Everything we know about Namor, Black Panther 2’s villain from SDCC 2022

Wakanda for Ever: Black Panther finally has a new trailer and it’s full of familiar faces and new heroes. But the footage, released during Marvel’s panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2022, only teased the movie’s apparent villain: Namor, the Sub-Mariner, played by Tenoch Huerta (Sin Nombre, The Forever Purge).

While Namor is one of Marvel’s oldest characters, this is the first time he’s appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As you can see, Black Panther 2’s trailer doesn’t give us too many details about the underwater ruler. So to tide you over until Black Panther arrives in theaters on Nov. 11, here’s everything you need to know about Namor.

What are Namor’s powers?

Namor is also called the Sub-Mariner and is the King of Atlantis. He rules the oceans. Namor’s unique parents were the ones who gave him his extraordinary powers. Woodrow Wilson sent his father to Antarctic as an explorer to look into the disappearance Sir Ernest Shackleton, who was on a mission to find Vibranium. His mother Fen was an Atlantean princess.

Namor, as you would expect of a sea-fairing heroine, can communicate with and control all the creatures in the oceans. He can also breathe underwater and swim effortlessly. He can also heal himself when he’s in water and even telekinetically control water in some iterations. Namor can also be a formidable fighter on the ground, thanks to his incredible strength and speed. Because of his super strength and speed, Namor can also fly. It’s why he has little wings on his ankles.

If you’re thinking to yourself that this all sounds a whole lot like Aquaman, you aren’t entirely wrong. It may surprise you to find out that Namor was actually created three years prior to Aquaman’s creation, in 1939.

Namor is it a bad guy?

Yes, but also no. Namor, above all, is complex. As you would expect for a character that was created in 1939 long before many of the MCU’s heroes, Namor has been able to play a variety of roles, including a hero or villain.

This is for the purposes Wakanda for Ever: Black Panther, it certainly seems like he’s being positioned as the villain of the movie. Namor, in one of the most devilish moments of the comics threatened to avenge the surface for his actions of destroying Atlantis’ part with nuclear tests. This was a significant moment for the MCU’s future. The Fantastic Four stopped the attempt, and Namor teamed with Magneto for a time to battle the X-Men.

More relatedly, Namor and T’Challa have a particularly fierce enmity in Marvel Comics — because Namor was the first to conquer the historically (famously) unconquered nation of Wakanda (by using the powers of the Phoenix Force to summon a tsunami that raised its lands to the ground). This line is actually from Black Panther where he tells Ulysses Klaue “Every breath you take is mercy from me?” That’s straight from a Marvel comic. Except the first time, T’Challa was saying it Namor.

Namor is a mutant, then?

This is what he is. In fact, he is sometimes called Marvel’s first mutant, thanks to the fact that he gets his powers from his genetic mix of human and Atlantean DNA. As we’ve already touched on, Namor’s comic history is quite long and complicated, and his mutant status frequently plays large roles both in the plots of X-Men stories and the wider Marvel universe.

With the recent reveal of Ms. Marvel’s status as a mutant as well, this certainly seems to set up some interesting potential plots for the MCU’s future. But, since all we have for now is a short teaser of Namor’s role in Black Panther 2, we’ll just have to wait to see what larger role he might play.