The excitement felt by Latines across social media platforms this weekend was palpable after the first full trailer for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever prominently featured Mexican actor Tenoch Huerta.
Huerta will play Namor in the upcoming sequel. In the original comic, Namor is from the fictional underwater empire of Atlantis. Based on the trailer, however, it looks like Marvel has reworked Namor’s origin story to incorporate a Mesoamerican narrative.
While there are plenty of humorous memes celebrating Huerta’s character, the most meaningful messages over the last couple of days have been those written by Latines, who understand how important diversity and inclusion are in a film of this magnitude.
“As a Mexican-American actor with darker skin and a child of indigenous parents, I’ve felt firsthand the colorism inflicted on Latin-Americans in entertainment,” one user tweeted. “As such, I can’t describe the joy of recognizing the gorgeous, talented [Tenoch Huerta] in the #WakandaForever trailer.”
Another Twitter user explained that his enthusiasm for the character stems from seeing someone on the big screen that looks like him. “Wakanda Forever was already going to be an amazing movie, and then they added Tenoch Huerta. A dark-skinned Mexican man in a big movie like this means a lot to many of us dark-skinned Mexicans or folks of Mexican descent.”
Others are crediting Marvel with doing something different than the status quo. “Atlantis being inspired by Aztec culture and Namor being played by Mexican actor Tenoch Huerta in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is about to be the hardest shit the marvel has ever done,” one user wrote.
Here are a few more tweets that prove Latines worldwide are ready to see one of our own come to play in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
