James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy—still on track for its 2025 release date—has a new addition to the cast, and it’s probably not anyone you think it is. According to Deadline, María Gabriela de Faría (Deadly Class) has signed on to play Angela Spica, who is also known as The Engineer.
Deadline’s headline refers to the Engineer as the film’s “villain,” but on Instagram, Gunn pushed back on that ever so gently, writing, “’Villain’ is such a disparaging term!”
Like any comic book character, the Engineer has a storied and complicated past, but let’s focus on one thing: She was an original member of the Authority (appearing in Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch’s The Authority #1 in 1999), the morally complicated team that is also getting its own movie somewhere down the DC Studios road. There’s more backstory—she was actually the second Engineer; before the Authority there was Stormwatch—but it’s the Authority factor that seems most relevant in Gunn’s brave new DC world.
The Authority are technically superheroes, in that they have a variety of incredible powers; Angela’s involves nanotechnology that allows her to do all kinds of nifty things, including shapeshifting, flying, and technopathy (also, she often looks sort of like a metallic Mystique, which I’m sure has nothing to do with her being the first Authority member to appear). But, as Gunn himself explained in January, “[The Authority] are basically good-intentioned, but they think that the world is completely broken and the only way to fix it is to take things into their own hands.”
Sounds a bit vigilante-like, no? But not necessarily villainous. Still, you can see how Superman might butt heads with someone whose priorities don’t necessarily fit neatly under “truth, justice, and a better tomorrow.”
Gunn has described the Authority film as “one of my real passion projects,” so it makes sense that he’s seeding in at least one of the characters this early. Will there be a post-credits scene in which Jenny Sparks herself appears to invite Angela to the Authority, Nick Fury-style? I don’t know whether to want that or dread it.
Superman: Legacy also stars David Corenswet as Superman, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, Edi Gathegi as Mister Terrific, Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner, Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl, and Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho. We’ll find out what Gunn (who is writing and directing) has in store for all these superfolks on July 11, 2025.
