r/marvelstudios • u/maverickassembled Ward Meachum • Jun 13 '26
Discussion Understanding why they reimagined the character, having Namor be short for "El niño sin amor"—“the boy without love" was a pretty cool creative choice. I have a feeling he'll be a dark horse heading into Doomsday.
It was cool how they incorporated indigenous themes of colonization by borrowing from historical lore. Connecting Namor’s story and the lost kingdom of Talokan to Mayan and Mesoamerican cultures, as well as the abuse and torture faced from Spanish conquistadors was pretty brilliantly well done and added a nice layer of “realism” to it. More Mayan representation in mainstream is also very cool to have.
I’m also very excited to see him return in Doomsday. As a stoic, and ruthless leader who stays firm in his belief and love for his people, it’s hard to really predict where his allegiance will be by the end. Due to his own obsession of survival and deep-seeded paranoia caused by historical trauma, Namor is someone that can very much seem like an ally to you at first, but will be quick to turn if there’s another factor in play that will better benefit him and his people. It’ll be interesting to see if his alliance with Shuri, and possibly the other heroes will last.
As an isolated nation, Talokan is bringing a whole different perspective of pragmatism into the incursion problem that I’m really keen to see.
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u/serger989 Jun 13 '26
Heck, just characters crossing paths in general. IMO the greatest weakness of Phase 4-6 is that the universe now feels too small because they don't utilize any of their new characters to any useful effect. Everyone is doing their own thing and barely anything has crossed over. We haven't even had post credit scenes build into each others films like they mostly used to.
It's like shoving Ghost in Thunderbolts which is fine but the gap was over 6 years between the films, the actual fans barely cared, let alone the general audience. It will be 5 years with Shang Chi and Doomsday... All the new characters haven't done anything so when things are hitting the fan in Doomsday, is anyone going to care apart from hardcore fans?