Now, with Gladiator II heading to theaters on November 22, they’re ready to tell the rest of the world where the story picks up in the years after Russell Crowe’s Maximus gave his life, upending the leadership of the decadent and corrupt society. The central character portrayed by Mescal is Lucius, last seen as the young son of Lucilla, Connie Nielsen’s noblewoman from the original movie. Nielsen also returns in the sequel, playing one of the few true-life figures in the otherwise fictional Gladiator storyline, the daughter of the late emperor Marcus Aurelius. In the actual history, Lucilla was a firebrand revolutionary who despaired of the direction Rome took after her father’s demise.
As Gladiator II picks up her story, decades have passed and Lucius has come of age far away from his mother. While he was still a child, Lucilla sent him to the northern coast of Africa, to a region called Numidia that was (at that point) just outside the reach of the Roman Empire. He never fully understood why, and as he grew stronger, so did his resentment—even if his mother’s reasons had been pure. “There’s a lot of Sophie’s Choice going on here, where these are impossible situations that we are being forced to reckon with,” says Nielsen. “There is an authoritarian power that is parading as if it were still somehow the vestiges of a Republican government. Inside of this travesty are human beings who are caught in this gamesmanship and power. That is what I find always so interesting in Ridley’s stories. He’s really showing the effect of power on people and what happens in a place where power is unrestrained.”