Adding any new character to a massive, comic book cinematic universe leads to speculation and excitement around casting. The DCU under Peter Safran and James Gunn has a few big heavy hitting characters who need to join and have cast members. If a recent list of remaining movies on the docket is accurate, we’re talking characters like Batman, Wonder Woman, the Teen Titans, and Swamp Thing. So, nobody too major, he said sarcastically. But before any of them, we now have two new heroes I don’t think anyone was even wondering about. Meet your new Mister Miracle and Big Barda: Josh Hutcherson and Mackenzie Davis.
The news comes via James Gunn on social media. The pair will star in the Mister Miracle animated series based on Tom King’s excellent Mister Miracle miniseries. This also means (in theory) they will play the characters in live-action when and if that ever happens. So far in the DCU, only Frank Grillo’s Rick Flag Sr. has made the jump from animation to live-action. Mister Miracle, aka Scott Free, is canonically very short while Big Barda is…the opposite. So at least the casting has that correct.
Both characters come from Jack Kirby’s Fourth World metaseries when he left Marvel for DC in 1970. Mister Miracle is a New God, son of Highfather, who, through a diplomatic agreement with the planet Apokolips, went to live as Darkseid’s ward from a young age while Darkseid’s younger son Orion went to live on New Genesis. It’s as Darkseid’s young heir that Scott Free meets Big Barda, a native of Apokolips. She was raised in Granny Goodness’ abusive thrall to be one of the fabled Female Furies, Apokolips’ fiercest warriors. Barda and Scott fall in love and eventually the two marry and defect to New Genesis.
Tom King and Mitch Gerad’s Mister Miracle miniseries from 2017 places the couple in a seemingly never ending battle against Darkseid’s forces as they attempt to lead a normal married life in the small amount of downtime. As usual with King, the 12-issue comic has plenty of weird metaphysical stuff in addition to the more mundane and homey parts of superheroism. It’s very good.
Hutcherson, of course, came to prominence in the Hunger Games movies. He has since starred in Hulu’s Future Man and the Five Nights at Freddy’s movies. Davis starred in the “San Junipero” episode of Black Mirror, played a replicant in Blade Runner 2049, and a frickin’ terminator in Terminator: Dark Fate.
No word on when the series will premiere. Presumably we’ll also get a host of New Gods and Darkseid and whomever else in addition to the two main characters before then.
