![]() Namor wearing a Maya-inspired feather headdress “He doesn’t see himself as a villain, because in Namor’s eyes, what he is doing he’s doing to protect a people who have already made it through a tragic history.” (In the comics, Atlantis sinks below the sea following the Great Cataclysm, a disaster unleashed by the Celestials, a race of cosmic beings featured in the 2021 Marvel film Eternals in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, Talokan starts out as an underwater shelter for Indigenous people seeking refuge from Spanish colonization.) “Here is a man who believes 100 percent that he is the hero in his own story,” says producer Nate Moore in a statement. Wakanda Forever’s Namor adheres to a similar code of ethics. ![]() His loyalty was to his character, and that made him interesting.” “When you look at his motivation in the comic books,” the scholar says, “it was always about how protect his people. The character’s fierce commitment to his people, rather than an ideology or the pursuit of power, led the young Tlapoyawa to view Namor as heroic, loyal and even romantic. Growing up, Tlapoyawa, who is an Indigenous Chicano of Nawa descent, found Namor’s “ otherness” relatable. His sleek, dark hair, widow’s peak and pointy ears offer visual cues that he is a “nonwhite character,” Tlapoyawa adds. Kurly Tlapoyawa, an archaeologist, author and ethnohistorian who studies Mesoamerican civilizations, says Namor has always been depicted differently from the rest of Marvel’s largely Eurocentric character lineup. He bears great resentment toward terrestrial civilizations that contaminate his ocean realm (among them the Nazis, whom the antihero fights in several World War II-era comics). Endowed with superior strength and swimming skills, he can also fly, making him a worthy adversary. In the comics, Namor is the mutant son of a human explorer and an Atlantean princess. “Maybe the most important twist in the character is that he’s not a selfish person,” Huerta tells Entertainment Weekly. But while T’Challa opened Wakanda to the rest of the world at the end of Black Panther, Namor remains steadfast in his desire to keep Talokan hidden from outsiders. Much like T’Challa’s home of Wakanda, Talokan is a small, secretive, yet powerful kingdom. Portrayed by Mexican actor Tenoch Huerta, the silver-screen version of Namor has a reimagined backstory, reigning over Talokan, a Mesoamerican-inspired underwater civilization, instead of the legendary Atlantis.
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