With anti-alien sentiment on the rise on Supergirl, Ben Lockwood and his alter ego, Agent Libery, have stoked the xenophobic flames. But Ben is a better villain for Supergirl than his masked counterpart.

Over the first half of Supergirl‘s fourth season, we’ve watched an eerily prescient exploration of rising xenophobia through the not-so-subtle metaphor of aliens in America. The leading voice of that movement was quickly revealed to be a masked man known as Agent Liberty. His hateful rhetoric incites crowds and inspires others to don their own masks and carry out violence against aliens.

While Agent Liberty and his followers clearly provide a serious threat to the peace and stability of National City, especially as their rhetoric spreads, he is not nearly as interesting as — and does not provide quite the existential threat — the man behind the mask: Ben Lockwood.

The season’s fourth episode, “Man of Steel,” focused on Ben and how he became a bigoted extermist. When we first met Ben, he was a mild-mannered history professor at National City University. His father, Peter, was a blue collar steel worker whose company contracted with Luthor Corp. Peter held anti-alien views that Ben didn’t initially agree with.

However, when more companies, including the newly-branded L Corp, started using Nth metal as opposed to steel, Peter was forced to shut down his company — a major financial hit to the family. Ben was also accidentally injured when he tried to step in to stop an attack on an innocent alien.

Meanwhile, the Lockwood family became collateral damage as they lost their house during the Daxamite invasion and Peter was killed during the Worldkillers’ attempt to terraform the planet. Through this continued struggle, we saw Ben’s views shift in response to his family’s hardships, with aliens becoming a clear scapegoat.

The devolution of a reasonable, well-educated man like Ben into the type of man who lectures to his history class about the benefits of nationalism and making crude remarks about his alien students is a far more insidious threat than the one posed by men in masks.

In fact, he has only become more dangerous now that he has his own television show that gives him a platform to spew his hate. And doing so as Ben rather than Agent Liberty gives his words more power than if they came from a man unwilling to show his face and associate with those views.

Ben’s descent into hatred is not only powerful in how it was influenced by the very stories we watched play out over the course of Supergirl‘s first three seasons, but also because it shows how pain and fear can warp even the best of us.

Supergirl is a hero who exemplifies hope, yet it is the collateral damage of her battles that destroyed much of Ben’s life and sent him into the darkness.

The ideal villain for a hero like Supergirl is one who stands in complete opposition to everything she represents. Ben Lockwood isn’t interested in taking over the world; rather, he wants to change the views of the people in it. After all, it is much harder to fight an idea than it is to fight a villain.

As a result, Kara may have to rely more on her work as a journalist than as a superhero to fight the Ben Lockwoods of the world. This is different from other villains she has faced who have caused Kara to take a back seat to Supergirl during the fight.

And since so much of Kara’s journey has been to find balance between her lives as Kara and as Supergirl, a villain who pushes her away from Supergirl provides a unique challenge and opportunity for our hero.

Agent Liberty may have a hateful agenda and numerous followers, but it is actually Ben Lockwood who poses the greater danger on Supergirl.

Supergirl airs Sundays at 8:00 p.m. ET on The CW.