Tenoch Huerta, who plays Namor the Sub-Mariner in Black Panther: Wakanda Foreverteases that the film will humanize his character. Wakanda forever is the direct sequel to Marvel’s 2018 film Black Panther, which starred Chadwick Boseman in the title role. Following Boseman’s death in August 2020, the sequel was reworked to replace Boseman’s Black Panther with a female version of the hero. Wakanda forever will premiere in theaters on November 11.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that Huerta Namor, the film’s antagonist, would be playing at San Diego Comic-Con, where he made a brief theater appearance. Wakanda forever trailer. Since then, Namor’s introduction to the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been hotly debated, as the character plays an important role in the comics. In the film, Namor is the king of Talokan, an underwater civilization related to Atlantis. Namor takes an interest in Wakanda after King T’Challa opened Wakanda’s borders to the world, and a recent clip of Wakanda forever Namor shows up to confront T’Challa’s mother, Ramonda. Huerta confirmed that, just like in the comics, the film’s Namor is also a mutant – which could be an important stepping stone to the X-Men’s introduction to the MCU.
at a Wakanda forever press event that screen frenzy attended, Huerta explained that the film will try to make Namor more humane. Huerta said that while Namor is trying to destroy something very loved and dear, it was important to both him and director Ryan Coogler that audiences understand why Namor does the things he does. He went on to say that Namor is a perfect counterpart to the new Black Panther as they both respond to grief and threat in different ways. Read Huerta’s full commentary below:
“It’s hard when you have a character like that because you’re the adversary. You’re going to destroy something that’s valuable, not only in the story, but also from the people outside. A lot of people feel identified with Wakanda. Myself in Wakanda , and the story and the representation and everything. Now I have to play the villain who destroys or tries to destroy that legacy. But at the same time, I think Ryan and the script have found a way to make it human; to justify why people do that kind of things. It doesn’t mean it’s good or not, it’s good or not, but it explains. Maybe it’s not an excuse, but it’s a reason. It’s an explanation of why things happen, and why people have different reactions choose their sadness or madness or whatever, the threats in life and that’s beautiful, because it’s human.
“We have these two characters making different decisions with the grief and the threat. They share the same wound, historically, [in] the representation of their cultures. But at the same time they share as individuals that wound, and how they solve the problem is about their personalities and their own history. That is beautiful; that balance in a superhero movie, where you have this balance and these layers, is fantastic. It doesn’t happen too much, and it’s fun.”
How Black Panther and Namor are similar
Just like the villain of the first Black Panther movie, Erik Killmonger, Wakanda forever wants to make his opponent’s motives understandable to the public. Killmonger, played by Michael B. Jordan, went down in MCU history for being one of the first major opponents to garner sympathy, as Killmonger’s motives and anger were justified. Killmonger and T’Challa were two people who wanted to do anything to protect their people, and they had two different points of view on how to achieve that goal. Of Wakanda foreverNamor seems to step into that sympathetic antagonist role, and continues Black Panther‘s legacy of having complex villains.
Judging by Huerta’s vague but enlightening comments, Namor will also mourn the death of a loved one and that grief will shape his decision to attack Wakanda, a parallel to the Wakandans who are also mourning the loss of T’Challa. It also creates a resemblance between the new Black Panther and Namor as they will both react to loss. Not unlike the dynamics between T’Challa’s Black Panther and Killmonger, it sets the trend of Black Panther villains who share the hero’s motivation, but act on it in more villainous ways. Namor appears in Wakanda forever could also mean bigger things for the MCU as a whole, and there are already theories about what other MCU movies Namor might eventually appear in. It is likely that Huerta’s performance in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is just the very beginning of Namor’s story in the MCU.
