It has, for a while now, been widely understood that Jason Momoa will not be returning as Aquaman after The Lost Kingdom. Some still hold out hope, but Jason Momoa himself is here to tell us he doesn’t think he’ll return as DC’s Aquaman.
Momoa, speaking to Entertainment Tonight, reaffirmed what we’ve all known for a good while by saying, “I don’t necessarily want it to be the end… [but] I don’t think it’s really, like, a choice… The truth of it is, I mean, if the audience loves it, then there’s a possibility. But right now, I’m like, ‘It’s not looking too good.'”
Momoa, who went on to speak about how much he loves the role and how he can see where he’d like to take the character, is correct. If the film is miraculously a massive blockbuster, then Warner Bros. and DC Films are, of course, going to find a way to make Gunn bring him back, but the chances of that are really slim. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is not only dealing with the fact that it’s a dead-end movie in a dead-end film universe but also going up against the diminishing returns of the last few DC films to release and the overall slump of the superhero genre in general. The kind of box office that would force Gunn and Safran to consider bringing the actor back is going to be very hard to achieve.
However, that doesn’t mean it is the end of Momoa as a superhero or even in the DC Universe. The actor has already said that he’s spoken with Gunn about roles in the new universe, and there have been constant rumors swirling that he may land the role of Lobo at some point. For his part, Momoa would be more than happy to take that role as well, saying, “I was a big Lobo fan growing up, I read every comic. So that would be really cool.”
