History Recap / Supergirl2015S4E3ManOfSteel

* NeverMyFault: Ben's father refuses to modernize his refinery to process Nth Metal or to even try (Lena probably would've helped if he hadn't been so stubborn and prideful), claiming the old ways all the best. He then blames the aliens for his own self-destructive behavior when it's forced to close.

* HonorBeforeReason: Ben's father refuses to modernize his refinery to process Nth Metal or to even try (Lena probably would've helped if he hadn't been so stubborn and prideful). He then blames the aliens for his own self-destructive behavior.

* NeverMyFault: Ben holds the alien student that he insulted responsible for the loss of his job, despite the fact that he made a blatantly racist comment about her in the middle of a classroom full of fellow students, only the latest in a series of such incidents according to the dean. As it turns out, the student didn't even report him.

* BaitAndSwitch: The early part of the episode indicates it's the rather racist factory owner who will become Agent Liberty. Instead, it's his well-educated, initially alien-supporting son.

** The incident at the bar takes place during [[Recap/Supergirl2015S3E14SchottThroughTheHeart Kara's karaoke night.]]

* CorruptCorporateExecutive: From Ben's point of view, Lena is this. She profited greatly from alien technology at the expense of wrecking his father's company. She then buys up the media to suppress viewpoints unfavorable to her agenda. Finally, after Ben's father dies, she tries to buy off Ben and his family.

* TheCorrupter: Ben's superior who had him fired for espousing his racist views in class later sympathizes with him due to also having lost her home after the Terraforming incident. Ben then invites her to one of his lectures.

* CrimeAfterCrime: Due to AlcoholInducedIdiocy, Ben and his buddies set fire to the N-metal factory. They do not realize that a worker is still inside. Ben then beats the worker to death to silence a witness and because the worker is an alien. From that, he progresses to more hate crimes and murders.

** Ben also uses typical right-wing rhetoric, with terms like "safe space" and "Snowflake."

* DrivenToSuicide: During the terraforming incident, Ben's father goes to his shuttered factory deliberately hoping it will collapse and kill him. Ben is too late to stop him and can't save him when it happens.

** Ben is horrified when he sees a seemingly human factory worker in flames after he and his friends torch the Nth metal factory. When the man's image inducer fails and reveals him as an alien (specifically, one who had accidentally injured him months prior), Ben is immediately revolted and bludgeons him to death with a nearby pipe.

** Kara's big speech in Season 1 got Lockwood's father going on aliens being "roaches" to plant those beliefs.

* RememberTheNewGuy: Ben Lockwood is retconned into having met half the show's cast at some point.

* TraumaCongaLine: Being accidentally injured by an alien, his family business going bankrupt, having his home destroyed by J'onn fighting a Daxamite, losing his job for his radical views, and watching his father die in when the Worldkillers' attempted terraforming of Earth turns a tolerant professor into a genocidal killer of aliens.

* WholeEpisodeFlashback: After Kara is rescued by J'onn, the episode switches to a series of flashbacks showing how Ben Lockwood became Agent Liberty.

* AbsenteeActor: Nia Nahl is absent in this episode.

* AlcoholInducedIdiocy: Ben gets drunk with some of the factory workers after the death of his father. As they complain about losing their jobs, he gets the idea to burn down the Nth Metal factory. They throw some molotovs into the window, forcing the floor manager, the same truck driver who wounded him, to flee. Ben bashes the guy's head in with a pipe, marking his transition from a rabble rouser to a violent fanatic.

* TheCameo: Cat Grant and Thea both appear by way of archival footage.

* CorruptCorporateExecutive: From Ben's point of view Lana is this. She profited greatly from alien technology at the expense of wrecking his father's company. She then buys up the media to supress viewpoints unfavorable to her agenda. Finally, after Ben's father dies, she tries to buy off Ben and his family.
* TheCorrupter: Ben's superior who had him fired for espousing his racist views in class later sympathizes with himm due to also having lost her home after the Terraforming incident. Ben then invites her to one of his lectures.
* CrimeAfterCrime: Due to AlcoholInducedIdiocy Ben and his buddies set fire to the N-metal factory. They do not realize that a worker is still inside. Ben then beats the worker to death to silence a witness and because the worker is an alien. From that he progresses to more hate crimes and murders.
* {{Dehumanization}}: Ben starts doing this as his bigotry gets worse and worse. He starts referring to aliens as "[[ItIsDehumanizing it]]", defends his anti-alien rants to the Dean by saying "they're not people", and dismisses the alien factory worker's plea for mercy by hatefully telling him "you're an ''alien''". Mercy gets in on the action as well; she calls Fiona a monster for simply being an alien, and describes her as gathering "creatures" as if Fiona's building an army of evil monsters (she actually runs a support group).
* DestructiveSavior: Deconstructed, as we see how living in a place full of them, who then never seem to take any responsibility for it, slowly chips away at a good man's morality.

