Michael B. Jordan’s Erik Killmonger had a lot to be angry about in Black Panther. But it turns out his circumstances could be even worse than you previously thought! One of the movie’s most emotional moments came by way of a conversation between the “villain†and his deceased father, but what of Killmonger’s mother, the woman who N’Jobu (Sterling K. Brown) loved so much he became a globalist whose philosophies ran counter to the operating rules of Wakanda? Well, her fate was even more heartbreaking than N’Jobu’s. “The idea was when you see those guys talking over the paperwork in the beginning of the film, they’re talking about a way to break her out of jail,†says Coogler in the new Blu-ray commentary, which was reported by THR. “The idea was they never got her out, and she passed away in prison, so Killmonger didn’t come up with a mom either.â€
So his dad was killed by his own brother while Killmonger played pickup basketball outside, and his mom died in prison. Honestly, it’s probably for the best Coogler cut that detail from the story. You already felt so much for Killmonger it was kind of hard to root for T’Challa when his cousin showed up in Wakanda and aired out all of his very legitimate grievances with the country’s foreign policy. Giving him the Disney-special dead mom in his backstory would have pretty much ended any chance of the audience siding with the true king of Wakanda.