Aquaman — Characters & Cast

Initially, to protect the surface people he grew up among and to honor his mother's memory; ultimately, to prevent a war that would destroy both halves of his own heritage.

Begins as a barroom brawler who performs heroism while refusing responsibility, insisting Atlantis is not his problem. The quest forces him to stop defining himself by what he rejects; by the end he accepts the trident and takes the throne of Atlantis, becoming the bridge between the surface and the sea.

To avenge the ocean's poisoning by the surface world, to erase the shame of his mother's love for a human, and to prove his own purity of blood makes him the rightful king.

Moves from ambitious regent to self-declared Ocean Master as he unites the undersea kingdoms for war, growing more absolute the closer he gets to total power — until defeat strips him of the mandate he believed was his by right.

To stop a war she considers unjust and to force Arthur to accept the role only he can fill.

Introduced as an emissary of Atlantean duty, she breaks with her own court and her arranged future to back an outsider, discovering along the way that the surface world she was taught to despise is worth saving.

To protect her children and to end the enmity between the world she ruled and the world she loved.

A queen whose love for a surface man makes her an exile, she is the wound at the center of the story long before she is a presence in it; her fate reframes both sons' grievances and gives the film its emotional reunion.

To fulfill his promise to Atlanna and to place the rightful — not merely the legal — king on the throne.

The royal counselor who secretly trained Arthur as a child moves from covert loyalist to open kingmaker, gambling his position in Orm's court on the belief that the half-blood heir is Atlantis's only future.