Enter the Scarab
Inside the Big Belly Burger box is in fact not a Big Belly Burger—but the alien scarab that bonds with Jaime’s spine, transforming him into the Blue Beetle. In the comics, this marked a significant change in the Blue Beetle mythos. Dan Garrett derived mythical powers from an ancient Egyptian scarab, while Ted Kord has no superpowers at all, fighting crime with his technological inventions. Jaime’s beetle is an alien being that eventually forms a bond with him after the teenager struggles to adapt to the creature painfully merged into his physiology, eventually learning to communicate with him in English rather than its alien tongue.
The Scarab, actually alien technology from a species of intergalactic conquerors known as the Reach—seeded across worlds to eventually adopt a host that can be turned into a sleeper agent for the Reach—eventually names itself Kaji Dha, a reference to the Shazam-esque quote Dan Garrett would shout to transform into the Blue Beetle.
