'Mister Miracle' Finally Finds Its Big Barda in 'Below' Star Mackenzie Davis

Few DC stories have stuck with readers the way Tom King and Mitch Gerads’ ‘Mister Miracle‘ has, so it’s no surprise that fans have spent months wondering who would play Big Barda in the animated adaptation. The question has hung over the project since its quiet announcement, and the answer has now arrived.

The adult animated series was greenlit in June 2025 during the Annecy Animation Festival. At the time, Warner Bros. Animation and DC Studios shared a logline and a handful of details but no voice cast. King was named showrunner and executive producer, with Gerads attached as a producer.

Now the wait is over. Mackenzie Davis will voice Big Barda, the towering New God and wife of escape artist Scott Free. Josh Hutcherson will voice Scott himself, making the pair the first leads confirmed for the series.

DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran dropped the news while discussing the studio’s animated slate. Speaking to IGN, he said King had adapted his own book and “wrote all eight episodes and I think it’s just dynamite.” He then named the two leads almost in passing.

The casting did not come out of nowhere. Earlier this month, a rumor suggested the show had already locked in two leads, though no one could say which roles they were playing. At San Diego Comic-Con this year, King described the hunt for Barda’s voice as an enjoyable challenge and said the team had found a brilliant actress without naming her.

King had been dropping hints for months. Back at WonderCon in May, he said some of the actors landed exactly on the voices he had in his head, while one surprised him by bringing something he hadn’t expected. Nathan Fillion had also revealed in August that he voices Guy Gardner in the series.

Davis is best known to genre audiences for ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’, and she also appeared in ‘Speak No Evil’. Hutcherson, meanwhile, comes with ‘The Hunger Games’ and ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ on his résumé. It’s an interesting pairing for a story that mixes domestic drama with cosmic war.

There is a fun physical detail here, too. Davis is taller than Hutcherson, which echoes the comics, where Barda is generally around a foot taller than Scott. That matters if either actor ever steps into live action.

That live-action question is the big one. James Gunn has said that performers cast in major animated roles are meant to play their characters across both mediums for primary castings, and Frank Grillo’s Rick Flag Sr. is one example. It remains unclear whether Hutcherson and Davis will carry Scott and Barda into live action, and neither has been announced for an upcoming DCU film.

The series is also meant to matter within the shared universe. King has confirmed that it is a DCU project with major implications for the larger franchise, and he has also teased that Darkseid and Orion have been cast. Gunn has confirmed that it takes place in the same world as the live-action projects.

The official synopsis follows Scott Free, the world’s greatest escape artist, whose seemingly perfect life with Barda on Earth begins to unravel. War is raging between Apokolips and New Genesis, and his adoptive father Darkseid appears to have captured the Anti-Life Equation. As the body count climbs, Scott may be the only one who can stop the slaughter.

That setup has made the relationship between Scott and Barda the emotional core of the whole thing. King has called their bond the key to the entire series, which makes the casting of Barda especially important. The series is set to arrive on HBO Max, though no release date has been announced yet.