in the series finale], the difference in those two conversations. The difference is she’s able to be honest and vulnerable, and I think that’s true friendship.”

Lex Luthor in Supergirl Season 6
Lex Luthor in Supergirl Season 6

Lena wasn’t the only Luthor to take on an interesting new path in Supergirl’s final season. Season 6 also introduced a different side of Lex, who fell in love with Nyxly in the future and traveled back to the past to win her over and save her from dying. If seeing the cutthroat villain try to woo the Fifth Dimensional Imp seemed strange at first, you weren’t alone.

“It was super weird,” Jon Cryer, who plays the bald baddie, tells TVLine. “I was kind of afraid when [showrunner] Jessica Queller actually broke it to me. She said, ‘You’re gonna fall in love.’ I was like,“Why? Why would Lex fall in love?”

Since Lex has been portrayed throughout the series as someone who is virtually incapable of love, Cryer was initially confused as to how a romance with Nyxly would play out on screen.

“I said, ‘Are they going to ‘meet cute’? Are they going to be both walking their dogs in the park and the leashes get intertwined? How are they gonna do this?’” he recalls. “She didn’t have answers for me at the time, but I thought what they came up with was really fun and allowed a lot of the relationship to have happened off screen.”

Cryer admits he was “really kind of scared of it, because I thought, ‘I don’t want Lex to lose his menace. I don’t want the dark side of him to be lost.’ And I knew they wanted to have some fun with it, so I said, ‘OK, it’s gonna be tough to have the comedic moments but also have Lex be scary,’ so we just took it moment to moment.”

When it comes to Lex’s feelings for Nyxly, though, Cryer says Lex justified it because “Nyxly is so powerful that, once he finally met a being he felt was worthy of him, it really is just a function of his ego that he fell in love with her.”

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