There’s an ongoing call for superhero movies to feature greater diversity than they have so far. In 2019 alone, Marvel’s responded to this by delivering their first female-led film in Captain Marvel and featuring the MCU’s first ever openly LGBT character in Avengers: Endgame (though there was some controversy over it). Now, they’re set to follow all that up with a gay lead in The Eternals as well.
Clearly, the House of Ideas is grabbing all the headlines in this area at the moment, but we’ve heard that DC’s working towards better representation behind the scenes as well. We Got This Covered has been told that the DCEU will soon beat Marvel to the punch with two major milestones for the comic book movie genre, as our source informs us that Warner Bros. is planning solo outings for both Vixen and Traci 13.
Vixen should be familiar to viewers of the Arrowverse, with Mari McCabe (Megalyn Echikunwoke) having her own animated series and her grandmother Amaya Jiwe (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) starring in Legends of Tomorrow. A standalone film featuring the character with the power to summon the spirit of any animal would be the first superhero movie with a black female lead, and as such, would be a pretty big deal.
Traci 13, meanwhile, is a less recognizable property as she’s yet to make it to live-action. The CW were said to be developing a TV show for the character, who’s a teenage sorceress, a while back, but we haven’t heard much about it as of late. If WB’s working on a film version instead though, that’d explain why. And again, if Traci got her own movie, it’d be the first superhero flick to have an Asian woman as the title character.
With other important films like Shang-Chi and Birds of Prey on the way as well and rumors pointing to the possibility of an African-American Superman, it sounds like the next decade is going to be a hugely significant one for the superhero movie genre, for both Marvel and the DCEU, and we’re certainly excited to see each franchise making more of an effort when it comes to diversity.