Xolo Maridueña: From karate champ to super hero

It’s a dream, surreal is really the only word I can use for it,” says Xolo Maridueña, who plays Jaime Reyes/Blue Beetle in the all-new superhero movie from Warner Bros. Pictures, “Blue Beetle.”

“For as long as I can remember, Jaime Reyes is the biggest Latin Superhero in the DC Universe,” says the actor. “Growing up, my mom was a huge fan of comics and I think she passed down that liking to me, and it was always a dream to play this role and to get into this character.”

For Maridueña, family is what sets “Blue Beetle” apart from other superhero movies. “The family aspect is one that this movie really hits right on the head,” he shares. “Getting to work alongside phenomenal actors that are playing my family – Elpidia (Carillo, plays Jaime’s mother), Damían (Alcázar, father), Adriana (Barraza, grandmother), Belissa (Escobedo, sister) – the whole core family, I look at them and I speak with them and I’m like, ‘Whoa,’ from the get-go we were bonded for life, and we are now. I haven’t seen that in a superhero movie before, so I think the audience is really gonna relate to that.”

Unlike in most superhero movies where the protagonist hides their identity from family to keep them safe, in “Blue Beetle,” Jaime discovers his superpowers right in front of his family, making them all privy to his secret. “This family, really, for better or for worse, is the driving force of everything that Jaime does,” says Maridueña. “You see that, and it’s really just due in part to how much he cares about them, and that is an experience that I relate to and that I can connect with so easily.”

“My family is also so integral in everything that I do, and sometimes it feels like we’re on top of each other all the time, but those are the best types of relationships. I think they really provided a support system for Jaime to excel in everything that he wanted to do, and maybe now that he has the Scarab the plans are a little bit different, but they’re ride-or-dies, they see him for who is he and they’re gonna support him, and that really is such an important part of the story.”

In “Blue Beetle,” recent college grad Jaime Reyes (Maridueña) 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 superhero Blue Beetle.