QUEEN RAMONDA: Which one did your mother give you?

(Namor smiles at her bluntness.)

NAMOR: She named me Ch’ah Toh Almehen...

there were many interactions i was glad to see amended between the script and the final cut, but this was not one of them. it seems disingenuous (kinda colonizery actually) to disallow the audience from hearing namor’s mayan birthname, but the emphasis on his mother being his name-giver is very important and further testament that it would serve better to understand these main characters’ places in their cultures matrilineally. amleth, like his mother, was not just a thrall but a wolf (warrior) in sheep’s (slave’s) clothing; they both twofoldedly used the creation--protection of a new, real (freely chosen) family to both escape their subjugated earthly status and reach the gates of valhöll/folkvangr. n’jadaka- like his mother and because she, an american, birthed him, and as his father assumed- was rejected and considered lost both literally by t’chaka abandoning him and conceptually by wakanda refusing to seriously combat colonialism. his uncle not only took his father from him, but prevented n’jobu from breaking his mother out of prison; therefore, he eventually internalized his hatred for wakanda as the greater enemy and purveyor of death in his life than the imperial core he would later serve, making it easier to internalize the imperialist imperative to destroy his native culture to achieve his goals, especially because he had no living connection to it. not only did wakanda (t’chaka) lose him, but he became lost in his ways as a whitewashed caricature of a Black radical. all three died in, while fighting against, the metaphorical prison of antiBlackness, whereas n’jadaka’s mother literally died in prison. t’challa, like his mother, epitomized bast. as king and queen, they both went out into the battlefield (literal and political) to defend wakanda and her resources from colonizers and outsiders, but both also came to realize the balance in accepting (displaced) Africans as kin. not only did ramonda give her life to save riri, but also t’challa encouraged nakia to raise their son in haiti and forego the funeral after preparing them for his illness and death, in effect making his son an outsider and only giving those two his full life.

namor and shuri were directly acting on the deaths of their mothers; furthermore, there is no exploration of namor’s blood ties beyond his mother (maybe cousin namora), and shuri has lost all her immediate family until she is introduced to toussaint. before burying his mother in the soil of her homeland, namor and the talokanil stumbled upon a hacienda and rightfully burnt it and its owners to the ground; but both filmically for us and psychologically for namor, the two events are forever intertwined. he had to burn down the hacienda in order to physically bury his mother, and it seems he must burn the surface world before he can move on spiritually. a more general issue- in the first and second film- is the conflation of the imperial core with the whole world. i indirectly acknowledged this issue with n’jadaka by emphasizing that his assimilation of colonial--imperialist cognition allowed him to misdirect his anger at the colonial powers towards his own African siblings, but with namor he has been his own king and god since the 16th century, involved in no surface world politics. yet, while his insistence on striking wakanda first if they do not support him could be interpreted as either his war tactic to defeat the biggest threat first or just disdain for their passivity towards colonization, his consistent generalization of the surface world as colonial profiteers implies that he actually wants to wage war on the entire world. at least n’jadaka explicitly said he was arming Black and other colonized peoples to take their freedom, but namor generalizes all surface nations as enemies, antithetical to his goals. 
to make things even more complex, the politics of liberation here are still intertwined with the atlantean lore from marvel comics. the eternal war between the two nations in the comics is clearly being translated into the film, and disney namor is just as cocky and hardheaded as namor the sub-mariner, which arguably leads to the latter’s decapitation by the squadron supreme (of course he gets resurrected by someone wanting to rule the world). both namors share the belief that killing any and every outsider necessary to achieve his goals (ostensibly for the good of his nation) is always the best course of action. in the film, he threatens to wash wakanda off the face of the earth if they do not join him after killing queen ramonda; in the comics, he literally does so because they’re providing shelter to the avengers during his battle with the x-men, killing countless wakandan denizens. it is this attitude that precisely leads to one of his many deaths, with the squadron supreme-- a group of heroes from several universes tracking him down to kill him and destroy atlantis because he destroyed their earths during the incursions (see multiverse of madness!) which were missions that t’challa was apart of in the comics but exercised much more caution. the mcu has yet to introduce the ability for unlimited resurrections the way the comics do (and they probably never will), so namor’s miscalculations may prove much more fatal. his assurance that wakanda will need his assistance to defend itself from colonial powers- who he overestimates as the entire surface world- severely underestimates wakandan might. because of the nature of the mcu, there will definitely soon be a greater unforeseen threat to wakandan security that suddenly renders their technological advancements null, but realistically that threat could never be just colonizers. he also underestimates shuri in the wake of her mercy… 

(amended scene) after nakia rescues shuri and riri

NAMORA: They came while you spoke to the Queen? We should not have trusted her. The Princess has seen our home. What is stopping them from coming for Talokan?

