This Tuesday, according to the A.V. Club, directors Joe and Anthony Russo revealed that The Avengers: Infinity War will contain a whopping 67 characters, presumably culled from their various film franchises, network programming, and Netflix series — along with a bevy of new characters, no doubt. And now, it looks like they're not the only superhero franchise adding more characters to the mix — it has now been revealed that Warner Bros. is swelling the ranks of its own upcoming superhero team-up movie. According to Variety, actress Amber Heard is in talks to join the cast of Justice League , in which she would play a character named "Mera." But who is Mera, and how big would Heard's involvement in the franchise be if she signs on?
Mera was first introduced into the pages of DC Comics in 1963, in an issue of Aquaman. Unlike that aquatic hero, who is merely a human who has adapted to breathe underwater and control marine life, Mera is an alien queen from a different realm called Dimension Aqua. She has some typical superhero powers like super-strength, telekinesis, and flight; but her most interesting power is her ability to condense water and use it to build solid structures.
After Mera was exiled from her kingdom by a usurping enemy, she traveled to Earth and met Aquaman. They eventually fell in love and had a baby named Aquababy (natch). Their domestic bliss didn't last long, however; Aquaman's archnemesis Black Manta kidnapped Aquababy and — despite Mera's best efforts to rescue him — Aquababy tragically died, driving his mother insane. She wound up committed to an asylum and, after attempting to attack Aquaman, wound up impaled on a piece of metal. When that didn't kill her, she banished herself in misery. So yeah, a happy story.
Much later, in the 2010-2011 series Brightest Day, Mera's origin story was revised to reveal that she was actually an assassin sent from a penal colony of anti-Atlanteans to kill Aquaman — but she fell in love with him instead, fabricating her story about being exiled from Dimension Aqua. (This explained her insanity post-Aquababy, as her violence was just her latent anti-Atlanteanism coming through.)
It remains to be seen which version of the character Heard would portray onscreen: the kindly but grief-stricken exiled princess, or the hardened but love-struck assassin. But either way, Justice League Part One will likely be only the beginning of the road for the actress if she agrees to play the part. Eight months after the mega-blockbuster premieres in 2017, Aquaman will be getting his own solo franchise spinoff, headlined by Game Of Thrones actor Jason Momoa. Heard's Mera would likely follow Momoa's hero to Aquaman, directed by James Wan (The Conjuring), and then presumably on to 2019's Justice League Part Two, as well.
The news of this potential role comes on the heels of a very busy year for the 29-year-old actress. In April, her film The Adderall Diaries (in which she co-stars with James Franco) premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and was picked up for distribution by A24, the same studio behind this year's Oscar contenders Room and Ex Machina. Then she appeared in this summer's hit sequel Magic Mike XXL. And she capped 2015 with a memorable supporting performance in The Danish Girl alongside Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander. (She and Johnny Depp also got married in a private ceremony this past February. Cheers!)
Zack Snyder's Justice League Part One will debut on Nov. 17, 2017, starring Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa... and now possibly Amber Heard, it looks like.
