Ivory Aquino joins Batgirl as first transgender character in a live-action DC superhero movie

The supporting cast of HBO Max’s Batgirl movie must be pretty much wrapped up, with Deadline saying Ivory Aquino from When We Rise now joining the cast of the superhero movie as Alysia Yeoh—a character first introduced as Batgirl/Barbara Gordon’s roommate in Gail Simone and Ardian Syaf’s “New 52” Batgirl book. Aquino is transgender and Alysia is a transgender character, making this the first major transgender character in a DC comics movie. (Nicole Maines played transgender superhero Dreamer on Supergirl, but that was TV.)

In the comics, Alysia is a close friend of Barbara’s who (at first) doesn’t know she’s Batgirl, giving her someone to talk to who isn’t her dad or Batman or a supervillain trying to kill her. Alysia also briefly went out with Barbara’s brother, James Gordon Jr., before realizing that he’s a terrifying murderer (this is the kind of thing you’ve got to deal with when your roommate is part of the Bat Family).

Aquino is joining Leslie Grace, who is playing Batgirl (WB recently released the first glimpse of her in her superhero costume), as well as J.K. Simmons (reprising his role from the Zack Snyder movies as Jim Gordon, Barbara’s dad), Micheal Keaton (reprising his role from the Tim Burton movies as Batman), Brendan Fraser (the bad guy Firefly), and Jacob Scipio (whose character has not been identified).

The Batgirl movie, directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah from Bad Boys For Life, is supposed to hit HBO Max at some point this year—but, like, on purpose. Not like Dune and Mortal Kombat and all of those movies that came out on HBO Max last year. Then again, HBO Max’s Blue Beetle movie is going to theaters instead of the streaming service, so maybe Warner Bros. will decide to do the same thing with this movie as well.