Keeping Up with the Regency Era Kardashians just wrapped its fourth and most interesting season to date. Queen Charlotte, of course, remains my most favorite of the Bridgerton universe because there’s at least an attempt to reckon seriously with what it means to be Black in these spaces. But Bridgerton season four is finally about class in a way that all the other seasons have only addressed in the margins. Yes, the Bridgerton family is extremely wealthy compared to other families, but their competitors in the Ton at least could stand in the same rooms, bow before the queen with them and attend their parties. Like the Featheringtons, Bridgerton competitors could also marry into the Bridgerton family, thus increasing their own status and diluting the need to compete.
Then the second son, Benedict, fell in love with a maid.
Black Girl Watching is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a paid subscriber.
This proves to be an inconvenient scenario not just for Benedict (Luke Thompson) and his maid(en) Sophie (Yerin Ha), who cannot marry without being ostracized from high society in scandal, but also for the audience. It’s capaganda (capitalist propaganda, if you will), this fantasy that Bridgerton offers its significantly poorer audience. It’s an escape into a bygone world of gentlemen, ladies, mansions and balls, and, above all, romance. The Queen (Golda Rosheuvel) is Black! So, never mind that the luxury and leisure of the English court are made possible by its booming Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The Featheringtons’ maid, Mrs. Varley, is like a co-conspiring bestie to Mrs. Featherington! So, never mind that the maintenance of the luxury and leisure of the Ton falls on a servant class who work their entire lives for the lords and ladies and will never manage to escape their servitude. That’s too deep for polite conversation.
But with Sophie as the romantic lead of the season, Bridgerton breaks with form and shows us the brutal, disgusting process of how the sausage is made—and then expects us to want more sausage. In a pair of striking scenes, we first see Benedict and his brothers playing a joyous game of Pin the Shaving Cream on the Brother. Immediately afterwards, we see a maid on her hands and knees cleaning up the mess the brothers made and simply left behind.
Later in the season, as Mrs. Featherington snaps at her new maid for not being as good as Mrs. Varley, who quit over the Featheringtons’ disrespectful wages, fan-favorite Penelope Bridgerton (Nicola Coughlan) is seen scolding her mother for being rude to the help. They’re meant to be kind to the help, like the benevolent Bridgerton matriarch Violet. Throughout the season, Sophie checks Benedict on his immeasurable privilege and ignorance over how much strife he puts his servants through on a daily basis. And all I can think about is, are we supposed to like these insufferable people now that we’ve gotten to know the human beings who wait on them, hand and foot?
You have people whose entire lives are about serving you, raising your children, dressing and undressing you, chauffeuring you wherever you want to go, when you want to go there. You have people whose lives consist of cooking your food, serving it you, and cleaning up after you when you’re done. They throw out your chamber pot piss in the morning and draw your curtains when you wake up. And we’re supposed to go back to relating and rooting for the rich people after what we’ve seen?
But this is the appeal of the show. It’s bigger than “steamy love scenes”— we’re supposed to long just as much for the day when we can live as comfortably as the Bridgertons, at someone else’s expense. This is what makes Sophie’s story a fairytale, in the first place.
Through Benedict’s insistence on being with Sophie despite the ruin he could bring to his family, or to himself by being cut off from the family, season four offers both an escape from class strife and a prison. Love, the ultimate liberator, has come to set Sophie free. But of course, only Sophie. As much as the white Bridgertons love to collect marginalized spouses, they do so only as much as their wealth, power and status in the Ton are secured — much like their IRL Kardashian counterparts.
The Sophie-Benedict Cinderella story had the potential to shake up the Ton and to buck the social order, as Benedict declared that he wished he could do. Violet Bridgerton had hatched a plan with Lady Danbury and the Queen’s newest lady in waiting, Alice Mondrich, to make the Queen bless a marriage between the classes, thus upending the social order. But that’s not quite what happens, because that’s not quite what Bridgerton is about.
Will and Alice Mondrich are the bellwethers of class acceptance in Bridgerton
Look no further than the Mondriches. The aforementioned lady-in-waiting, Alice, and her husband Will had much humbler beginnings. Will is introduced in season one as the Black friend and counterpoint to the Black duke, Simon. Where Simon was born into title and wealth, Will was born into slavery but escaped to Britain, became a boxer and befriended local rake Simon. When Will wanted to build a gentleman’s club, Simon invested and his Bridgerton brother buddies patronized him, making Will everyone’s new Black friend of a different class. While Simon has never been seen again after season one (thanks, at least in part, I’m sure, to the racist fans of the show and book series), Will and Alice, have persisted.
And without a regular Black male constant on the show who is on equal footing with the Bridgertons (thanks to the absence of Simon, Lady Danbury’s fine little brother Marcus, and now with the death of Francesca’s husband, John Stirling) Will and his wife have been promoted to the job. The biracial Alice has a white aunt of status with no surviving heirs, so her estate and family titles go to Alice and Will’s son, elevating Alice and Will to members of the Ton. Will’s storyline in season 3 consists of him wrestling with giving up the club he worked so hard for in order to be a member of society. Gentlemen do not work! They enrich themselves off of the labor of others! That is the trade and the formerly enslaved Will reluctantly but ultimately makes it. As a result, this high society loophole allows Alice to be promoted to lady-in-waiting for the Queen in season 4. Find the cracks and crevices and sneak the colored folk in, if you must! But that status quo will be maintained.
