New rumors around Superman: Legacy emerge seemingly every day, and with the ongoing strikes causing delays in production, there are apt to be quite a few more before the movie itself finally hits screens. The latest is particularly interesting because it focuses on a location rather than a character. Bialya, a fictional nation in the DC Universe along the lines of Corto Maltese, is apparently playing a major role in the upcoming film. Though it has yet to be confirmed as of this writing, it opens up a Pandora’s box of possibilities.
That includes a big connection to The Blue Beetle, whose new DCEU movie will presumably raise the character’s profile. The character — at least the original version of him — has deep connections to Bialya. And while there’s no guarantee that any version of the character will appear in Superman: Legacy, the link is too strong to simply ignore. James Gunn has a chance to bring The Blue Beetle into the new DC Universe with very little effort.
The Blue Beetle’s Origins Lie in Bialya
Bialya first appeared in 1987’s Justice League #2 (Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis, Kevin Maguire, Al Gordon, Gene D’Angelo, and Bob Lappan), a Middle Eastern dictatorship located at some indeterminate spot between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Like Corto Maltese, it makes an easy stopping point for international intrigue without getting wrapped up in real-world geopolitics. It also served as the resting place of the Khajia Da alien scarab that gives Blue Beetle his powers (at least in the New Earth of DC’s post-Crisis continuity).
The first Blue Beetle, Dan Garrett, found the scarab in Bialya and used it to become a superhero. His successor, Ted Kord, pointedly refused to take the scarab, instead using his genius intellect to build various gadgets and devices to fight crime. Jaime Reyes, the third Blue Beetle, becomes the scarab’s host and ultimately seeks Kord out for help in controlling its often destructive motivations. The Blue Beetle movie focuses on Jaime Reyes as a hero, with Kord’s sister Victoria — a new character created for the project — serving as the main antagonist.
Superman: Legacy Could Reboot Blue Beetle From the Beginning
Assuming that Bialya plays a large part in Superman: Legacy, it opens a path for Blue Beetle to join the DC Universe at an earlier point in the character’s extremely convoluted history. The scarab could appear and find its way to Garrett, beginning his career as The Blue Beetle and setting up an eventual conflict with his protégé Kord. That creates an organic path for multiple characters who could sustain several movies or TV shows before arriving at Reyes.
Beyond the benefits of telling the whole story from the beginning, it also gives the DC Universe a way to distinguish the stand-alone movie’s Blue Beetle — a product of the now-defunct DCEU — from any incarnation the reboot wishes to present. If the DCU wants to use Reyes, it provides time and padding to avoid comparisons with the DCEU version. And perhaps most importantly, it establishes a legacy DC character who, like Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, can reveal DC’s diverse array of heroes to new fans who haven’t seen much of them before.
That all connects to Bialya, which offers plenty of other opportunities to expand the reboots scope as well. But with Blue Beetle among the DCEU’s closing acts — and with the character’s history connected so intimately to the fictional country — including his scarab lets the reboot quickly springboard to bigger things. Gunn has already indicated that Booster Gold will join the DCU, and Kord’s Beetle is one of his most notable partners. Bialya’s inclusion in Superman: Legacy makes that team-up — and so much more — very easy to imagine.