Blue Beetle did not perform as well as expected at the global box office in 2023. As a result, the film’s star, Xolo Maridueña, is reportedly heading over to Marvel Studios.
Maridueña is listed among the cast of Marvel’s upcoming Disney Plus series Nova on the Production List, a movie and television tracking website maintained by the Film & Television Industry Alliance. Other names included on the site are Tanner Gillman, Glenn Close, and John C. Reilly. Marvel boss Kevin Feige is listed as producer, with Sabir Pirzada named the series’ writer. Although some actors have had roles in DC and Marvel projects, fans on social media were thrilled to know that Maridueña might be jumping ship.
Maridueña’s role as Blue Beetle in DC was his breakout superhero moment, but its lackluster ticket takings could make his reported departure to Marvel more permanent. If the actor gets too heavily involved with the Nova series, he may sign on for more Marvel projects, creating a conflict with DC’s potential plans for Blue Beetle. While Maridueña might not necessarily be needed to reprise the role as a voice actor for the upcoming animated series, excluding him from a live-action sequel would be a mistake, especially since James Gunn has already confirmed that Blue Beetle is canon within his DCU.
Head of streaming, television, and animation at Marvel Studios, Brad Winderbaum, confirmed that the Nova Disney Plus series was in the early stages of development in September. “So Nova’s in development right now,” he told ComicBook. “But I will say we’re developing more than we make. This is part of the new Marvel. But we should talk about this because at Marvel, everything has a spotlight on it, and everyone gets super excited, and we love Nova. And we want to get it right. We got a few things in development and we’re not going to go on a show until we are happy with a pilot. So it is in development right now.”
Nova, also known as Richard Rider, is a Marvel Comics character who started off with his own comic series but later became part of superhero teams like The New Warriors. He’s a member of the Nova Corps, an intergalactic police force, and gains superpowers like strength, flight, and the ability to take a lot of damage thanks to the Nova Force. The character was first created by Marv Wolfman in 1966 in his fanzine Super Adventures. At that time, the character was called the Star, and he got a new superpower every few minutes thanks to some pills from a spaceship.
Wolfman, with the help of writer Len Wein, later reworked the character into a prisoner named Kraken Roo, who eventually became the superhero Black Nova. Later, when Wolfman was working for Marvel Comics, he teamed up with artist John Romita Sr. to redesign the character’s look and craft a new origin story. Nova officially made his Marvel Comics debut in The Man Called Nova #1 in September 1976. Wolfman wanted the teenage Nova to be a tribute to Spider-Man, with a similar working-class background and a catchy, alliterative name.
Given the character’s history with Marvel Comics, the series might be a good fit for Maridueña, who also plays Miguel Diaz in the Netflix series Cobra Kai. The 23-year-old actor gave an incredible performance in Blue Beetle. “The story followed Jaime Reyes, who is chosen by an alien scarab to be its symbiotic host, bestowing the recent college graduate with a suit of armor that’s capable of extraordinary powers, forever changing his destiny as he becomes the titular superhero,” the official synopsis reads. Marvel’s Nova does not have an official synopsis at this time of writing.
