El Paso Deserved Better From Blue Beetle

When DC announced that Jaime Reyes would be getting his own film, El Pasoans had every reason to feel something rare: seen. Not in the broad, vague "representation matters" way that gets stamped across press releases, but genuinely, specifically seen. Jaime Reyes is canonically from El Paso. He grew up here. He goes to school here. He is one of the only major comic book heroes in either of the Big Two universes whose story is rooted in a real border city with a real, living culture that does not exist anywhere else in the country.

The Director Came To El Paso Then He Left Us Out

Director Angel Manuel Soto actually visited El Paso during pre-production. He scouted locations. He met with people in the community. Old Sheepdog Brewery even brewed an official beer for the film and landed a scene in the movie, which is genuinely cool. The groundwork for an El Paso Blue Beetle was being laid.

Then the studio stepped in. The official reasoning was that they wanted Jaime to have a city that felt as iconic as Metropolis or Gotham, a place that felt uniquely his. So they created Palmera City, filmed across Miami, Atlanta, and Puerto Rico, and built a fictional Gulf Coast city that plays like someone Googled "latinx neighborhood" and constructed a set from the results.

What is worth noting is that Palmera City technically existed in the comics before the film, but it was only introduced in the source material seven months before the movie released. That feels like a promotional tie-in working backward to justify a decision that had already been made.

El Paso Is Not "Hispanic" It Is Mexican

El Paso is over 80 percent Mexican. Not Latino. Not Hispanic as a catch-all that bundles together dozens of distinct cultures under one convenient marketing umbrella. Mexican. Deeply, specifically, generationally Mexican in a way that reflects the active, living relationship this city has with Juarez, with the border, with people who might sleep on one side of the Rio Grande and spend their days on the other.

Soto has said that he put some of his own Puerto Rican culture into Palmera City, which is understandable on a personal level, but the result is that Jaime Reyes, introduced as the first Latino superhero in a major DC film, ended up in a city that is a blend of cultures rather than the specific one he was written into. Some fans went further and accused Soto of replacing the character's Mexican identity with his own. Whether or not you go that far, the outcome is the same. Mexicans who grew up with Jaime Reyes, who saw themselves in a superhero from El Paso, watched that specificity get dissolved into something more palatable and more general.

The Cuban community in Miami is not the same as the Puerto Rican community in the Bronx. The Honduran community in Houston is not the same as what exists here. And none of them are El Paso, because El Paso is a border city where over 80 percent of the population is Mexican, where the Anglo residents often speak better Spanish than some of their Mexican neighbors, where the culture is less American and more Texan but also still deeply and unapologetically Mexican. You cannot replicate that by building a set in Atlanta.

The Sun City We Never Got to See

Think about what an El Paso Blue Beetle actually looks like. Jaime perched on the Star on the Mountain the way Spider-Man sits on New York water towers, looking out over both cities at once. A villain threatening the Bridge of the Americas at the end of the day on a Friday when the crossing line stretches back half a mile into Juarez. A fight sequence tearing through the Segundo Barrio and ending in somebody's backyard during a quinceañera. Jaime grabbing elote from a street vendor after stopping a crime, still suited up, just existing in the city like a person from here actually would.

The Franklin Mountains cutting through the background of every aerial shot. The Rio Grande, thin and brown and carrying more history per mile than most rivers carry their entire length. The border not as a threat or a backdrop for cartel drama, but as the specific, complicated, beautiful thing it actually is for the millions of people who live and work across it every single day.

El Paso is one of the safest cities in the country. Consistently. That fact alone, told through the lens of a superhero who is from here, would have done more for this city's national perception than any amount of news coverage. Instead we got a fictional Miami and a street sign with our name on it.

The Characters Needed a Real City Under Them

The Reyes family in the film is warm and likable. The cast committed fully and brought real energy to roles that had genuine potential. But characters are shaped by the specific places they come from, the streets they grew up on, the traditions passed down to them in a particular way by a particular community. When you invent a city from scratch, you strip the characters of that weight. They become types instead of people.

Xolo Mariduena, who plays Jaime, is Mexican, Cuban, and Ecuadorian. For someone with that background, a city that blends those cultures probably did feel like home in a real way, and there is something genuinely cool about that. But Jaime Reyes was not written as a blend. He was written as a kid from El Paso and El Paso has two hundred years of specific, irreplaceable, borderland history that no fictional city can substitute for.

What We Actually Got

A fictional Miami stand-in. A street named El Paso. A brewery that deserved to be in the actual story and not just a background prop.

The comics version of Jaime Reyes is still from here. He still has the Franklin Mountains behind him and the bridge ahead of him and the full weight of this city as the foundation of who he is. That version of the character is still waiting for a film that takes him seriously, that comes here for real, that lets El Paso be El Paso instead of a pitch deck concept of what a Latino city is supposed to look like.

Hopefully whoever makes the next one actually shows up.

5 Movies With A Little El Paso In Them

Movies from the last decade that mention El Paso in some way, shape, or form.

Gallery Credit: Grizz

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An anonymous El Paso creator is hiding rubber ducks and prizes across the city, turning everyday spots into viral treasure hunts.

Gallery Credit: Courtesy: EP Ducker

Mijo-Palooza 2026: A Pillow Fight Fundraiser Recap

The Buzzzed Podcast hosted their 4th annual Pillow Fight Fundraiser supporting a local organization doing great work for the community! This year all the proceeds went to The Mijo Things Foundation, so the event was of course named Mijo-Palooza! Local celebs, The Nation of Wrestling, and tons of amazing organizations supported this years fundraiser. Also shout out to The Yard Patio and Beer Garden where this years pillow fight fundraiser was hosted!

Photos taken by Marlak Productions!

Gallery Credit: Marlak Productions, Grizz