Namor's Plan To Kill Riri Williams In Wakanda Forever Is Completely Flawed

The following article contains spoilers for "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever."

Namor is one of the oldest characters in Marvel Comics. He's been a hero, a villain, and pretty much everything in between throughout his tenure, so it only makes sense for him to have shades of gray for his big-screen debut in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever." 

In the latest film, Namor (Tenoch Huerta) is the ruler of Talokan, an underwater civilization that works hard to keep its presence a secret from the rest of the world. Of course, things go awry when the United States begins drilling for vibranium in the ocean, courtesy of a machine originally designed by Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne). As such, Namor enlists the help of Wakanda to track down Riri to bring her to him so that Talokan may dispose of her properly. 

Of course, upon meeting Riri, Shuri (Letitia Wright) and Okoye (Danai Gurira) realize they can't merely hand her over to be killed by Namor, and what ensues is a power struggle between the two nations. A lot of people needlessly die because of the conflict, and it all could've been avoided if Riri wasn't such an overachiever at MIT. But it's possible none of those people had to die if Namor had thought about his plan just a little more. 

Namor wants Riri Williams dead because technology she came up with is used by the government to drill for vibranium in the ocean. The Talokan people attack the outpost, disposing of everyone onboard either through a siren song that makes them drown themselves or by combat. However, that's not enough for Namor; he wants the Wakandans to track down the scientist responsible for developing the technology and deliver them to him so that he can kill her. 

The main problem with this plan is that it does nothing to solve the issue currently facing Talokan. Namor doesn't want anyone to know about the empire's existence, and killing Riri does nothing to prevent that from happening. After all, the technology is still out there, and it's always possible for the government to chalk up the one attack to a fluke and build another outpost to drill for more vibranium. In doing so, they may inadvertently stumble upon Talokan's existence, and Riri's death will have been for nothing. 

Riri's death would accomplish nothing other than Namor getting revenge on someone who inadvertently put his people in harm's way. But then again, that does seem to be part of Namor's modus operandi. 

Namor's plan may fall apart under scrutiny for more than a couple of minutes, but his desire to kill Riri at least informs us about his character. In both the comics and the movie, Namor loves his people. He's largely protective of them and will do anything to keep their existence a secret from the rest of the world. Killing Riri may not solve all of his problems, but it would make himself feel better to get revenge on someone who threatened his people, whether it was done intentionally or not. 

Plus, if Riri is still out there, what's to stop her from inventing something else that could potentially allow outsiders to locate Talokan? Or she could continue improving the technology she designed initially, causing even more countries to drill for vibranium. At this point, Namor is completely unaware that Riri isn't directly working with the government, so in his mind, this is just another federal lackey who poses a direct threat to his kingdom. 

Namor does what he thinks would be best for his people, but perhaps if he had thought it through more carefully, he could've saved both Talokan and Wakanda a lot of trouble.