Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom Trailer: Blink And You'll Miss Amber Heard's Mera - Looper

Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom Trailer: Blink And You'll Miss Amber Heard's Mera - Looper,Amber Heard's Mera is a really important character in the "Aquaman" films and the lore at large - but the character is barely in the latest trailer.

Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom Trailer: Blink And You’ll Miss Amber Heard’s Mera – Looper

Looking for Amber Heard’s Mera in the latest trailer for “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom?” You’ll have to work a little harder than you might expect.

Early on in the trailer, Arthur Curry, played by a returning Jason Momoa, lets the audience know (in a voiceover) that his life looks a little different than it did in 2018’s “Aquaman.” Specifically, he’s a husband and a father now, and we see plenty of his baby — whose name isn’t mentioned in the trailer — but Mera seems to be missing, at first. In an aerial shot of Arthur’s lighthouse home base, though, where his father Tom Curry (Temuera Morrison) lives, you can very, very briefly spot a flash of red hair. There’s no face to go with that hair, but it sure seems like that’s our only glimpse at Mera, the daughter of Xebel’s King Nereus (Dolph Lundgren) who can use telepathic abilities to control water.

So why is Mera so absent from this major look at the second “Aquaman” film? Director James Wan recently addressed this — but it might also be related to the unfortunate drama surrounding Heard herself.

James Wan says Mera was always going to play a smaller role in Aquaman 2

Warner Bros.

In a feature about the upcoming film in Entertainment Weekly, James Wan said that Mera’s diminished role in “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” was, actually, the plan all along. “I always pitched this to everyone from the get-go,” Wan told the outlet. “The first ‘Aquaman’ was Arthur and Mera’s journey. The second movie was always going to be Arthur and Orm. So, the first was a romance action-adventure movie, the second one is a bromance action-adventure movie. We’ll leave it at that.”

EW does describe the director as seeming “circumspect” about the whole Heard issue, and it’s clear that he’s trying to sell the idea that Orm, the antagonist turned ally played by Patrick Wilson, was always going to be the focus of “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.” The trailer does show Orm and Arthur teaming up to save Atlantis and the world at large as a villain named Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) emerges with the dangerous Black Trident, determined to destroy Aquaman and his family. Mentioning in the trailer that Arthur is now husband and father — roles which both involve Mera heavily — and declining to show her in any real way feels like a specific choice, though — and it could, sadly, be related to Heard’s string of bad press after her legal troubles.

Bad press has plagued Amber Heard since her trial against Johnny Depp

Consolidated News Pictures/Getty Images

As we all know, Amber Heard and Johnny Depp went to court in 2022 after Heard wrote a 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post that detailed abuse she’d suffered at the hands of a former partner. Heard did not specifically name Depp, but the two had a high-profile relationship, and Depp sued her, claiming that his career has been irreparably affected by these allegations that do not mention him or identify him specifically.

Entertainment Weekly reported, during the trial, that Heard said her role in the second “Aquaman” move was significantly reduced thanks to the case and said so in sworn testimony. Saying Warner Bros., the studio overseeing “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” apparently “didn’t want to include her,” Heard elaborated, “I was given a script and then given new versions of the script that had taken away scenes that had action in it, that depicted my character and another character, without giving any spoilers away, two characters fighting with one another, and they basically took a bunch out of my role. They just removed a bunch out.”

Depp won $10.35 million in damages for defamation. Heard does not have any upcoming acting roles besides “Aquaman 2” as of this writing. Depp’s new film “Jeanne du Barry” recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and, in 2023, he signed the biggest-ever deal for a men’s fragrance campaign for Dior’s scent Sauvage.

“Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” hits theaters on December 20, 2023.