WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Dark Nights: Death Metal #5 by Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion, and FCO Plascencia on sale now.
Lex Luthor is a man of many titles. The arch nemesis of Superman. The greatest mind on Earth. Even president. If there was ever one man who possessed the potential to see through every problem, every crisis, and ascertain the core issues at hand, it would be Lex Luthor.
Throughout the years Lex Luthor has operated under one constant and unbreakable rule: everything he does, he does for himself. This truth is regardless of which timeline he exists in, which Earth he lives on, or what the crisis at hand might be. In Dark Nights: Death Metal #5 the crisis that Luthor and the entirety of the DC multiverse faces is the imminent destruction of all of reality at the hands of The One Who Laughs. Previous attempts at defeating him have failed and the entity known as Perpetua is close to meeting her demise at his hands. All seems lost until Luthor saves Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman from death.
As the remaining heroes converge, Luthor explains his final plan to defeat The One Who Laughs once and for all. He relates a memory from his childhood of how he used to visit a planetarium daily and delight in watching a video on the birth of existence. One day, however, the video was played in reverse by accident and Luthor was shaken by the display of watching existence revert back to nothingness. It's from this memory that he finds the key to victory. To defeat The One Who Laughs, Luthor explains, the remaining heroes and villains must harness the power of anti-crisis energy. It's a risky, all-or-nothing plan but there is no other choice for reality to survive.
During his speech, Luthor turns to Wonder Woman and tells her what he believes she, Superman, and Batman represent truly. He states that Superman seeks to bring out the best of people, Batman to curb the worst in people, and that Wonder Woman seeks the truth most of all. If anyone could pass the truest judgment on those heroes, it would be Lex Luthor. Luthor has battled Superman for longer than anyone else and in ways no other villain ever has. In Blackest Night #7 by Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis, Lex Luthor admits through the power of The Lasso of Truth that even he wants to be Superman.
Luthor sees Superman's qualities and he yearns for the respect, love, and attention that it brings him. He sees Superman as the shining bastion of justice and altruism that people aspire to be. Luthor continues to explain what drives Batman. The endless nights of fighting crime, of putting his life on the line to keep the citizens of Gotham safe; Luthor sees that Batman fights to bring order to a world that desperately needs it. His desire is to keep the worst of humanity and bay, either by fighting it or by teaching others to live above it.
And as Luthor looks to Wonder Woman he sees her definitive drive is to seek truth. Her iconic weapon, the Lasso of Truth, is a physical embodiment of this pursuit. With truth Wonder Woman forces her opponents to reveal themselves not only to her but to themselves. With truth she sees her partners for who they are, and sees the world with its veil torn back. Wonder Woman uses truth not only as a weapon against those who use treachery and deceit as weapons, but also as a tool to help mend the world.
As Wonder Woman and the remaining few heroes make their final stand against The One Who Laugh's counter-assault, it is Lex Luthor's words that hang in the air. It was his intervention that saved Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, and it was his speech that motivated them into what may quite possibly be the final battle for the multiverse.