Fans are ready to meet the new Fantastic Four — and that includes the new take on Silver Surfer, played by Julia Garner. The actress, who will be playing the Shalla-Bal version of the character in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, recently opened up about the Surfer’s backstory, as well as reaching different audiences through the MCU and the potential for a Silver Surfer spin-off movie.
“It’s going to be really interesting,” she told Entertainment Weekly recently in her first interview since the trailer reveal when asked to describe how director Matt Shakman described the character to her initially and how it was written in the script.
“I have to be so cryptic about everything, otherwise I’m going to have Marvel come after me. But it was described as there’s this mystery about her, and there’s this sense of this ambiguous energy going on of whether she’s good or not. She is the herald of Galactus, so she works for Galactus, but you’re not sure where she stands. Does she stand with her boss, or is she just doing what she’s told? She has this mysterious energy about her, and slowly that mystery will get solved with the audience throughout watching it.”
The actress was also drawn to the audience she could cultivate through the MCU, not just the strength of the character. “She’s so different than anyone I’ve ever played, and that was also another reason why I wanted to do it,” Garner explained.
“I don’t expect everybody to watch Ozark or [Inventing] Anna or The Assistant. Some people are only going to watch certain things, so that’s why I want to branch out to every genre, and that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to do Marvel — it’s reaching a different kind of audience.”
Garner seems to be all in on the MCU, so much so that she would be willing to return for a Silver Surfer spin-off movie, if that ever became a reality.
“A hundred percent, I would love to do that,” she told the outlet. “The Silver Surfer is such a cool character, and I feel like it’s so rare to be presented with any sort of mystery in this day and age. So any kind of energy like that on screen, I know I want to see that, so that would be awesome if that happened.”
That said, in true Marvel superhero fashion, she was tight-lipped about whether or not there were concrete plans for her to return to the MCU for another film.
“Oh my God, I wish I could answer that question, but I don’t have an answer, honestly,” she teased to Entertainment Weekly. “I was just happy to be a part of this movie. But we’ll see.”
Garner stars in The Fantastic Four: First Steps alongside Vanessa Kirby, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, and Ralph Ineson. The film will arrive in theaters on July 25, 2025.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
