Cover story
JOSH DUHAMEL plays an ageing superhero whose children are struggling to live up to his legendary feats
Josh Duhamel and Ben Daniels star in the new superhero drama
Jupiter’s Legacy
COMIC-BOOK DRAMA Jupiter’s Legacy
From Friday 7 May, eight episodes as a box set, Netflix
SUPERHERO DRAMAS are known for their epic scale and thrilling action scenes, and they don’t come any more ambitious and exciting than Netflix’s new series Jupiter’s Legacy.
The eight-part saga tells the tale of the world’s first superheroes, The Union of Justice, who rise to prominence after receiving their powers in the 1930s.
In 1929, steel tycoon Sheldon Sampson watches his family’s business empire crumble in the Wall Street Crash.
As America descends into the Great
Depression, a recurring dream leads
Sheldon to set sail for a mysterious island in the
South Pacific with his wife,
Grace, elder brother
Walter and three friends, where they gain superpowers and form The Union.
GENERATION CHASM
As the decades pass, Sheldon, AKA The Utopian, and the rest of The Union keep mankind safe by following a strict code of honour. But, as the action reaches the present day, their efforts to pass the torch to their children come unstuck when the next generation begins to question their parents’ legendary feats.
While their offspring battle to prove themselves in a changing world, Sheldon and his friends begin to wonder if their code still serves a purpose.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything in the superhero genre that deals with normal family dysfunction like Jupiter’s Legacy does,’ says Josh Duhamel, who plays Sheldon. ‘These are people who have incredibly powerful abilities, but at the same time, they still deal with the same things that any family might deal with. ‘It’s my first time playing a superhero, and I loved putting on The Utopian’s suit, but I was as just as excited about exploring the family’s complex, sometimes fractured relationships.’ In the opening episode, The Union is forced to do battle with Blackstar (Tyler Mane), a formidable enemy who’s escaped from prison and is threatening to wreak havoc across America.
The superheroes confront the villain in a spectacular brawl, only for Sheldon’s son, Brandon AKA Paragon (Andrew Horton), to go on to break one of the most important rules The
Union has strictly followed since its creation.
‘Sheldon has very strong beliefs in how things should be run, but his kids have different beliefs,’ explains Duhamel. ‘As The Utopian, Sheldon is the most powerful man on the planet, but he’s humbled by his kids because he can’t control what they believe and they’re questioning the code. I’ve never seen a superhero meet with a therapist, but Sheldon does!’
Brandon isn’t the only person who disagrees with his father on The Union’s purpose and future direction. The code states that superheroes should never govern and owe their allegiance to the current President of the United States. However, Sheldon’s brother Walter AKA Brainwave (Ben Daniels), has long argued that superheroes should take a leading role in solving the world’s many problems.
‘Sheldon has worked so long and so hard to uphold this standard, yet he doesn’t know if it’s actually working,’ says Duhamel. ‘But he believes you have to follow the code entirely or the whole thing could go sideways.’ Created by Mark Millar in 2012, Jupiter’s Legacy is an homage to the golden age of comics, which spanned the 1930s to the 1950s.
EPIC INTENTIONS
‘I wanted to create the biggest and best superhero story of all time with these books – a big, self-contained Lord of the
Rings or Game of Thrones with superheroes,’ says Millar, who worked at Marvel for 10 years before setting up his own comicbook company, Millarworld. ‘I wanted to take all the skills
I’d picked up and employ them to create the biggest franchise I could possibly imagine.’
Comic-book fans have been eagerly anticipating the prospect of Millar’s work arriving on Netflix since the streaming giant acquired Millarworld back in 2017.
Screen versions of his comic books American Jesus, Empress and Huck are currently in the works, but Millar believes Jupiter’s
Legacy is the perfect production to start an exciting relationship.
‘Netflix bought everything, so there is a vast amount of material,’ he says. ‘We just looked at them all and thought, “What’s the most exciting here?” And Jupiter’s Legacy is really the most ambitious title we could have started with. It’s a bold project to begin with and it plants a flag.’
‘I wanted to create the biggest and best superhero story of all time with these books’ MARK MILLAR