In the closing moments of tonight’s episode of Supergirl, a fifth dimensional imp named Mr. Mxyzptlk appeared onscreen, marking his first live-action appearance since the fourth season of Smallville.
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You can get a good look at him below, as played by Once Upon a Time star Peter Gadiot.
Mr. Mxyzptlk is a powerful character whose battles with the Man of Steel are defined by a sense of fun and mischief more than malice — but that doesn’t mean there won’t be destruction when he comes to town. Mxyzptlk’s idea of a good time is to make a building come to life and start walking around town, crushing everything in its wake while it throws a temper tantrum.
In most versions of the mythology, Mr. Mxyzptlk can only come to the DC Universe every so often; when he’s sent away, usually by being tricked into saying or writing his name backwards, he returns to his own dimension and comes back only once the “rules” allow him to.
There are some stories that have reinvented him as a more “serious” threat with darker understones, including Countdown to Final Crisis and the Grant Morrison run on Action Comics which came at the beginning of DC Comics’s 2011 contunity reboot, The New 52. It seems unlikely that a show as light as Supergirl, though, would take one of comics’s most lighthearted villains and make him anything too dark.
Created in 1944 by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Ira Yarborough, Mr. Mxyzptlk features heavily in the recently-reprinted World’s Funnest collection, in which he faces off with his fellow god-like, childlike imp, Bat-Mite. Supergirl will not be the character’s live-action debut; he previously appeared in The Adventures of Superboy, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and Smallville.
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Distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. International Television Distribution, SUPERGIRL is executive produced by Greg Berlanti (Arrow, The Flash), Ali Adler (The New Normal), Andrew Kreisberg (The Flash, Arrow) and Sarah Schechter (Blindspot, The Mysteries of Laura). Supergirl is based on the characters created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and appearing in DC Comics, by special arrangement with the Jerry Siegel Family.
“Luthors” episode of Supergirl airs tonight at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.