We saw as much in season two, when Eloise Bridgerton, in her search to uncover the person behind town gossip rag Lady Whistledown, fell into a bit of flirtation with a bookshop worker named Theo. He gave her his favorite books to read and introduced her to the political activism brewing underneath the Ton’s polished veneer. Lady Whistledown wrote about Eloise and Theo’s friendship and nearly ruined Eloise and the entire Bridgerton clan’s standing in society. The stakes in this and every season have been about this potential loss of power and status, and how hard the gatekeepers of the family—Violet and Anthony in particular—are willing to work to make sure that never happens.
So, instead of Benedict marrying a maid, Violet blackmails Sophie’s enslaver into pretending that Sophie is a legitimate daughter of Lord Penwood’s house. Though the Queen knows this is a lie, she’s deeply amused by her favorite Kardashian soap stars’ shenanigans, and lets it all slide with uproariously laughter. Benedict and Sophie marry and the status quo remains in place.
Capaganda requires the audience to turn off our brains in order to root for and aspire to be like our oppressors. Our heroes, the Bridgertons, are landlords, for crissake! Bridgerton took a serious risk in upending that social contract by making us remember that the servants are people with lives who are deeply impacted, mostly negatively, by their spoiled, pampered, thoughtless enslavers—whether that’s the Queen, the Bridgertons, the Featheringtons, the Penwoods or any of them— and that there’s no such thing as “the good kind” of enslaver. Benedict wields his power over Sophie in the same uncomfortable ways that Mrs. Featherington wielded hers over Mrs. Varley, and the Queen wielded her power over Lady Danbury—at the end of the day, there can’t be equality, true friendship or love when one holds the other’s livelihood and future in their hands.
Penelope is the only one who recognizes as much this season when she finally lets go of the Lady Whistledown mantle that made her famous and important. She’s a Bridgerton now, and the mother of the new Lord Featherington. The powerlessness from which she created Lady Whistledown no longer exists. In the vacuum Penelope leaves behind in order to pursue other forms of writing, a new Lady Whistledown emerges. People have speculated that it’s Mrs. Varley, someone invisible enough as a maid to get the tea and spill it. Let me dispel that notion right now: the maids have jobs! 24-7! They are too busy to produce a weekly gossip magazine! Lady Whistledown is a bored woman’s job. It’s likely Alice Mondrich who, as a lady-in-waiting, has nothing to do all day but hold dogs, wear wigs, and find gossip for the Queen.
Disabled actress Gracie McGonigal (R) plays Hazel the maid in S4
In its focus on class and power this season, the disability representation was incredible, featuring a lord in a wheelchair on the marriage mart; a maid with a limb difference (Gracie McGonigal who plays Hazel) and Francesca and John’s autism-coded characters. All of these disabled characters (and some disable actors) just existed without their disabilities being the center of their storylines. Each were allowed to experience or search for love, unencumbered—if a bit in the background in the case of Hazel the maid and the young lord. It’s remarkable because I’ve yet to see it elsewhere in a fictional narrative on screen—especially not in a period piece!—without a primary focus on disabilities (like in the docuseries “Love on the Spectrum,” for example). The inclusivity in front of the camera is a standard that other shows should follow (even if the show’s insistence that partnering people of color with white people is the revolution gets on my last nerves).
John’s death this season was also excruciating and well acted, with Francesca’s Hannah Dodd playing a young grieving widow with absolute anguish. And the promise of Francesca and Michaela’s love story—the first queer love story that will take centerstage in a future season of Bridgerton, was laid out well, with respect for Francesca and John’s brief but lovely love story.
But with every season of Bridgerton as an example, it’s hard to imagine how this gender-swapped sapphic romance between Francesca and Michaela (who was Michael in the books) will turn out in a series that teases revolution but ultimately refuses to ever actually rock the boat.
Benedict’s bisexuality isn’t invalidated by him ending up in a heterosexual partnership with Sophie. And also, a bisexual character ending up in a heterosexual partnership is notable in a show that is, at its core, about maintaining the status quo.
All of Sophie’s secret maid friends attend her wedding; new money and status won’t make her forget where she comes from! But, of course, she’ll go on to have maids and servants of her own now. It can’t be helped; that’s just the way things are. We should be happy about Sophie’s turn of good fortune! After all she’s been through, she’ll surely be a kind overseer, like Penelope or Violet before her. Maybe she’ll even have a maid bestie like Mrs. Featherington and Mrs. Varley!
But the specter of class and slavery can’t help but haunt this show.
Anti-Black violence happened at the 2026 British Academy Film and Television Arts awards last night.
First, I want to hold space for Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo—two extraordinary actors who turned in the best performances of their careers in Sinners. I want to sit with them and their hearts as they traveled to London and graced the BAFTAs stage for the first time as presenters, and Jordan as a nominee, and what that must’ve meant for these Black men to be internationally acclaimed for their craft—finally! I want to cover them in love as they opened their mouths to present an award together and before they could even get started good, they were made to hear a white man in the audience hurl at them the slurs “N____r b___h!” in the silence.
