Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is continuing to light up the box office in its second full week of release. There are many reasons for the Marvel sequel’s success, but one of the more villainous reasons is the film finally saw the introduction to one of the brands oldest characters, Namor, in the MCU. This underwater king, played wonderfully by Tenoch Huerta Mejía, made a big splash in Wakanda Forever as the film's main antagonist. This has led fans to wonder, given where Namor’s story ended, would Marvel Studios give the Sub-Mariner his own solo film? Sadly the answer appears to be they legally can’t.
In an interview with The Wrap producer Nate Moore confirmed Namor’s situation saying, “He can return”, but Disney and Marvel can’t produce a standalone film with the character. The reason being, like the Hulk, Universal Pictures owns the rights to Namor. The character isn’t even allowed to be in marketing material or posters by himself unless it’s a part of a series of posters like with Wakanda Forever. Namor’s rights issues are a lot more complicated and confusing than Hulk or the current deal Marvel has with Sony to use Spider-Man. There are still many question marks surrounding the whole situation. Moore went further saying, “It honestly affects us more, and not to talk too much out of school, but in how we market the film than it does how we use him in the film.” Moore finished talking about this subject saying:
“There weren’t really things we couldn’t do from a character perspective for him, which is good because clearly, we took a ton of inspiration from the source material, but we also made some big changes to really anchor him in that world in a truth that publishing never really landed on, I would argue, in a big way.”
Namor, like a lot of Marvel characters, has had a very rocky journey to the big screen. However, none have been arguably as messy as Namor. Like the X-Men, Spider-Man, and Fantastic 4, Namor was a licensing victim to the company’s past financial woes which is how the MCU’s newest villain ended up at Universal. Since the 90s, there have been a handful of projects centered around this aquatic mutant in active development. This included a Philip Kaufman directed film written by Batman’s Sam Hamm, but this fell into the ocean when Universal acquired the rights in 2001.
Universal has been sitting on those rights since then and the only reason Namor is in the MCU now is that Kevin Feige and Marvel found a mysterious loophole. However, even though there’s no way for Namor to take center stage at the moment, fans still got a stellar introduction to the character in Wakanda Forever. Huerta’s menacing performance was the standout star of the film with his parallel connection with Shuri being one of the most compelling arcs in the MCU to date. Also, with Namor seeing Wakanda as an ally by the end of the film, we definitely haven’t seen the last of this character in this popular universe. If Universal won’t use this iconic character, Marvel Studios will take full advantage of whatever loophole they found.
While fans anxiously wait for Namor’s rights mess to clear up, you can see the character’s epic cinematic debut in Wakanda Forever in theaters now. The trailer can be seen down below. You can also read Moore’s entire Wrap interview on their website.