No one has been this excited for a beetle that wasn’t the classic Volkswagen car or Paul McCartney as Warner Bros. and DC Comics dropped the first trailer for the new 2023 Summer — Latino — blockbuster, Blue Beetle. It will be DC’s first Latino live-action superhero movie starring Cobra Kai star Xolo Maridueña. 

Directed by Puerto Rican filmmaker Angel Manuel Soto, it is set for an Aug. 18 release date. Originally planned to go straight to HBO Max, the studio made a last minute change to make it a theatrical release shortly before production. 

The first Latino superhero feature from DC was conceived under former studio President Walter Hamada, who departed from the company in October 2022 to oversee horror at Paramount. Maridueña stars in the title role as well as his alter ego Jaime Reyes, a recent college grad who returns home to and unexpectedly finds an ancient relic of alien biotechnology: The Scarab. 

Like DC’s other character, Venom, The Scarab chooses Jaime to be its symbiotic host, and as shown in the trailer that dropped Monday night, April 4, he dons an incredible suit of armor full of various unpredictable powers — a change that forever alters his life as he becomes Blue Beetle.

In the original comics that first published in Sept. 2011, Reyes is a Mexican-American who lives in El Paso, Texas. He is also the third iteration of the Blue Beetle series hero, first introduced in 2006 as a part of DC Comics Teen Titans. 

It was one of 52 monthly titles and the series was canceled after 17 issues in January 2013. Despite its short run, the iteration is highly known for being one of the very few Latino superheroes in comics. 

The cast also features an swath of Latino talent including Adriana Barraza (Rambo: Last Blood, Thor) as Jaime’s grandmother, Nana; Damían Alcázar (Narcos franchise) as his father; Elpidia Carrillo (the Predator films) as his mother; Raoul Max Trujillo (the Sicario films) as Carapax; with Oscar winner Susan Sarandon (Dead Man Walking); and George Lopez as Jaime’s Uncle Rudy. 

Soto, best known for directing the 2020 drama Charm City Kings, starring Meek Mill, recently told reporters and audience members at a Q&A that the film is “unapologetically Latino," IGN reported. He also explained that he tried to incorporate three generations of Reyes’ immigrant family and make them the focal point of the story.

“Whether or not you’re Latino, it transcends ethnicity, it transcends color or skin because that’s something that we can all relate [to],” Soto said. “We are not a genre and we’re not a buzzword either. It is a superhero movie that happens to have a Latino at the forefront. That’s it.”

Born in Los Angeles, California, Maridueña is of Mexican, Cuban, and Ecuadorian descent. At 16, he had his breakthrough role as Miguel Diaz in Cobra Kai, one of the starring roles in the spinoff show from the 1980s classic, The Karate Kid, streaming on Netflix.

For the 21-year-old, it’s an important role to take on, being the first Latino superhero to star in the DC film universe. 

"The only thing that is on my mind right now is just the fact that he's Latino. I have so much pride in getting to be a part of this project... I think it's so important, and I don’t want to stand on the soapbox for too long but representation is so important,” he said after his casting was officially announced back in 2021. 

Maridueña is one of Hollywood’s newest young Latino stars alongside Jenna Ortega who played Wednesday Addams in Netflix’s new hit Wednesday, who is now proliferated across every kind of media, highlighting the continuing and growing process of growth in Latino representation. 

Blue Beetle hits theaters this Summer, Aug. 18.