** The tension between the workers in the common steel industry and those who favor the upgrade to steel made from Nth Metal mirrors the real life tension between people who work in the coal industry and those who favor renewable energy.
** Ben's pro-nativist speech to his class carries some very blatant racist undertones, especially when he talks about "complexion". It's probably no accident that the first student to walk out, while clearly an alien, is played by a black actor.
** Ben also uses typical right-wing rhetoric, with terms like 'Safe space' and 'Snowflake'.

* HonorBeforeReason: Ben's father refuses to modernize his refinery to process Nth Metal or to even try (Lena probably would've helped if he hadn't been so stubborn or prideful). He then blames the aliens for his own self-destructive behavior.
* GreaterScopeVillain: Mercy refers to the "people [she] work[s] with", implying that she and Otis are being backed by someone else.
* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: Downplayed, but evident. While a number of major catastrophes are the result of aliens (the large-scale invasions and attacks carried out in previous seasons), most of the violence in this episode is carried out by humans, with Ben himself murdering two helpless and pleading aliens on screen (dialogue confirms he's killed at least two more besides), and the Graves siblings having no qualms about murdering Jensen (another human who had helped them) in cold blood. The point is driven home when we get a replay of Fiona's death; despite Mercy describing her as a monster, Fiona is tied to a chair and helpless while Ben mercilessly stabs her in the back.
* InnocentlyInsensitive: Lena showing up to Peter Lockwood's funeral ''really' didn't help in easing tensions with Ben.

* JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: Ben makes the leap from bigot and rabble rouser to xenophobic murderer when he bludgeons an alien factory worker to death.
* KryptoniteProofSuit: To save Supergirl from the kryptonite-poisoned atmosphere, Lena fits her with an all-covering suit designed to filter out the kryptonite.
* LaserGuidedKarma: The dean who fires Ben (after his rant spurred by the loss of his home and father's livelihood) later apologizes for doing so and joins his movement after she herself loses her home in similar circumstances.

* MoralMyopia: Ben Lockwood demonstrates this repeatedly, both before, during, and after his StartOfDarkness.
** Ben is surprised to hear Alex say that Supergirl went easy on the factory workers, as he sympathises with them and had just been (accidentally) wounded by the alien foreman. He doesn't consider that the human workers are the ones who started the violence, and that they outnumbered the aliens by at least ten to one.

* NeverMyFault: Ben holds the alien student that he insulted responsible for the loss of his job, despite the fact that he made a blatantly racist comment about her in the middle of a classroom full of fellow students, only the latest in a series of such incidents according to the Dean. As it turns out, the student didn't even report him.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: While never intentional, one way or another, each main character played a part in warping Lockwood from a good man to a bigot. Kara's big speech in season 1 got Lockwood's father going on aliens being "roaches" to plant those beliefs. After being injured by an alien, Ben is thrown when Alex believes he was part of the mob, rather than trying to disperse it, and that Supergirl was harder on the mob than the aliens. J'onn accidentally destroyed the family home while fighting a Daxamite. Lena is unreceptive to his arguments about the past being important and encourages him to convince his father to modernize. James defends his reporting on aliens, even though Ben believes it downplays the consequences by relegating the human cost to the back pages. All mean well, but each slight builds on the previous one to make Ben into Agent Liberty.

* NotTheFallThatKillsYou: According to the DEO's tracking system, J'onn saves Kara a mere six feet from impact. They had previously noted that she would die from the fall due to the kryptonite poisoning.
* OhNoNotAgain: After suffering two alien invasions, Ben says this when the Kryptonian witches start terraforming the Earth.

* RacistGrandpa: Ben's father Peter. George, Ben's son, is the first one to parrot his racist rants.

* SanitySlippage: As his life falls apart from one alien-related event after another, Ben goes from mild mannered and open minded to xenophobic and murderous.
* StartOfDarkness: The episode tracks Ben's descent from mild-mannered history professor into a murderous, xenophobic fanatic. His corruption starts when his father's steel factory starts losing business to an Nth metal refinery, and his father's death during Reign's attempt to terraform Earth finished the job.

