Aquaman 2 Star Reveals Secret Villain

A deep-cut DC Comics villain surfaces in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.

By Cameron Bonomolo

"I'm going to kill Aquaman... even if I have to make a deal with the devil himself." So swears Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, set four years after the pirate and mercenary failed to avenge his father in 2018's Aquaman. Blaming Atlantean king Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) for his father's death aboard a hijacked submarine, Manta makes his deal with the devil: King Kordax. "Free me from my prison and I will grant you the strength to kill the man who murdered your father," the demonic Lost King tells Manta in the trailer. "You will take from him what he stole from you, and his home will burn, and his kingdom will fall before my legions."

"We last saw Black Manta being rescued by Dr. Shin (Randall Park), and since then they've been putting together a crew. Black Manta still has this mission of finding and destroying Aquaman," Abdul-Mateen told DC Nation (inserted in this week's issues of DC Comics). "He still has the hate, the passion, and the rage, but he needs more help. So, he's got a whole army of new cats and he's traveling all over the globe in order to find more Atlantean technology because he has to rebuild his suit."

Enter Kordax, whose long-lost undersea domain is the titular Lost Kingdom. In Aquaman, Arthur had to find and wield former Atlantean King Atlan's trident to rule the seven seas; in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, the magical MacGuffin is the Black Trident: the cursed weapon of King Kordax.

"The Black Trident is an ancient Atlantean relic. It comes from King Kordax, who's also the brother of King Atlan," the actor revealed. "There was a battle for the throne and Kordax felt like he was the rightful heir, and King Atlan would not cede it. So Kordax forged this evil trident through black magic. When Black Manta and his crew stumble upon this trident 3,000 years later, Black Manta grabs it and becomes possessed by the evil spirit of Kordax." 

The Kordax-possessed Black Manta is a threat not just to Aquaman's kingdom, but his entire bloodline. To free Kordax from his prison, Black Manta must kill Aquaman's family: his mother, Atlanna (Nicole Kidman), his half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson), and Aquaman's young son, heir to the throne of Atlantis.

Related:

Aquaman 2: Who Is King Kordax?

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In the original DC comics, Kordax was the abandoned bastard child of Dardanus and Cora of Atlantis, the daughter of then-Atlantean ruler Oren the First. The accursed Kordax was born with the green scaled body of a sea creature and was abandoned to the harsh depths of the ocean for his monstrous appearance. With his powers of telepathy granting him the ability to communicate with marine life, the scorned Kordax went on to become the warlord ruler of Tritonis, home of the Merpeople.

DC's Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom surfaces in theaters on Friday.

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