Yesterday's DC Fandome event proved to be a real treat for DC fans, providing looks at exciting upcoming films like Wonder Woman 1984, The Suicide Squad, Black Adam, The Flash, Shazam!: Fury Of The Gods and The Batman, but just because Aquaman 2 is the furthest DC feature out currently on the release schedule doesn't mean that it didn't have some cool knowledge to drop as well. Director James Wan and actor Patrick Wilson teamed up for an intimate discussion about their experiences making the first underwater adventure, and during the conversation essentially promised that the developing sequel will introduce audiences to whole new worlds.
Still being about a two-and-a-half years away from its release date, Wan and Wilson didn't have too much to say about the development of the follow-up, and in addition to officially confirming that Wilson's Orm will be back in the mix, they also revealed that Aquaman 2 will take characters to parts of the ocean that were left previously unexplored:
Patrick Wilson: I'm excited for some new worlds. I know you love world-building, and I’d like to see some of that. I'd like to see where else we can go. Because I know you’re going to push that ocean. There’s a lot of unexplored ocean! We only know five percent of the ocean, and that's people!James Wan: That is true. I can definitely guarantee you new worlds in this next one, and I think you’re going to be very excited as an actor with what you're going to play with with Orm.
As established in the first Aquaman, there are seven underwater kingdoms (with Atlantis being one of them), and while the first adventure showed us a number of the different cultures – particularly through Orm's machinations to become Ocean Master – there is clearly a whole lot that we haven't seen yet. The enthusiasm that James Wan and Patrick Wilson share for that element of the sequel is certainly exciting.
We previously learned that David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, who was a co-writer on the first Aquaman, is writing the script for Aquaman 2, and while nothing about the plot has been confirmed yet, we can draw some pretty solid conclusions simply based on where the last story left off. Specifically, Jason Momoa's Arthur Curry a.k.a. the titular hero is going to have to deal with all of the responsibilities that come with being the King of Atlantis, and simultaneously have to deal with the plot being developed by Dr. Stephen Shin (Randall Park) and Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) as they try to expose the secrets of the underwater kingdom to the world.
James Wan also spoke to the tone of Aquaman 2, and noted that there is going to be a bit of a deviation present in the sequel. While the previous movie was primarily an adventure movie in the vein of Romancing The Stone, the second chapter is going to be going to some darker places. Said the director,
I think the second one is a little bit more serious, a little bit more relevant in the world we are living in today. I think that’s where it wants to go.
While James Wan is clearly working to be purposefully vague here, it's hard to imagine that he's referencing anything other than the way that humanity treats the environment in our modern world, especially the ocean. These kinds of issues have been present in Aquaman comics for decades, regularly creating tension between the land and undersea worlds, and we got a bit of the rhetoric from the war-hungry Orm in the first movie, but it's exciting that we'll get to see that conflict potentially expand in the next one.
Given how far away its release date is, and the fact that there are a number of other massive DC projects on the way in the coming months and years, it may be a minute before we start to see the gears start to seriously turn for Aquaman 2, but you can be sure that we'll be keeping our ears to the ground for news and updates to share with all of you.