* TraumaCongaLine: Being accidentally injured by an alien, his family business going bankrupt, having his home destroyed by J'onn fighting a Daxamite, losing his job for his radical views, and watching his father die in when the Worldkillers' tried terraforming the Earth turns a tolerant professor into a killer with aims on genocide of non-earthlings.
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Pretty much ''everyone'' on the heroes side unwillingly further radicalized Ben for a number of different reasons.

* YouRemindMeOfX: Lena warns Ben, as she sees much of her brother's extremism in him.
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Mercy tries to kill Jensen after deploying the kryptonite dispersal bomb since he's a liability, but Ben stops her. He instead plans to use Jensen to get into the DEO.

* HonorBeforeReason: Ben's father refuses to modernize his refinery to process Nth Metal or to even try. He then blames the aliens for his own self-destructive behavior.

* CrimeAfterCrime: Due to AlcoholInducedIdiocy Ben and his buddies set fire to the N-metal factory. They do not realize that a worker is still inside. Ben then beats the worker to death to silence a witness and because the worker is an alien. From that he progresses to more hate crimes and murders.

* BaitAndSwitch: The early part of the episode indicates it's the rather racist factory owner who will become Agent Liberty. Instead, it's his well-educated, alien-supporting son.

* ALighterShadeOfBlack: Agent Liberty is a murderer and a fanatic, but he comes off as relatively better than Mercy and Otis; where they have no qualms at all about killing humans, he refuses to.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The tension between the workers in the common steel industry and those who favor the upgrade to steel made from Nth Metal mirrors the real life tension between people who work in the coal industry and those who favor renewable energy.

* BaitAndSwitch: The early part of the episode indicates it's the rather racist factory owner who will become Liberty. Instead, it's his well-educated, alien-supporting son.

** Ben goes to Lena for help with his father's failing factory while she's busy rebranding the company, which would place it sometime before [[Recap/Supergirl2015S2E1TheAdventuresOfSupergirl the season 2 premiere]].

* DontYouDarePityMe: The alien student that Ben made a racist comment about in class reaches out to him out of concern. He brushes her off with this trope.

* FromNobodyToNightmare: The episode shows how Liberty was once a mild-mannered professor warped into an alien-hating fanatic.
* NeverMyFault: Ben holds the alien student that he insulted responsible for the loss of his job, despite the fact that he made a blatantly racist comment about her in the middle of a classroom full of fellow students (and, as it turns out, she didn't report him).

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Mercy tries to kill Jensen after deploying the kryptonite dispersal bomb since he's a liability, but Ben stops her. He instead lans to use Jensen to get into the DEO.

** Ben's father dies during the [[Recap/Supergirl2015S3E23BattlesLostAndWon the attempt to terraform Earth]].

* RealityEnsues: Ben

!! Tropes

* BaitAndSwitch: The early part of the episode indicates it's the rather racist truck driver who will become Liberty. Instead, it's his well-educated alien-supporting son.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: While never intentional, one way or another, each main character played a part in warping Lockwood from a good man to a bigot. Kara's big speech in season 1 got Lockwood's father going on aliens being "roaches" to plant those beliefs. After being injured by an alien, Ben is thrown when Alex's interrogation indicates he could have been at fault. J'onn accidentally destroyed the family home while fighting a Daxamite. Both Lena and James turned him down for jobs and James not doing stories on the fallout of alien attacks. Obviously, they had no idea but each character unknowingly aided in Lockwood's "aliens are evil" beliefs.
* TragicBigot: Ben Lockwood was once a truly good man who actually fought ''for'' alien rights. But when an alien he was defending from a mob ended up accidentally injuring him, Lockwood's entire faith was twisted into pure hate.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: While never intentional, one way or another, each main character played a part in warping Lockwood from a good man to a bigot. Kara's big speech in season 1 got Lockwood's father going on aliens being "roaches" to plant those beliefs. After being injured by an alien, Ben is thrown when Alex's interrogation indicates he could have been at fault. J'onn accidentally destroyed the family home while flying a Daxamite. Both Lena and James turned him down for jobs and James not doing stories on the fallout of alien attacks. Obviously, they had no idea but each character unknowingly aided in Lockwood's "aliens are evil" beliefs.

* TragicBigot: The episode shows that Ben Lockwood was once a truly good man who actually fought ''for'' alien rights. But when an alien he was defending from a mob ended up accidentally injuring him, Lockwood's entire faith was twisted into pure hate.

* FromNobodyToNightmare: The episode shows how Liberty was once a mild-mannered professor warped into an alien-hating fanatic.