Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom Review: DCEU's Fond Farewell

🦸 This review is part of the The Old DCEU – Every Film Reviewed – watch every DCEU film from Man of Steel to the finale (2013–2023).

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom arrived on December 22, 2023, as the final film of the DC Extended Universe — the last entry in a franchise that had begun with Man of Steel a decade earlier, built toward the Justice League, fractured under studio pressure and creative conflict, and was ultimately superseded by James Gunn’s new DC Studios vision. It is, appropriately, a film that doesn’t try to do too much. It doesn’t try to fix the DCEU’s problems or resolve its hanging threads or deliver a definitive statement about what the universe meant. It tries to give Arthur Curry one more adventure and one more family story, and it largely succeeds.

Ad

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (4K Ultra HD) (opens in a new tab)

The lost kingdom sequences are visually rich in 4K HDR. A worthy conclusion to the Aquaman collection.

James Wan returns for the sequel with a specific structural choice that proves correct: the film’s central relationship is not Arthur and his son (a new addition to his life), and not Arthur and Orm in an antagonistic sense, but Arthur and Orm in the one they’ve never had — brothers, forced into collaboration by a common threat, finding something functional and even affectionate in the process. Patrick Wilson’s Orm, who spent the first film as its chief villain, is released from prison by Arthur under reluctant necessity and becomes the film’s comedic MVP: a pure-blood Atlantean aristocrat dealing with the surface world’s beer, traffic, and casual rudeness with an outrage that is the film’s most consistently funny element.

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s Black Manta is a more effective returning villain than most DCEU sequels produce. He has a specific, comprehensible motivation — Arthur’s responsibility for his father’s death in the first film — and the Black Trident gives him a power upgrade that makes him a credible threat without making him unstoppable. The environmental allegory the film builds around orichalcum — an ancient energy source that, when burned, accelerates catastrophic climate effects — is more integrated into the plot than most superhero film message-delivery attempts, and it gives the threat a resonance beyond the personal.

Narrative Architecture: Brothers and Consequences

The film’s best sequences are the Arthur-Orm buddy dynamic sequences. Wan deploys them with genuine comic timing — Orm encountering a fast food drive-through, Orm’s incomprehension of surface-world clothing options, Orm processing the concept of sarcasm — while maintaining that Orm is genuinely formidable and not entirely wrong in his contempt for the surface world’s treatment of the ocean. The film has enough respect for the character to let his personality remain intact even while using him for comedy, and Wilson commits to both registers with evident pleasure.

Arthur’s fatherhood arc is the film’s quieter thread — his young son Tom is both the personal stakes and the explicit embodiment of the surface-Atlantean future Arthur is building. The scenes between Momoa and the child actor are warm and specific in ways that don’t oversell the pathos. Arthur has always been the DCEU character who is most comfortable in his own skin, and fatherhood, for him, is an extension of that comfort rather than a revelation.

The Lost Kingdom itself — Necrus, an ancient civilization sealed away after its orichalcum-burning caused its own destruction — is visually striking and thematically relevant. Wan builds it with the same density of creature and architecture design that defined the first film, adding an alien quality that distinguishes it from the Atlantean kingdoms we’ve seen before. The sequence in which Arthur and Orm first enter it together is the film’s visual highlight.

A Graceful Closing

Ad

Aquaman DC Multiverse Figure (Lost Kingdom) (opens in a new tab)

The updated Aquaman suit design from the sequel is distinct from the first film and well-detailed in the collectible format.

The film’s most specifically notable quality is how it handles its closing chapter status. Unlike a film that has been explicitly designed as a franchise finale, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom was made before the DCEU’s cancellation was certain — it was produced as a sequel that expected a third film would follow. The natural endpoint of its story nevertheless provides something like closure: Arthur has stabilized Atlantis’s relationship with the surface world, has become a father and a king, and has found a functional if unlikely working relationship with his brother. These are reasonable places to leave a character.

The final scene — Arthur addressing the UN to announce Atlantis’s formal emergence as a recognized world power — lands with a weight that neither the film nor its makers entirely intended. It is the end of a universe that began with Superman choosing to reveal himself to humanity a decade earlier. The parallel is not heavy-handed; it is simply accurate. The DCEU began with one extraordinary being choosing to be known. It ends with another.

Ad

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (Blu-ray) (opens in a new tab)

Own the complete Aquaman two-film arc. Both films work well as a collected set.

Is Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom worth watching?

Yes, particularly if you enjoyed the original. The Orm buddy dynamic is genuinely fun, the environmental themes give the threat real stakes, and Jason Momoa is the same reliable presence. A respectable close to the Aquaman duology.

Do I need to watch Aquaman (2018) first?

Yes. The sequel continues Arthur’s story as king of Atlantis, assumes the Arthur-Orm relationship, and brings back Black Manta as the main villain from the first film. Prior viewing is needed for context.

Who is the villain in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom?

Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) returns with a revenge mission and the Black Trident — an ancient weapon from the Lost Kingdom. He’s the franchise’s best returning villain, driven by a comprehensible and personal motivation.

Is this the last DCEU film?

Yes. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (December 22, 2023) was the final film in the DC Extended Universe. James Gunn’s new DC Universe launched with Superman in 2025.

Is Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom suitable for kids?

PG-13, and one of the more family-accessible DCEU films. Action throughout with no significant intensity spikes. Good for 8+ with parents.