Black Girl Watching is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
I wonder if, before this, Jordan and Mr. Lindo had gotten their hopes up. I wonder if they’d finally felt seen in an industry that has overlooked their contributions for years. The look on their faces is unbearable. But they took a beat, read that prompter, and gave out that award. They watched their cast mate Wunmi Mosaku win Best Supporting Actress and their writer-director Ryan Coogler win Best Original Screenplay and I wonder if, even in their joy, that degradation stayed with them.
“You may have noticed some strong language in the background,” BAFTAs host Alan Cumming said on stage of the racial slur hurled by Tourette’s campaigner John Davidson, whose life story with the disability was featured in the movie I Swear which was also awarded that night. Though no other group besides Black people was subjected to slurs, Davidson had also reportedly yelled out “shut the fuck up” to white people on stage. “This can be part of how Tourette’s syndrome shows up for some people as the film [I Swear] explores that experience.”
It’s true: some people with Tourette’s have the most extreme and rare version, Coprolalia, which causes involuntary use of offensive words and even racial slurs. Apparently, that’s what Davidson has. But that n____r only came out when he saw Black people.
“Thanks for your understanding and helping create a respectful space for everyone,” Cumming said. Isn’t it something, what white people demand that Black people “understand”?
Apparently realizing his outrageous statement about “understanding” was inadequate, later in the broadcast, Cumming returned with a weak non-apology: “Tourette’s Syndrome is a disability and the tics you’ve heard tonight are involuntary, which means the person who has Tourette’s Syndrome has no control over their language. We apologize if you are offended tonight.”
If.
The BAFTAs said nothing publicly specifically to Jordan or Mr. Lindo. Nothing to the Black members of the audience in the room nor globally. The BBC had plenty of time to edit out the slur, yet chose to air it on television anyway. When Nigerian-British filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr. won Outstanding Debut film for his excellent feature My Father’s Shadow, and he gave a speech acknowledging those experiencing genocide and occupation around the world, and said “Free Palestine,” the BAFTAs and BBC acted quickly to cut that part out of the broadcast. The BBC erased Davies’ calls for liberation of Sudan, Congo, Nigeria and Palestine. But they left in N____r.
Sit with that.
The BAFTAs and the BBC made numerous violent choices that night and thanked us for “understanding.” The docile negroes who have to smile and push through and “understand” the layers and levels and generations of white violence collapsed into one evening.
“A source told Variety earlier that Davidson was an ‘invited guest’ and under no circumstances would he be asked to leave the ceremony,” Variety reported of the incident. “Under no circumstances”?
It seems the extent of their plan to mitigate any harm was for the floor manager to offer a mild warning before the program began: “I’d like to welcome John Davidson MBE from one of our nominated films ‘I Swear’. John has Tourette’s Syndrome so please be aware you might hear some involuntary noises or movements during the ceremony,” Variety reported the floor manager saying.
But it wasn’t just noises or movements. It was racism. And it wasn’t just Jordan or Mr. Lindo who were slurred. Sinners production designer Hannah Beachler was also verbally assaulted by Davidson with n____r off-camera. She wrote on Twitter:
“I keep trying to write about what happened at the BAFTAs, and I can’t find the words. The situation is almost impossible, but it happened 3 times that night, and one of the three times was directed at myself on the way to dinner after the show.”
This is BAFTAs’ epic failure.
Where, on an institutional level, was their plan to first prevent as much harm as possible here, and to repair potential harm caused? Disabled people belong in the world and must have appropriate accommodations. In this case, the BAFTAs not only should’ve had a stronger warning for its audience about what could come, but also a plan for how to protect all of its invited guests from harm. If a racial slur is a tic that’s triggered when someone sees Black people and you know Black people are going to be in the room, there is a duty here to plan for this accordingly before harm is caused beyond expecting the victims to “just ignore it” or “understand” it—not only by Davidson and his team but also the BAFTAs. This institution failed its duty to work with Davidson to ensure the safety of Black guests. While I find it unacceptable for the BAFTAs to award the fictionalized I Swear while pushing out the real human who inspired the film, it is also unacceptable to subject Black people to n____r. There is no compromise on that. But the BAFTAs and the BBC don’t seem to understand that. And they’re not alone.
Early Monday morning, after a night of backlash, BBC issued a similar unspecific milquetoast apology as its host did: “Some viewers may have heard strong and offensive language during the Bafta Film Awards. This arose from involuntary verbal tics associated with Tourette syndrome, and was not intentional. We apologise for any offence caused by the language heard.” No responsibility taken for their choice to air the slur. No apology for the racism. Just passive voice stretched to its absolute limits. As of yet, there have been no reports of an apology from Davidson, nor the BAFTAs—and many white people on social media seem to believe an apology isn’t warranted in the first place. This is a disability! It’s involuntary!Wanting an apology is ableism! They have said, rushing to extend Cumming’s demand for “grace.”
Yet, “involuntary” is a mitigating circumstance, not a free pass to harm. And what could be more ableist than suggesting disabled people cannot recognize the harm they cause and repair it? Without a doubt, from Beachler’s tweet and Jordan and Mr. Lindo’s faces, harm was done in that room. And harm was done outside of it. There is far more attention on the violence of Davidson’s words and the BAFTAs and BBC’s violent choices in response than there is on celebration of the three awards that the Sinners team collected last night. Their moment was stolen. That’s violence too, and it demands repair. What is stopping Davidson, the BAFTAs or the BBC from apologizing publicly and for real for their anti-Black violence specifically, other than a centuries-old belief that Black people don’t deserve apology?
