Is DCU’s new ‘Blue Beetle’ animated series a sequel to the film, or a spin-off?

It may not have soared at the box office whatsoever, but Blue Beetle nevertheless emerged as a hearty success story for the ill-fated DCEU. Indeed, the franchise trappings of Warner Bros. proved to be no match for Ángel Manuel Soto’s steady directorial hand and Xolo Maridueña energized turn as Jaime Reyes. As a result, it’s firmly considered one of the continuity’s best.

It was so good, in fact, that Gunn was all too happy to pre-emptively welcome Maridueña into the new DCU fold as this new continuity’s Jaime. That character, as revealed by Deadline earlier today, will be starring in an animated Blue Beetle series.

And with Maridueña serving as the connective tissue between the DCEU’s Blue Beetle film and Gunn’s brave new world, the question now is how much this new series will connect to that film.

Is the Blue Beetle animated series a sequel to the film?

According to the aforementioned report, the animated series will “build on the movie… but divert from telling the same story.” It’s not a clear-cut answer, but the best way to probably interpret this is that the animated series won’t be an origin story for Jaime, as we already got that in the DCEU, and can therefore reasonably extrapolate his background from that film even if it doesn’t belong to same continuity as the animated series. Welcome to comic book characters, y’all.

The new DC Universe will kick off in December with the Creature Commandos animated series on Max, before moving to the big screen with Superman, which hits theaters on July 11, 2025.