There’s something delightful about this series – we’re back with Wakanda this episode and once again this newly arrived part of the MCU plays a critical part of the show. In fact, it’s entirely central and that brings me joy.

Killmonger is back and it is, in many ways, the bravest episode so far. I say this because it toys with an idea that was present in Black Panther and generally absent in almost every other MCU film and television series (Falcon and the Winter Soldier being the notable exception).

The idea is that the supposed villain is right. I’m going to deconstruct this in some detail and it may seem I’m dissing the episode. I’m not – it was startling in its choices and really very good. What follows is more about where forays into these kinds of moral questions about the rights and wrongs of power bump up against the MCUs own self-imposed meta-boundaries.

It’s a classic trope for an innately and structurally conservative genre – one which always defends the status quo. Part of defending the status quo is to dress up those questioning it as morally reprehensible or otherwise dismissible.

Black Panther did this with Killmonger, FWS did it with the Flagsmashers. Both succumbed to the pressures of giving the antagonists sympathetic goals many people generally admired and then turning them into mass murdering monsters as if to say that this is the kind of person who supports feeding the poor or lifting minorities out of structural poverty.

To which I can only say…hmmmm.

Here, Killmonger here has a different plan, a different arc in many ways let down by an ending that isn’t able to explore what Killmonger does next but only able to continue to paint him as an evil man who needs to be stopped.

Strangely it portrays Killmonger as evil in pretty prosaic ways. Compare this to the very real evil of Stark’s arms sales (and Pepper Potts’ complicity in this) that are clearly responsible for thousands of deaths or General Ross’ willingness to kill an entire country’s worth of people because one person died on his side. These aren’t even commented on – they’re seen as justifiable, not worthy of mention.

That Killmonger’s father was murdered for trying to fight for racial justice is also never addressed as a murder.

Erik Killmonger comes from nothing, abandoned then orphaned, denied access to his home and the resources that could have helped him. He nevertheless arrives on the scene having literally fought his way out of the hole in which he ended up. This isn’t seen as anything to be lauded, presented instead as fundamentally suspicious. It’s always struck me as strange that a young person who’s literally earned their right to be at the table is presented as morally dubious. If I didn’t know better I’d link this to the old attitude of the English aristocracy which told tales about how ‘new money’ was morally corrupt and to be roundly mocked.

Killmonger was never going to be accepted because as a person who started out poor he’s already proven he’s morally questionable. That he ended up a psychopath? From the presentation of his background as dubious compared to the inherited wealth of Tony Stark (who’s forgiven his evil acts for no good reason I can see except he’s the titular hero) it comes as no surprise at all that Killmonger is a killer. It would be more radical if he wasn’t, if coming up from the street an orphan was shown as turning him into someone with compassion.

As if to underline this classist attitude at the heart of the show, there is a discussion between him and T’Challa where the latter suggests Killmonger obtained power without earning it and I wanted to spit out my tea. The unremarked bitter irony of a king who inherited his power by family succession (and literal divine right) criticising a man who fought his way up against all the odds (racial prejudice, poverty and lack of education) to be his peer? That there is some powerful energy and privilege speaking.

I wanted to see the Wakanda Killmonger would make. I wanted to see how he’d change the world when fired by ideas of injustice and his original vision of lifting his own people out of poverty and oppression.

Instead, we have the show close with the bold statement that he is still evil and more so than those who murdered his father and abandoned him or those who were responsible for the deaths of thousands and would be again if given the chance. He lied and killed, but somehow his moral ledger is worse than theirs. It is a failure built into the MCU (and even worse in the DC-verse whose ‘status quo’ is positioned further to the right) that the status quo must be defended.

In Black Panther, Wakanda does nothing to upset its technologically inferior cousin, the US, content to open a mission rather than challenge the systemic racism and injustice which plagues the country. It’s built into the system and this episode collides with those unspoken moral boundaries hard. It’s both tragic and really compelling to see these things explicitly shown on screen.

In this episode of What If? we come terrifyingly close to seeing what happens when the antagonist wins only to shy away with some moralistic incoherence and painfully on the nose signalling right at the end.

Killmonger remains, for me, one of the most interesting antagonists in the MCU. If it was a grimdark novel he’d be the hero for sure. The episode is brave and ambitious – I love it for that. I love its choices, how thrilling it is to see Ulysses Klaue up to his old tricks and how satisfying it is to see Tony Stark outwitted by a man everyone underestimated.

That it falls where all such ambitious elements of the MCU fall is not its fault but a problem with the construction as a whole and this episode deserves our applause for daring to come as close as it did to challenging those founding moral principles successfully.

Rating? 8 sympathetic villains out of 10.

Stewart Hotston