UPDATE: BAFTAs has now issued an apology specifically to Jordan and Mr. Lindo almost 24 hours after the event: “Early in the ceremony a loud tic in the form of a profoundly offensive term was heard by many people in the room. Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were on stage at the time, and we apologise unreservedly to them, and to all those impacted. We would like to thank Michael and Delroy for their incredible dignity and professionalism. … We take full responsibility for putting our guests in a very difficult situation and we apologise to all. We will learn from this, and keep inclusion at the core of all we do, maintaining our belief in film and storytelling as a critical conduit for compassion and empathy.”
Davidson, on the other hand, issued no apology to any of the Black people he hurled this slur at, releasing instead a statement only acknowledging how mortifying the event was for him. “I can only add that I am, and always have been deeply mortified if anyone considers my involuntary tics to be intentional or to carry any meaning.
I was in attendance to celebrate the film of my life, I SWEAR, which more than any film or TV documentary, explains the origins, condition, traits and manifestations of Tourette Syndrome. I have spent my life trying to support and empower the Tourette’s community and to teach empathy, kindness and understanding from others and I will continue to do so. I chose to leave the auditorium early into the ceremony as I was aware of the distress my tics were causing.” The end.
Tourette’s is a terrible disability. I’ll never understand what it must be like to live with it. And white people will never understand being Black and being called N____r by a white person. When racism and ableism collide for Black disabled people, they curiously don’t mobilize to call for “grace” and “understanding”—yet the consequences for being Black and disabled in public are deadly. Sonya Massey. Elijah McClain. Ryan Gainer. All killed by police who see disabled Black people as inhuman, inherent threats to be put down. In this white supremacist system, whose feelings get centered, who requires acts of grace, and who is demanded to be gracious are all political. None of this exists in a vacuum.
Jordan, Mr. Lindo and Hannah Beachler were called n____r in the context of an 80-year-old institution awarding its first Black winner in Ryan Coogler for Best Original Screenplay last night. In Big 2026. They were called n____r in the context of the BBC constantly running zionist propaganda on its platforms while erasing calls for a liberated Congo, Sudan, Nigeria and Palestine from its broadcasts “for time,” while leaving in the slur against them. They were called n____r in the context of Sinners competing with and losing to the most basic, most anti-Black movie of the year, One Fetish After Another, over and over again, all season. They were called n____r as the most anti-Black writer-director of the season Paul Thomas Anderson took up another award for Best Director last night, using undocumented Hispanic immigrants and Black women as little more than aesthetic background props for his racist ass white-male-centered bullshit movie, and then declining to say anything in his self-aggrandizing speech about ICE violence against immigrants and Black American women like Dr. Linda Davis who was just killed because of ICE last week.
“I’m not a politician, I’m a filmmaker,” Anderson shrugged through his cowardly answer as to why he wouldn’t speak up for the communities he stepped on to collect his trophies all season. “I try to do it through the work.” The empty work that stated no revolutionary or political vision? The work that caricatured undocumented people and Black women? That used them and threw them away as to not hurt his awards chances with white voters? Oh.
To watch the unmatched Black brilliance that is Sinners and its cast and crew continuously lose to that objectively inferior, self-masturbatory, stilted, stunted, boring, wack ass slog of a movie is par for the course in a white supremacist system that continuously expects Black people to just be happy to be there at all. You have to be twice as good to get half as far, the Black American adage goes. It’s not a challenge for us to accept, but merely a statement of white supremacist reality. They don’t have to yell the word; in those rooms, it’s always hanging in the air.
Love and grace to Michael B. Jordan, to Delroy Lindo, to Hannah Beachler. Love to Ryan Coogler and Wunmi Mosaku. Love to Black people with Tourette’s who are sitting at the intersection of racism and ableism and hearing both be excused and dismissed while erasing the fullness of their reality. May the catastrophe of the BAFTAs spark in us an urgency to divest from these white supremacist institutions that were never created to see or honor us, and to build instead a world that’s safe for Black people and disabled people, that centers the most harmed, and works to repair it.
***Spoiler alert for the plot of ‘Wuthering Heights’movie and book***
As a sex positive, pro-hoe person, I hate using the word “porn” negatively, in the way a phrase like “trauma porn” has inherently negative connotations. Sex work is valid work and I won’t single it out for degradation. For that reason, when speaking of films and filmmakers who seem to metaphorically get off on exploiting pain and depicting gratuitous violence as entertainment, I coined the phrase “eroticized trauma,” instead. But, I’m so sorry, it must be said: Emerald Fennell’s latest film “Wuthering Heights” is literal trauma porn.
It begins with an L-Cut over a black screen. We hear squeaking and creaking like the sound of a wooden bed in motion. Then, of course, comes the heavy breathing. Fennell wants us to believe that we’re overhearing a sex scene. But when the camera fades into the scene, we learn, instead, that Fennell is simply trolling the audience by offering up the last thing we would expect: a man with a sackcloth over his head, struggling to breathe while being hanged from a noose in the public square. He dies violently, with an erection, as if his public execution were an autoerotic asphyxiation kink gone wrong. It makes the grotesque onlookers horny and some literally have sex or masturbate while the now-dead man swings and children laugh.
