With a universe in chaos and a regime in flux, there's a new DC hero on the horizon: Blue Beetle.

Nestled between two DC projects with big weights on their shoulders — The Flash and Aquaman 2 — Blue Beetle is a small but potentially exciting new entry into the genre.

Read more: Blue Beetle post-credits scene explained

Don’t feel bad if you don’t know anything about the film, character or status in the series, as it’s been kept on the down low so far to date, but we have all the information you might need for DC’s newest hero.

Blue Beetle reviews

Our own write-up calls it a "throwback to the superhero movies of the noughties, for better and worse." So if you missed that type of glossy action, you're in luck. Meanwhile, Digital Spy highlighted the film's family-led heart before suggesting that its "set pieces are mostly just two powerful people in suits bashing each other in murky night-time settings."

Unfortunately, The Telegraph wasn't quite as subtle, calling Blue Beetle "powerfully boring." Read our full review round-up below for a more well-rounded view of DC's latest.

Yahoo Entertainment: Family-driven superhero movie has heart (3-min read)

Digital Spy: Blue Beetle is an entertaining debut for DC's newest superhero (4-min read)

The Telegraph: DC’s Iron Man with a spray-paint job is powerfully boring (2-min read)

The Guardian: Perky superhero caper offers more of the same (4-min read)

The Independent: A superhero movie that doesn’t involve time travel or multiverses – thank god (4-min read)

Blue Beetle release date

Blue Beetle is in cinemas now, following its release on Friday, 18 August.

Coming from Puerto Rican director Angel Manuel Soto, who previously helmed the acclaimed Charm City Kings, it’s clearly opened doors for him as he’s already been tapped to helm a Transformers film.

Is there a trailer for Blue Beetle?

Yes, there are a few now.

The second Blue Beetle trailer landed online in mid-July and it arrived with a bang, showing us exactly what our hero Jaime Reyes’ new Blue Beetle mecha-suit can do.

Throughout the three-minute-long trailer, we see Jaime try to grapple with his newfound powers whilst coming to terms with his heroic responsibilities and the impact they have on his close-knit family.

Meanwhile, we get to glimpse one of the movie’s big bads, Susan Sarandon’s Victoria Kord, who wants to use the power of the scarab for her own nefarious ends.

Oh yeah, did we mention the bit where Jaime’s nana lets loose with a suped-up machine gun? That happens too. Watch it below.

The first Blue Beetle trailer was released on 3 April, 2023.

It gave us our first look at Jaime's journey to becoming Blue Beetle, showing the teenager being taken over by the alien scarab that gives off serious Venom vibes.

The scarab gives him an Iron Man-like suit with Green Lantern-style powers that enable him to conjure up objects and weapons. The trailer shows him blasting into space too.

Blue Beetle cast

Despite being in the DCEU, Blue Beetle is a fresh cast of characters for audiences to come to know. It also looks to promise a Latin-American superhero in the same vein that Shang-Chi offered an Asian superhero film, or Black Panther a Black superhero film.

Xolo Maridueña, best known for starring role as Miguel Diaz in Netflix series Cobra Kai makes his film debut as Jaime Reyes / Blue Beetle a teenager who gains superpowers from an alien scarab.

Read more: The best Easter eggs and cameos in Blue Beetle

Around him are a great supporting cast including Bruna Marquezine (Maldivas) as Reyes’ love interest Penny, Belissa Escobedo (Hocus Pocus 2) as his sister Milagros and Harvey Guillén (What We Do In The Shadows) in an undisclosed role.

Academy Award nominee Adriana Barraza (Babel) will play Reyes’ grandmother, and TV legend George Lopez will feature as his uncle. Elipidia Carrillo, best known for 80s classic Predator, will feature alongside Narcos: Mexico star Damián Alcázar and Raoul Trujillo as Carapax the Indestructible Man.

Most interestingly is the inclusion of screen legend Susan Sarandon as the sinister antagonist figure Victoria Kord.

What is the plot of Blue Beetle?

Blue Beetle charts the origin of superhero Blue Beetle, a Mexican teenager called Jaime Reyes who is granted superhero armour when an alien scarab beetle grafts itself to him.

The choice to go for a smaller scale is wise given that this could also be a film easily added to the new universe Gunn is crafting and having it less connected to what came before might mean that audiences are more open to it.

During a recent visit to the Michael Rosenbaum podcast, Gunn confirmed that Blue Beetle will indeed mark the start of his newly-revamped DCU, with the hero being the universe's first new character.

“I mean the first DCU character, for sure, is Blue Beetle, and the first full DCU movie is Superman,” he told Rosenbaum, clarifying the order of things.

Blue Beetle is in cinemas now.