Blue Beetle’s post-credits scene is a treat for Latin American fans

17.08.2023 - 19:31 / polygon.com / Peter Safran / Jaime Reyes

It’s hard these days to make a superhero movie without teasing another superhero movie to come, and DC’s Blue Beetle is no exception. The film — technically the first release in James Gunn and Peter Safran’s complete reboot of the DC movie universe, now branded as the DCU — saves one of its bigger mysteries for a possible sequel, and teases that sequel in a mid-credits sequence. There’s an end-credits sequence, too, but that one does its own thing entirely. Let’s dig in. (Spoilers ahead for Blue Beetle.)

Blue Beetle is the origin story of what appears to be, in the DCU, the second incarnation of the hero Blue Beetle. Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) is a Mexican-American 20-something who’s just graduated from a pre-law program. Shortly after returning to his family in his fictional hometown, Palmera City, he encounters a piece of alien technology that gives him fantastical powers. (Venom by way of Iron Man — or Kamen Rider by way of Ultraman.) But an opening montage and various references throughout the film make it clear that the first Blue Beetle was a man named Ted Kord, who co-founded the immense corporation Kord Industries, then disappeared.

This is close to how Blue Beetle works in the comics — Jaime picked up the mantle after the death of Ted Kord, who picked up the mantle from Dan Garret, the original original Blue Beetle. There are some blink-or-you’ll-miss-it references to Garret being one of Kord’s mentors in Blue Beetle, too.

But the movie diverges from comic canon with Ted’s sister, Victoria (Susan Sarandon), who takes over Kord Industries following his death and directs it toward capital-E Evil. It even starts to seem likely that she somehow had Ted killed so she could seize control of a business she resented being shut out of. But when she gets her chance at a villain monologue aimed at Ted’s daughter, Jenny (Bruna Marquezine), Victoria doesn’t share any big reveals about what happened to Ted — it’s left as an open mystery.

And in the mid-credits scene, a screen in Ted’s empty secret Blue Beetle hideaway lights up, then starts playing Air Supply’s “All Out of Love” for some reason. As the song starts skipping, a staticky voice from the computer asks whoever turned the machine on to tell Jenny that her father loves her, and is still alive — “Ted Kord is alive,” it repeats. What happened to Ted, where is he, and does the audience have any reason to care about this guy they know almost nothing about? That’ll all have to wait for a sequel.

Blue Beetle director Ángel Manuel Soto has repeatedly said that he wants to make a Blue Beetle trilogy, with the first movie serving as an introduction to the character, and the other two representing a three-act structure as Jaime matures and the films grow