Of course, this scene never appears in Emily Brönte’s classic 1847 novel Wuthering Heights—Fennell just wants us all to applaud her cleverness and ascribe some depth and edginess to her flaccid, rich white woman’s imagination of the debaucherous poor. Yet it’s among the least egregious changes in Fennell’s adaptation, if it can even be called that when she completely ignores or fundamentally misunderstands the source material. Fennell says she’s put the title in quotation marks to stave off the ire of readers of the book who can tell that Fennell didn’t. It hasn’t worked.
Though the scene doesn’t connect at all to the rest of the plot, it introduces young Cathy, the main character as a child, who witnesses the hanging with Nelly, who, in this version isn’t a maid like in the book, but an unpaid “companion” for Cathy. Beyond that, the scene reveals something insidious about Fennell and her ideas about sex, violence and kink. Unlike violence, the underlying requirement of sex and kink is consent—something she’ll fail to responsibly distinguish throughout the film. Perhaps the bait-and-switch scene was simply confirmation that this entire film will run contrary to its marketing.
“Inspired by the greatest love story of all time,” the trailer lies, as anyone who has ever read Wuthering Heights knows that, though it is a great book, it is most decidedly not some great romantic love story. Instead, Brönte’s novel tells the story of how abuse, racism, and classism thwart love and breed obsession and how real love and self-acceptance can heal generational trauma.
Fennell has no interest in any of this, or perhaps no awareness. She wants to make a bodice-ripping period piece where revenge is a non-consensual kink that turns deadly. In Fennell’s mind, dying of grief because the man you didn’t choose married someone else isn’t selfishness, but the ultimate sign of “great love.” Fennell turns this idea of Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi)’s deadly cruelty and obsession with each other as some Romeo & Juliet, star-crossed lovers tale to be imitated by the impressionable audience. “Come undone,” the tagline of the film encourages, further solidifying for audiences that having a mental breakdown and dying as Cathy does or living in misery forever after as Heathcliff does is the evidence of great love and a great movie.
I expected such irresponsible filmmaking from Fennell. She is also the disaster-mind behind Promising Young Woman, where ***spoiler alert*** a young woman seeks revenge on the male rapist of her friend, but only actually harms women who contributed to her friend’s pain and then gets murdered herself by her friend’s rapist. It’s no wonder Hollywood continues to prop up its favorite patriarchal princess; the women in her films somehow always manage to get back in their place or suffer.
She’s also the born-wealthy woman behind Saltburn, which dares to ask, “What if the poors are obsessed with us and plotting to steal our money out from under us?” And, “What if The Talented Mr. Ripley kept the great cinematography but lost all nuance and depth, and had nothing to say about the perversions of whiteness, maleness, class, and obsession?” In this context, Fennell’s illiterate adaptation of Wuthering Heights makes total sense.
White Australian actor Jacob Elordi accepted the role of Heathcliff despite the fact that, in the book, Heathcliff is described multiple times as “dark-skinned,” and is often degraded by white characters with the old slur for Romani people. “I wish I had light hair and a fair skin, and was dressed and behaved as well, and had a chance of being as rich as he will be!” Heathcliff says in the book when he realizes that Cathy is going to choose the extremely wealthy, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Edgar Linton over him. “I must wish for Edgar Linton’s great blue eyes and even forehead…I do and that won’t help me to them.”
This is Heathcliff’s racial and class anguish colliding, and his singular motivation in the book: to become wealthy and whiten his bloodline as both revenge for Cathy choosing Linton and a way to validate himself and become worthy of the kind of man Cathy would love and choose. Fennell strips this crucial racial element out of Heathcliff’s character because Elordi is what she imagined Heathcliff to look like when she read the book as a 14-year-old. Unless this R-rated, BDSM, Harlequin “romance” was made for other 14-year-olds who imagine all characters as white despite their descriptions, I’m not sure why the version of Fennell before her prefrontal cortex fully developed is the one that’s running this show. When there are so few non-white movie leads, it’s simply outrageous to whitewash a POC character.
Some have suggested that they don’t mind Heathcliff being white in the film because he’s evil in the book, and who needs an evil POC when there are so few POC characters on screen? To that, Ms. Fennell would like to introduce you to whom she has cast as Edgar Linton and Nelly. Pakistani actor Shazad Latif plays Edgar to shield Fennell and Elordi from criticism for whitewashing Heathcliff. And Hong Chau is Nelly and avoids criticism of Catherine for having an Asian maid by making Nelly into Catherine’s unpaid companion, which Fennell thinks is better. Never mind the optics of Fennell stripping Nelly of her position as the narrator of the story and downgrading her to a one-dimensional villain. Alongside Edgar, Nelly is the main antagonist to Heathcliff and Cathy’s love. Look at these meddlesome POC, getting in the way of Fennell’s fantasies of true love!
As it turns out, 14-year-old Fennell’s dreamboat Heathcliff is actually a violent abuser in the book. His “seduction” of Edgar’s sister Isabella (turned into Edgar’s “ward” in the film to justify casting a white actress in the role after race-swapping Edgar) is not some BDSM kink the way Fennell has rewritten it for the modern audience. Heathcliff is monstrous to Isabella in the book, punishing her for not being Catherine. As soon as they’re married, he hangs her dog (is this where Fennell got the idea for the opening hanging scene?!) to solidify that he does not and will never love her or be kind to her.
