One of the questions we haven’t heard raised about Blue Beetle is: did it imply the existence of the Justice League International? As noted by filmmaker Angel Manuel Soto, not only was there a Green Lantern “cameo” in the film, but there was also a wink-and-a-nod reference to Martian Manhunter, in the form of a box of Oreo cookies in “The Bug,” Ted Kord’s Beetle-shaped airship. The thing is, the relationship between Blue Beetle/Ted Kord and J’Onn is based on their shared membership on a superhero team. So…is that what’s being implied here? Could there be a version of the Justice League International implied to exist in the background of this movie?
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It seems unlikely, honestly. But not impossible — especially when you consider a few specific characteristics of J’Onn and Ted.
Minor spoilers ahead for Blue Beetle and Zack Snyder’s Justice League, I guess.
So, to start with Ted: he’s vanished during the course of the movie, and doesn’t appear onscreen. He does pop up, in the form of a garbled voice cameo, in the post-credits sequence, revealing that he is still alive and “out there somewhere.” Some folks on Reddit have speculated that the voice sounds fairly young, and not like the “old man voice” you might expect from a guy who has a daughter in her 20s and has been missing for 20 years. That particular observation ties into a popular theory that wherever (whenever?) Ted went, it likely has to do with Booster Gold, the time-traveling superhero who has his own show coming up on Max in 2026 or so. In the comics, Ted and Booster are best friends, having met as members of the Justice League International.
Of course, the counter to that is that the descriptions given for the Booster Gold series sound like an adaptation of the 1980s series, in which Booster used time travel to arrive in the present, but then didn’t use it as part of his power set, and instead was just kind of a “celebrity superhero.” It wasn’t until the end of that run that Booster was recruited for the Justice League.
Moving on to J’Onn, the implication that he was working with Ted doesn’t necessarily mean he was doing so in his capacity as a Justice Leaguer. The only time we have seen J’Onn was in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, where it was revealed he has been manipulating events from behind the scenes, using his shapeshifting powers. So, obviously, he would have almost as much interest in working with billionaire-industrialist-superhero Ted Kord as with billionaire-industrialist-superhero Bruce Wayne.
That said, J’Onn’s role in the JLI was as a kind of de facto manager, keeping crazy people like Ted and Booster under control. Certainly that gels with his role as a self-appointed guardian of Earth, and it’s possible there was some version of that team that did exist prior to Ted’s disappearance and Superman’s debut on Earth. Hell, as we saw in Black Adam, the JSA existed in the DCEU for years without anyone commenting on it when Superman arrived. Maybe J’Onn and Ted were some kind of Justice Society Task Force!
From Warner Bros. Pictures comes Blue Beetle, which arrived in theaters on August 18th, marking the DC superhero’s first time on the big screen. The film, directed by Angel Manuel Soto, stars Xolo Maridueña in the title role as well as his alter ego, Jaime Reyes. Recent college grad Jaime Reyes returns home full of aspirations for his future, only to find that home is not quite as he left it. As he searches to find his purpose in the world, fate intervenes when Jaime unexpectedly finds himself in possession of an ancient relic of alien biotechnology: the Scarab. When the Scarab suddenly chooses Jaime to be its symbiotic host, he is bestowed with an incredible suit of armor capable of extraordinary and unpredictable powers, forever changing his destiny as he becomes the Super Hero BLUE BEETLE.
Starring alongside Maridueña are Adriana Barraza, Damían Alcázar, Elpidia Carrillo, Bruna Marquezine, Raoul Max Trujillo, with Oscar winner Susan Sarandon, and George Lopez (the “Rio and “Smurf” franchises). The film also stars Belissa Escobedo and Harvey Guillén. Soto directs from a screenplay by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, based on characters from DC. John Rickard and Zev Foreman are producing, with Walter Hamada, Galen Vaisman and Garrett Grant serving as executive producers.