NAMOR: We will. I promised my mother that I would never allow a single Talocanil to be killed again.

(Namor turns to Namora, seeing blood red.)

NAMOR: Our people invoke my name when they pray for protection. His death will not go unpunished.

t’challa and ramonda live on through shuri in her climactic battle with namor, despite her initial insistence that people are simply gone once they pass. this makes her vision of ramonda all the more special, because until then she had only seen n’jadaka with the herb, but clearly the herb is just as psychological as it is spiritual. n’jadaka purposely asks, why did you take herb? because that why constructs her experience; that why is both psychological and spiritual. as she holds the blade to namor’s throat, the spirit of bast takes over, but i’m not sure if it was purposely written the way i interpret. not only does she reflect the famous painting of bast beheading apep (a snake god threatening to consume the world like k’uk’kulkan/namor), but also the spirit of protecting the home overwhelms her. the montage in their minds during this scene rewinds time, not just to restore their homes but to restore their mothers (the hearth of matrilineal culture). the script says shuri “trembles with anger and fatigue,” but what if she unknowingly recreated the ritual taught by her mother? she’s not in the bush-- surrounded by neither grass nor water-- and she didn't burn any funeral garments-- besides namor, who does represent the epitome of vengeance that she’s worn since ramonda’s death-- but for a ritual of grieving to truly work, she simply needs an open spirit and to be quiet as she refused to be when ramonda tried to teach her earlier.
in that moment-- blade at namor’s throat-- she found her mother in the quiet breeze, despite all the noise of violence overwhelming her senses. it wasn’t fatigue or anger that pushed her (2:18:35), but the hand of her mother (and t’challa; the paw of bast). the beginning of black panther with t’challa battling m’baku is reflected in the climax of wakanda forever-- not a question of who, but a command. her goal is to protect her home, which she can achieve without destroying the namor’s or taking his life; not only that, but she realizes that vengeance is the spirit that possessed namor to destroy her home as well (a spirit the bp franchise more so associates with Western mores). they cannot protect those who are already gone (their mothers especially), but only those left behind, so when she says, we cannot let vengeance consume our people, she means literally consume and kill them in the spirit of sekhmet and apep.

Shuri And The Burning Bush

while shuri can prevent another talokan attack on wakanda by showing both strength and mercy, the same won’t work against colonialism and antiBlackness. the colonized and precolonial peoples may understand and respect yield (emphasis on may), but the same respect isn’t afforded under colonialisn. even if she doesn’t want to preemptively strike the imperial core to prevent vibrainum mining or an invasion, it wouldn’t be succumbing to vengeance to arm her global African and colonized siblings in order to combat the snakes that continue to poision and kill them everyday. it seems rather ironic (read: antiBlack) for her to show mercy to talokan in order to preserve their home from destruction-- because she visited and saw how beautiful it was-- but her visit to oakland simply showed her basically calling the place dirty and then proceeding to offer no help to the Black struggle besides… teaching some science classes? vague ass “social outreach” and “information exchange” isn’t the same as sharing resources, funding communities, teaching colonial resistance, etc. that’s like when jay z hired somebody to go teach crypto classes in stuyvesant like people in poverty are worried about bitcoin. he brags about being a billionaire… where’s the financial assistance? where’s the free housing? t’challa bought an apartment building, and instead of addressing oakland’s homeless crisis they taught science fair experiments to people who likely can’t afford MIT like n’jadaka somehow did for grad school (then still joined the military afterwards!). 
wakanda could cultivate stronger panafricanism if they would simply expand t’challa’s policy-- geographical and political expansion, by teaching and supporting colonial resistance instead of just “education and outreach,” especially starting with their own continent instead of just the imperial core-- before ever “needing” the snaky talokanil as “allies.” in the comics, t’challa knew that namor couldn’t be trusted, and that’s why after their first mission together he developed a file full of his and the atlanteans’ weaknesses. one would hope that shuri’s experience and visit to their city will eventually encourage her to do the same, especially since she herself destroyed atlantis in the comics after namor destroyed wakanda. in the spirit that amleth destroyed the paradigm of choosing between kindness for his kin and hatred for his enemies in order to somewhat rewrite his fate while still behaving “morally,” living in his godliness, one would hope that toussaint- by growing up in haiti while also being wakandan royalty, so hopefully nakia and shuri as well- will understand and appreciate the godliness (bastliness) in recognizing and defending all Black folx as kin. but one probably has too high of hopes for a disney film.

AMLETH: It was prophesied that I must choose between kindness for my kin and hate for my enemies ...

OLGA: And see what hope we have before us...

He looks her deeply in the eyes with love.

AMLETH: I choose both.