Blue Beetle is being billed as the first movie of the newly rebooted DC movieverse, but it's not overly concerned about that. This is a small-scale story--a 22-year old kid gets superpowers from an alien relic, and the greedy head of a megacorporation wants that power for a force of armored super-soldiers. There's not much universe-building going on beyond that--it's an entirely standalone story with a few scattered references to other existing superheroes, pretty similar to how most DC and MCU movies have been the past several years.

But while it's not really thinking about what else is currently going on in this new world, it does set up some things for the future, including a direct sequel tease. So while the new DC big screen universe is pretty small today, it won't stay that way for long. Let's look at what happened in Blue Beetle and what it might mean for the future.

Warning: Everything after this point is spoilers.