Gladiator II, the long-awaited sequel to the Oscar-winning 2000 film Gladiator, is scheduled for release in the U.S. on November 22, 2024, but key aspects of the plot have already been revealed. We now know that Paul Mescal will play Lucius Verus, the young heir to the empire that Spencer Treat Clark played in the original film.

Below you'll find everything we've discovered about Paul Mescal's Lucius and whether or not he's the son of Russell Crowe's Maximus Decimus Meridius.

The first Gladiator film doesn't explicitly state whether Lucius is Maximus' son, and the released plot snippets of Gladiator II are also silent on that matter. However, it's entirely possible that this is part of the sequel's story.

In a 2006 interview with UGO, Ridley Scott, the filmmaker behind both Gladiator films, spoke about a possible Gladiator sequel that would center on "the son that Maximus likely left behind with his affair with Lucilla." (via Rotten Tomatoes) Given that Lucilla was Lucius' mother at the time, the "son" Scott mentions was likely him. While it's safe to assume that Scott's original idea for the sequel has changed a lot since then, we can't rule out the possibility that this particular aspect of the story has remained the same.