As Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige admitted to IGN last year, the legal rights around comic book character Namor are “not as a clean or clear as the majority of the other characters.” Nonetheless, the producer also remarked that “there’s a way to probably figure it out,” and if what we’re now hearing is true, then Disney may have finally found a path for the Marvel antihero into the MCU.
According to a source close to We Got This Covered, the Sub-Mariner is expected to cameo in either Black Panther 2 or Doctor Strange 2, and while the details end there, this isn’t the first hint we’ve received that Namor McKenzie might show up in Stephen Strange’s second solo movie.
To elaborate, earlier this week, Doctor Strange 2 director Scott Derrickson tweeted then quickly deleted an image (seen below) from the 2011 limited comic book series Fear Itself: The Deep, which showed the Sorcerer Supreme and Namor swimming together underwater. The post was simply captioned “Are You Experienced?,” which happens to be the name of a very famous Jimi Hendrix song where the opening lyrics speak of holding hands and watching the sunrise “from the bottom of the sea.”
It’s not much to go on, but Derrickson’s tweet has certainly been enough for some fans to get their hopes up about Namor entering the fray. That being said, seeing how Black Panther 2 is expected to come out a few months before the Doctor Strange sequel, surely we can’t rule out the character receiving his MCU debut in T’Challa’s next solo film.
In any case, with both sequels believed to be hitting theaters in 2021, Marvel Studios still has plenty of time to change and refine their plans for Namor. But while we wait for further details, you can expect to see Black Panther and Doctor Strange both return to the world of the living when Avengers: Endgame hits theaters on April 26th.