Yet Fennell takes that awful hanging of Isabella’s dog and turns Isabella into a dog as a kink between husband and wife. In the film, she’s consensually chained to the wall by a collar around her neck and crawls on the floor on her hands and knees, barking at Heathcliff’s command. When Nelly comes to save Isabella in the film, she doesn’t want to be saved. This is the exact opposite of what happens in the book.
“I’ve sometimes relented, from pure lack of invention, in my experiments on what she could endure, and still creep shamefully cringing back!” Heathcliff confesses to Nelly in the book of the abuse he puts Isabella through, blaming his young wife for his actions.
“He’s a lying fiend! a monster, and not a human being!” Isabella responds to Nelly when Heathcliff says Isabella is free to leave the abuse anytime she wants but she chooses to stay. “I’ve been told I might leave him before; and I’ve made the attempt, but I dare not repeat it!” she says. “The single pleasure I can imagine is to die, or to see him dead!”
Before Isabella winds up giving birth to their son, she manages to escape Heathcliff’s abusive clutches and lives free and far away from him with their son for the rest of her short life. For Fennell to whitewash not only the characters but a woman’s abuse and survival story and reframe it as some consensual kink instead is astounding. But that’s what must be done when you need Heathcliff to be a romantic hero and not the vengeful devil of a man that his character so evidently was.
“She abandoned [her principles] under a delusion,” Heathcliff says of Isabella in the book in what could be a word-for-word, bar-for-bar rebuke of Fennell’s “adaptation.” “Picturing in me a hero of romance, and expecting unlimited indulgences from my chivalrous devotion. I can hardly regard her in the light of a rational creature, so obstinately has she persisted in forming a fabulous notion of my character and acting on the false impressions she cherished.”
Emily Brönte with the prescient third-degree burn for Fennell from beyond the grave!
The art of adaptation, when done well, is exactly that. They elevate the source material, like Heated Rivalry or The Leftovers; they make space for marginalized actors who were previously shut out of earlier iterations, like Wicked: Part One; they correct some wrong or narrow-minded thinking in the original, like one of the best adaptations of all time, the TV series Interview with the Vampire. Above all, a good adaptation should serve a purpose. And Fennell’s films just have no real sense of depth or urgency or reason for existing beyond gimmick.
Here, Fennell’s anachronistic costuming and Charli XCX soundtrack aren’t used in service of her narrative, but simply because she thinks it looks and sounds cool. Her fully-clothed vanilla sex scenes mixed with licking dirt and grass and oozing raw eggs, are dreadfully unsexy and too vanilla to actually provoke. She’s cast 28-year-old Elordi in a POC role and her producer, (35????-year-old) Robbie as his 17-year-old love interest, not for the chemistry, or the accuracy, but simply for the white romance novel aesthetic. And even as a romance it fails, because their story is simply not romantic. Though their lost-love ending is orchestrated to induce tears, these characters are too decontextualized from their beating hearts to make the desired impression. With these empty adaptation choices, Fennell is the Taylor Swift of film; the cinematic embodiment of Great Gowns, Beautiful Gowns, and Go, Girl, Give Us Nothing.
By only adapting half of Brönte’s novel (as many other adaptations have done) and killing off Cathy’s child at the end of the film, Fennell has killed off the literal hope of the book that made this journey worthwhile. Cathy’s child is the change agent, the generational curse breaker that offers not only Heathcliff but the reader a blueprint for another way of being.
In the book, just hours after Cathy dies of grief at the thought of choosing between Linton and Heathcliff, Cathy and Edgar have a baby girl, also named Cathy. For Heathcliff’s plan of vengeance to work, it’s imperative that he marry the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Linton girl Isabella. It’s not just about revenge against Cathy and Edgar, it’s about him becoming as good and worthy as the Lintons. He and Isabella have a blonde-haired, blue-eyed son, whom Isabella names Linton Heathcliff(!). When Cathy and Linton are teenagers, Heathcliff forces his son—the white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed version of himself—to marry Cathy’s daughter. He also lies in wait until Edgar dies and he takes over both Edgar’s wealth and property as well. By all accounts, he has won. Yet he remains miserable.
He’s become more physically, emotionally and financially abusive to the next generation and everyone around him than his abusers were to him when he was oppressed. He hates his son, both for being sickly and for looking like the Lintons, and being a reminder of who he could never be. He tortures Linton and that only makes Cathy Jr. want to protect him more and love him more. Knowing that Heathcliff has forced them together for his own games and her misery, she’s determined not to let him win.
“I know he loves me, and for that reason I love him. Mr. Heathcliff YOU have NOBODY to love you; however miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery,” Cathy Jr. tells Heathcliff. Where Heathcliff uses his hate to fuel his plotting and ease his pain, Cathy Jr.’s love is her weapon and her revenge.
The success of his plans doesn’t heal him or end his pain. His sickly son dies a few months into the marriage to Cathy Jr.—proof to him that there was nothing he could’ve ever done to be good enough for his Cathy in any form.
