Paul Mescal Duels Pedro Pascal in Gladiator II First-Look Photos

Paul Mescal has entered the great arena. Ahead of the first Gladiator II trailer on July 9th, Paramount Pictures released first-look photos of director Ridley Scott’s sequel to his Russell Crowe-starring 2000 epic. The images (via Vanity Fair) show the Oscar-nominated Aftersun actor as the older Lucius Verus (originally played by a young Spencer Treat Clark), the grandson of Marcus Aurelius and son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), fighting for his life in the arena — the same arena where Crowe’s enslaved general-turned-gladiator Maximus Decimus Meridius avenged his murdered family with the death of the power-hungry Emperor Commodus (JoaquinPhoenix). 

“I remember that day. I never forgot it,” Mescal’s Lucius said in the first Gladiator 2 footage screened at the Caesars Palace Colosseum in Las Vegas. “That a slave could takerevengeagainst an emperor. That a slave could get justice in thearena.” 

In the Gladiator sequel, “decadeshave passed and Lucius has come of age far away from his mother,” according to plot details shared by Vanity Fair. “Whilehe was still a child, Lucilla sent him to the northern coast of Africa,to a region called Numidiathat was (at that point) just outside the reach of the Roman Empire. Henever fully understood why, and as he grew stronger, so did hisresentment — even if his mother’s reasons had been pure.”

The grown Lucius returns to Rome as a prisoner of war, where he reunites with his mother — and clashes swords with Roman general Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), who trained as a junior officer under Crowe’s legendary general (albeit off-screen).

“When you’re a POW in Rome, if you aredamaged, you are killed. Ifyou are fit, you’ll get put into some kindof service, as in slavery,or you would go into the arena to die,” Scott told Vanity Fair. “The wrinkle is,when he gets to Rome as a prisoner and has a firstround in the arena,he sees his mother — to his shock. He doesn’t knowwhether she’s alive ornot. How would he know? You don’t havetelephones. There’s no press.And there’s his mother in the royal boxlooking pretty good after 20years. And she’s with the general who hecame face-to-face with on thewall in Numidia.”

While Crowe won’t be reprising his role in the sequel — the vengeful champion known as “the Spaniard” died in the arena, joining his murdered wife and son in the green fields of Elysium — Gladiator II “has an identity that is shaped by [Maximus’] legacy,” Pascal added. “It wouldn’tmake sense for it not to.” The Last of Us star describes Acacius as afighter who “learned from the best, so of course this code of honor isingrained into his training and into his existence. But at the end ofthe day, he’s a different person. And that can’t change who he is.Maximus is Maximus, and that can’t be replicated. That just makesAcacius capable of different things.”

Along with Mescal and Pascal, Gladiator II features a star-studded cast that includes two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington as the lavishly-dressed Macrinus, a wealthy powerbroker and arms dealer who has a stable of gladiators and a gold-plated chariot; and Joseph Quinn (A Quiet Place: Day One) as Emperor Geta and Fred Hechinger (Kraven the Hunter) as Emperor Caracalla, ruling brothers who “threaten Lucilla’s wellbeing as a means of controlling Acacius.”

Pascal, 49, dubbed Mescal, 28, “Brick Wall Paul” because of the “brutal” battles between Acacius and Lucius. “He got so strong. I would rather bethrown from a building than have to fight him again,” Pascal said. “To go up againstsomebody that fit and that talented and that much younger…. Outside of Ridley being a total genius, Paul is a big reason as to why I would put my poor body through that experience.”

In fashioning his gladiator physique, Mescal said, “I just wanted to be big and strong and look like somebody who can causea bit of damage when sh-t hits the fan. I think also,sometimes, one could, in striving for that perfect look, end up lookingmore like an underwear model than a warrior.” Mescal’s physical transformation and combat training not only made the Irish actor an arena-ready fighter, but factored into his psychology when playing a character who is thrust into a “brutal” reality of “savage” individuals as someone who is “unafraid of the establishment in a way that makes him dangerous to the establishment.”

“Muscles start to grow, and that can be deemed aesthetic in certaincapacities, but there is something about feeling strong in your bodythat elicits just a different feeling. You carry yourself differently,”Mescal said. “It has an impact on you psychologically in a way that isuseful for the film.”

Gladiator II opens only in theaters November 22nd.