I recently re-watched Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League, which reminded me of the following theory. I came up with it shortly after seeing BvS, to try to make sense of Luthor’s convoluted, nonsensical scheme, and tweaked it slightly after seeing JL. It’s a fan theory, but I’m positive that at least some elements of it must be what the filmmakers intended.
After the events of Man of Steel, most of the world is obsessed with Superman’s existence and what it means to our world. Lex Luthor, one of the smartest human beings on the planet, sees the bigger issue: aliens exist. They are physically powerful, technologically advanced, view us as little more than vermin, and they’ve been here before. One of them has been living among us for decades, undetected. How many more have their been?
Luthor uses his vast resources to scour the globe. Picking up bits of Kryptonian tech left over from the invasion, sure, and pieces of Kryptonite, as well, but those are mostly sidelines. What he’s really looking for is evidence of previous alien visitations. And he finds it - an Apokolyptan Mother Box. (Presumably the lost “tribes of man” box left over from Steppenwolf’s aborted invasion).
A prodigious intellect with a matching prodigious ego, Luthor manages to figure out how to activate it, and foolishly does so. Which puts his mind into communion with that of Darkseid, a malevolent, insane space god. Luthor’s psyche is almost immediately overwhelmed, driving him insane.
From there, he seeks to carry out Darkseid’s agenda, but he’s an insane human trying to enact an insane, alien agenda, so it’s a bit…off. But, also, his psyche was almost immediately overwhelmed. Luthor underestimated the dangers of the Mother Box, but equally, Darkseid underestimated him. Luthor has a Level 10 intellect. As his psyche was being overwhelmed, he managed to partition off a relatively sane facet of psyche. A facet which schemed against Darkseid and his agenda.
Following Darkseid’s agenda, Luthor doesn’t want to just kill heroes. He wants to kill the idea of heroes. It’s not enough to simply kill Batman and Superman. He wants to manipulate them into killing each other, and in the process destroy their legends. He wants to kill hope.
To do so, in his insanity, he concocts a ridiculously over-elaborate scheme. But, the sane fragment of his psyche also seeds the scheme’s own undoing. He uses military contractors to “frame” Superman for war crimes. But instead of giving the contractors generic, untraceable weapons and ammunition, he gives them uniquely identifiable and traceable, proprietary LexCorp technology. Because the sane fragment of his psyche wants the scheme to be uncovered, and fail.
Every part of his scheme that doesn’t make sense? It’s a combination of him being insane and trying to carry out an insane alien agenda, and the sane fragment of his psyche deliberately undermining it.
He’s the one that made sure the Mother Box wound up at S.T.A.R. Labs, with Dr. Silas Stone. Sure, he was trying to sow chaos and expose humans to its corrupting influence as part of Darkseid’s agenda. But he also put it into the hands of one of the few humans on Earth that could begin to unlock its secrets. He may even have arranged Victor Stone’s “accident”, to force Silas into using it, creating a human cyborg that can interface with and defeat Mother Box technology. Not to mention, unlike the Atlantean and Amazonian Mother Boxes, Steppenwolf apparently couldn’t detect the human Mother Box until our heroes used it on the Kryptonian ship. Putting it in S.T.A.R. Labs also seems to have been a pretty effective means of hiding it from Steppenwolf.
He invites Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne to his house. Why? He says, “I like to bring people together.” But why is he bringing them together? Sure, it’s part of his scheme to stoke the tensions between them, but he doesn’t actually do anything to stoke those tensions, beyond making sure they run into each other. Instead, he literally opens the door for the World’s Greatest Detective, who has All the Cool Toys, and exposes his computer server. Which has an unsecured access port. Behind an unlocked door. A few feet from the ballroom where the party is taking place. In a hall being used by the caterers, only a few feet from the kitchen, which is filled with random, anonymous outside staff. It’s almost like he’s providing Bruce Wayne with a multitude of options to steal data from the server…
Which, sure, is part of his convoluted “Batman and Superman kill each other scheme.” He wants Batman to find the info on the kryptonite, so Batman will steal it and use it against Superman. But he also “just happens”, for no reason whatsoever, has data on Aquaman, the Flash, Cyborg, and Wonder Woman on that same server. Because the sane fragment of his psyche wants Batman to find that data, and use it to assemble a team of heroes.
And, of course, Luthor’s theft of a photograph and the party “just happen” to lure Diana of Themiscyra out of a century of hiding in the shadows, where she meets, and allies with, Batman.
Because Lex Luthor “likes to bring people together.”
Ladies and gentlemen, Lex Luthor founded the Justice League.
