When Narcos: Mexico breakout actor Tenoch Huerta was announced as playing a villain of Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, everyone jumped on the idea he would be playing the MCU incarnation of Prince Namor McKenzie, aka, The Sub-Mariner. One of Marvel’s first superheroes and mutants that predates the popular Stan Lee era.
Now, Huerta’s role as Namor has been confirmed thanks to the official promo artwork that circulated on Twitter (via @MCU_Facility) over the weekend. It shows Namor in mesoamerican Indigenous garb along with another image with Namor wearing a headdress that seems to be honoring Tepeyollotl, the Aztec jaguar god that might share superhero similarities to Wakanda’s own feline god Bast.
A welcomed update on the character’s origin. His original heroics saw him mostly destroying America’s WWII enemies including very racist depictions of the Japanese forces but would eventually be an important cog in the Fantastic Four comic books and the greater Marvel Comics universe. Namor has played both anti-hero, and villain at varying points of the comics and almost went to all-out nuclear war with Wakanda in the pages of The Defenders. So, having him join the Black Panther sequel was something many of us wanted to see going back to 2018.
Not only that, the artwork also featured the Atlantis villain Attuma, who is expected to be an antagonist. How exactly Atlantis will be featured in the film remains to be seen but will hopefully be extremely different from the Aquaman films.
Universal Pictures for the longest time held the solo film rights and even once attempted a feature film with Jonathan Mostow (Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines), but it never went in front of cameras. However, it looks like Marvel Studios figured out how to include him in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but we don’t know if he’ll end up getting his own solo series or film down the road. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine that Namor could factor in future things like the Fantastic Four reboot, Doctor Strange 3, Captain America 4 (via a McGuggin like the Serpent Crown), or even a big crossover event like Secret Wars as a supporting character.
We’ll likely see some first-look images or even teaser footage at San Diego Comic-Con later this month as the Black Panther sequel is heading to theaters on November 11 and promotion for the film will likely begin as soon as Thor: Love & Thunder is released into the wild later this week.
THE RONIN 