Since the debut of Wonder Woman 1984, people online have been wondering why Pedro Pascal’s villainous character Max Lord has an Asian son.
First, what does it matter if Max’s son Alistar, who is played by actor Lucian Perez (Klaus), is Asian? Is it that hard to believe a non-Asian character could be the father of a child with an Asian background? At the end of 2020, are we still measuring someone’s ethnic makeup to decide if they fit into a box deemed acceptable by people who can’t understand that multicultural families are things that actually exist?
But still, across social media for the last few days since WW84 hit theaters and HBO Max, people couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that Max’s son looked Asian.
There are plenty of plot holes in WW84 that make no sense that audiences can nitpick about. Pascal’s character having an Asian or biracial son, however, is not one of them.
Alistar’s ethnicity has no bearing on the story at all, so why do people assume the film owes it to them to explain this specific detail?
What’s most important about the Max and Alistar scenes in WW84 is the emotional weight they’re supposed to carry in a genre that usually chooses superhero action over sentimentality. Luckily, some people understood the significance of their father and son dynamic.
SPOILER ALERTS:
Here are things in WW84 we should be questioning: How about a dead Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) somehow inhabiting the body of another man or that having everyone in the world make wishes at the same time would undoubtedly cause contradictory wishes?
We can debate whether the father-son relationship worked or didn’t based off acting, and that’s totally fine. But we shouldn’t criticize a casting decision because it doesn’t match a narrow perception of the world. Questioning Alistar’s ethnicity shows ignorance towards multicultural families.