Fridge / The Adventures of Superboy

Fridge Brilliance

• Sherman Howard replaced Scott Wells as Lex Luthor after the first season. This change in appearance had an actual in-universe explanation in the episode "With This Ring I Thee Kill", as Luthor underwent plastic surgery to make himself look like Warren Eckworth, a businessman. Then in the episode "Roads Not Taken, Part 2", Superboy takes a portal to Earth in an Alternate Universe, where his duplicate is a tyrannical dictator named the Sovereign,and where he meets a duplicate of Lex, a member of an anti-Sovereign resistance cell, and who looks like Eckworth, instead of how he looked like in the first season. The "real world" explanation is that it was impractical to get Scott Wells to reprise his role. The in-universe explanation for Lex's appearance is in a line of dialogue by the duplicate Lana, who reminds the Sovereign that he, she, and Lex grew up together. This would give the Lex of that world plenty of reasons to change his appearance to that of Eckworth, not the least of which is reducing the chances that the Sovereign might retaliate against Lex's family. -Tropers/dbz77
  • An alternative explanation is that all of the Luthors on other worlds look like Sherman Howard, and the Scott Wells Luthor is the odd man out. He was destined to kill Eckworth and take his appearance, because that would make him match all the other Lex Luthors of the multiverse.