not to be dramatic, but Okoye telling her bitch ass husband she would end him without hesitation when he tried to manipulate her changed me as a person and cured my depression.
“would you kill me my love?”
“for wakanda? No question.”
a woman in my theater: “oH I HEARD THAT!!!!”
Listen. LISTEN. *cups your face in my hands* Listen to me. I have never so perfectly and purely seen a Paladin depicted in a movie as I saw in Okoye. Lawful good to her core. Pure, unvarnished loyalty to Wakanda and her people evident in every goddamned motion. Dignified, graceful, reverent respect for the rules of her country and its greater good.
There is something so beautiful about faith, something that just burns through with a beautiful glow that lights up someone’s eyes and every expression. There is a confidence and a peace that is both palpable and enviable when faith has been tested and come through intact. You could so hear it in her voice.
Personal shit is great, and I’m glad she was seen in a loving relationship. The Lone Woman Warrior trope is worn thin, and I’m sure even thinner for black women who are often not allowed to be lovable people on screen. But the core of the Paladin is ‘there is something greater than I, and I will sacrifice everything for it’, and it was beautiful to not only see that happen on screen but see her proved right, see her win, in one case by not even raising her weapon. She stood firm in her faith and the narrative said yes, it said this is just, it said your very faith will protect you from harm. And she’s not seen as hard or cold edged weapon for that. The imagery around her in that moment is more like a saint or an angel, glowing and reaching out a peaceful hand to a symbol of one of the tribes of her country. Her country loves her back.
Okoye doesn’t just love her country. She doesn’t just serve her country. She doesn’t just believe in her country. She has unshakable faith in an absolute truth: Wakanda Forever.
She is elevated for her faith as much as her skill.
It’s fucking breathtaking.
Reblogging because I hadn’t thought of Okoye as a Paladin, but yes.
She’s so lawful that she was willing to follow Killmonger because the law of Wakanda said so, but not “Lawful stupid” in that when she realized he was just going to destroy her country, she turned on him in a second.
She didn’t turn on him when she realized he was bad for Wakanda, she knew that from the beginning. She turned when he broke the law of inheritance by refusing to continue the challenge, and in so doing lost his legal claim to the throne.
She needed a solid, defensible, reason. A nation is more than a single ruler or family, it’s a system, and her own feelings or political opinions weren’t a good enough reason to defy the system that had held Wakanda together for centuries.
Tag: general okoye is a straight up BOSS
“The idea of a Wakanda fills me with a lot of hope and a lot of passion. The idea of a nation like Wakanda that was never colonized and then it advanced itself to becoming the most technologically advanced nation on the globe. And the idea that my job is to protect that. And to retain the sovereignty and the security and longevity of that, that my foremothers and forefathers put forth .. I mean, that just got me. That just connected me so deeply to her.”
– Danai Gurira on portraying General Okoye.
what i do is not up to you 