Shuri dying off-screen is a problem, and she deserves more

Revealing Shuri’s death through a character poster was a strange move, and Shuri’s character deserves more care and attention than that.

Avengers: Endgame is less than a month away. While Marvel has mostly been keeping details and spoilers about this movie under wraps, they surprised fans by revealing new information about the movie earlier this week. When releasing character posters for Endgame, characters who were alive were shown in full color, while characters who died were shown in black and white.

We learned through these posters that Pepper Potts, Valkyrie, and Happy Hogan survived. We also found out that Shuri, a character who we saw was considered missing in the first Endgame trailer, is confirmed to be dead.

As a fan favorite, many fans were shocked by this news and how it was revealed. A lot of people on the internet didn’t have favorable reactions to her being dead, and many people were confused about the way this news was revealed.

The choice to reveal Shuri’s death in a character poster is a strange one for a couple of reasons. First of all, all of the other characters we know to be dead after Avengers: Infinity War were given on-screen deaths. Shuri is the only person, as far as we know, who is dead, but we never saw what happened to her. Even if they changed things for her character later on, there were many reshoots and pick-ups for these movies that could have given time to add her death into Infinity War.

Another option to show her death would have been in an Endgame trailer. While there was the nod to her being missing in the first trailer, this was vague enough (and the trailers are known to be misleading) that her fate wasn’t confirmed. Revealing her death in a character poster is upsetting, as it doesn’t even give her the screen time that the rest of the characters were given. In fact, for many more casual movie-going fans, they likely won’t even know of Shuri’s fate at all until watching Endgame.

While of course this news is upsetting for Shuri fans because they love the character, it also comes across poorly from a representation perspective. While the MCU is getting more diverse with time, there weren’t that many women of color who were featured prominently until Black Panther. With Shuri being a young woman of color, it doesn’t do her character justice by having her death be off-screen and revealing this information in a movie poster. It makes it seem like the character was a second thought or not valuable. At the very least, they should have revealed her death in a different way.

Hopefully, there is more to this reveal than meets the eye. Possibly, Marvel is going to show her death on-screen in Endgame. Even if they do so, it seems weird they didn’t just wait until the movie to reveal this and leave her fate up in the air. But, maybe her death has something to do with the plot of Endgame that we don’t know about yet. Also, there is a slim chance that the Avengers think she is dead but she turns out not to be (as Angela Bassett tried to assure us). Revealing her fate through the poster was such a strange choice that it makes one wonder if this is a misdirection. Maybe Marvel is trying to confuse us here.

We will just have to wait to watch Endgame to see what is actually going on. Whether Shuri is alive or dead right now, we really hope Marvel brings her back and gives her important roles in the MCU in the future. She is an inspiring and important character that many people, especially kids and teens, can relate to and deserve to look up to.