Heathcliff has also taken Wuthering Heights out from under its owner and his original abuser—not Cathy’s father, like in the film, but Cathy’s brother Hindley, whom Fennell erased and pasted onto the father character for the film. This huge deviation took the sting out of Hindley’s abuse as a peer and brother, competing with Heathcliff for the affection of his father who had adopted Heathcliff and doted on him. Hindley violently retaliated against Heathcliff for his father’s love, and when his father died, he turned Heathcliff into a servant, which devastated Heathcliff’s sense of self. But in his grown-up revenge against his Hindley, Heathcliff accidentally created the conditions for his own redemption.
Hindley had a son named Hareton before he died. To punish Hindley, Heathcliff raises Hareton —who should’ve been raised a gentleman by station— as a lowly brute who can’t read or write or be in polite society. This is the ultimate revenge, that Hindley’s son would be no better than Heathcliff was when he first came to live at Wuthering Heights as a child. But after Heathcliff forces Cathy Jr. to remain at Wuthering Heights after her young husband dies, she winds up falling in love with the rough and gruff Hareton, who is more Heathcliff’s son than Linton ever was, in manner and temperament and devotion.
It’s Cathy Jr. who makes fun of Hareton’s inability to read and write in the book—not Cathy and Heathcliff, as Fennell rewrites it for the film. But Cathy Jr. learns that she doesn’t want to be above Hareton in life; she wants them to be equals, and she teaches him patiently from that point on, how to read. Hareton in his humility, accepts the help and improves, opposing Heathcliff and Cathy who didn’t make those choices in their youth. Hareton also chooses to love Heathcliff as a father, despite his abuse.
“His honest, warm, and intelligent nature shook off rapidly the clouds of ignorance and degradation in which it had been bred,” Brönte writes of how Hareton freed himself of Heathcliff’s boorish upbringing. “And Catherine’s sincere commendations acted as a spur to his industry. His brightening mind brightened his features, and added spirit and nobility to their aspect.” Both Cathy and Hareton were horrifically abused by Heathcliff in different ways, and both chose to love and be loved anyway; to not internalize Heathcliff’s abuse as their own personal failings, as he tried to make it; and to accept themselves and each other.
At first, it angers Heathcliff that Cathy Jr. would love and choose Hareton, because that shatters his idea that Cathy married Edgar because Heathcliff was unlovable and unworthy. Through witnessing the next generation’s choice to love despite abuse, he finds validation that he was always enough as he was, and it was his bitterness and rage that pushed away the love he could’ve had, after all of the games with Cathy, his wife, his son and adopted children. Soon, Nelly catches Heathcliff inexplicably in a good humor for days on end, smiling, staring out at what appears to be nothing. Then, Cathy’s ghost, who’s been haunting him and Wuthering Heights since her death 18 years ago, comes through the window to take him one night. Heathcliff dies, eyes wide open. The book ends with whispers of people witnessing the ghosts of Cathy and Heathcliff wandering the town together, never to be parted again. That’s how you tell a story!
It mattered to Brönte that her story of survival be healing because her intention in writing it was to heal. Her mother had died when she was 3 years old. Two of her sisters died before adulthood. Like Hindley, her older brother was addicted to alcohol, drugs and gambling. She would also die of tuberculosis at 30 years old, only a year after publishing Wuthering Heights.But to leave tools for a future generation to not only survive these traumas but a path to heal from them must have been medicine for her soul.
That is the biggest gripe about Fennell’s bastardization of the original text: it poisons the medicine. Where Brönte explores how to heal trauma, Fennell wonders how she can get off on it, making that irksome opening scene the perfect encapsulation of Fennell’s purposeless, visionless “Wuthering Heights.”
There’s nothing like a film festival and crisp air to remind me exactly how much I love what I do! Thanks to Sundance’s Press Inclusion Initiative, I received a grant for Black Girl Watching and an All-Access Press Pass to attend this year’s last Dance in the festival’s long-time home, Park City, Utah, before it moves to Boulder, Co. next year. I saw 15 feature films and documentaries, 5 shorts, and attended several panels and parties over my six days on the Mountain and through last week’s online access portal. I met up with and ran into beloved friends I haven’t seen in six years (my last in-person Sundance was January 2020, just before we knew that the Covid pandemic had already begun), met SO MANY Black Girl Watching readers(!!) and had the most beautiful time running in the snow to catch the bus from theater to theater.
Still, I’m grateful to never return to Park City. A harbinger of the coming Climate Apocalypse, the mountains were far too green for an end-of-January winter on my drive up from Salt Lake City—a frightening sight compared to how snow-covered the place was on my last visit six years ago. Also, on top of the new fascist laws that Utah has enacted to police alcohol consumption, queer people and women, I’ve always had some kind of racist encounter while I’m there. Beyond being surveilled for potential retail theft when just browsing a store on Main Street of the fest, the worst of my three encounters this time involved a volunteer usher accusing me—in the middle of a film—of being a volunteer usher taking a seat from a “real patron”. Mind you, I’m the only Black person in the whole row, and I have my notepad and pen out, taking notes for my job because the movie had already begun. But she just knew I was the culprit.
I almost had a final run in on the morning of my last day, I squeezed in one more film before heading to the airport. I was the last person to arrive and had to sit in the only available seat—one usually reserved for companions of disabled guests. A white woman in the row in front of me called over a volunteer usher because she was told before I’d arrived that she couldn’t sit in my seat because it was reserved for disabled companions, but she needed it because her eyes get strained sitting too close to the front. The volunteer whispered a response to her and started walking towards me. Now, this is my last day at Sundance, I’ve had it up to here with the racist encounters and I’d made up my mind that if this volunteer tells me that I have to give up my seat for a white woman one week after Martin Luther King Day, I’m going off! The volunteer walked over to me, removed the wheelchair sign from my seat’s arm rest and walked away as the movie began. At least one of them knew better.
Yes, being Black at Sundance meant experiencing compounded ignorance that I take great pains to shield myself from in my regular life by working remotely and staying in my house. But it also meant celebrating some incredible films and sitting in the audience with some of my favorite filmmakers; watching Ava DuVernay give flowers to If I Go Will They Miss Me cinematographer Michael Fernandez at the movie’s premiere, and Barry Jenkins speak in total awe of the documentary Once Upon a Time in Harlem (and the moderator not recognizing the Oscar-winner and therefore cutting him off! Black at Sundance, I tell ya! Video below for paid subscribers). It meant crying at the tributes to Sundance founder Robert Redford and communications director Tammie Rosen who both passed away last year and both influenced my career as a critic and filmmaker through Sundance. It meant watching Ava be one of the few high-profile filmmakers at the festival to use her platform to speak up for Palestine and against ICE and American-grown fascism; it’s Baratunde Thurston dropping bars about how to connect and build agency and power with community on a panel at Solidarity House; it’s hugging necks with friends I haven’t seen in six years and dancing all night at after parties and still waking up early to watch as much as I can because I friggin’ LOVE movies. I love a dark theater and scribbling notes that I can barely read because I wrote them without being able to see the page. I love a crowd of people from all over the world, sharing life on one accord for (ideally) 90 minutes at a time, for days in a row. Film festivals are magical places and Sundance is one of the best.
Here’s my list of the best films I saw at Sundance 2026!
Paid subscribers can watch a panel Q&A with Barry’s remarksbelow.
Black Girl Watching is a reader-supported publication. Upgrade to a paid subscriber.
If I Go Will They Miss Me?
My absolute favorite film of the festival is the gorgeous slice of Black South LA life, If I Go, Will They Miss Me? Anthony, a father recently released from prison (J. Alphonse Nicholson) struggles to connect with his young son who bears his name. In Lil Ant (Bodhi Dell)’s imagination, his father is like the Greek god Zeus that he’s learning about in school and he draws Big Ant in all of his majesty. But Big Ant’s self-loathing and the burden of patriarchy make it difficult for him to accept his son or his son’s image of him, and contributes to his struggles with his long-suffering wife (a radiant Danielle Brooks).
Mixing in magical realism and documentary-style cinematography originating in Zora Neale Hurston’s films and popularized in Barry Jenkins’ works, If I Go, Will They Miss Me? is a promising debut from writer-director Walter Thompson-Hernández, and a stunning realization with cinematographer Michael Fernandez. I watched it twice and bawled my eyes out both times. Nicholson is magic on the screen, wrestling with what toxic masculinity costs a man and his family; and the sweet-faced Dell in his debut role as Lil Ant will break and heal your heart.
Kikuyu Land
This is the most urgent documentary I saw at Sundance from an incredibly brave journalist in her directorial debut, Bea Wangondu, and her co-director Andrew H. Brown. Wangondu and generations of her family hail from Kikuyu Land, a luscious region of Kenya where land ownership can mean status and safety, or make one a target for theft and murder. Like all of Kenya, the Kikuyu people and its lands were colonized by Britain and when the people won Kenyan independence in 1963, oppressors merely changed forms. African middle men took the place of British lords and British corporations took over the role of the crown, controlling the land and working its rightful stewards on tea plantations as essentially sharecroppers who can never make enough money from their back-breaking work to leave.
The modern-day owner of many tea plantations there was Lipton tea owner, the UK corporation Unilever, and Kikuyu Land shows the cost to the people who harvest the tea leaves for our global enjoyment. The film follows Wangondu as she tries to get justice for the workers and the alleged atrocities so many have faced on the plantations. She also interviews a man fighting to get his family’s stolen land back from the government; a “tea child” who ends up quitting school when he’s old enough to work the plantations full-time and help out his struggling family; and her own family for their land-owning ties.
I could talk about Brown’s gorgeous cinematography and how rich Kikuyu Land looks through Wangondu’s loving lens. But journalists in Kenya have been killed after being critical of the Kenyan government and exposing land-owning corporations. Wangondu, Brown, and the participants in their documentary have risked their lives to tell us this story and to use this lens to get justice for the people. This was, therefore, the only other film that I was compelled to watch twice, and Wangondu is my next guest on the BGW podcast for paid subscribers, Another Possible World. Look out for that episode in March!
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
We’ve heard the stories of the Harlem Renaissance, of the most brilliant writers, thinkers and artists in the country living and creating in Harlem in the 1920s and ‘30s. We’ve read of the love and camaraderie of the artists of the day, and we’ve read the dueling essays of the greats and their debates and full-on fights about what the “right path” for Black America should be. But the documentary film Once Upon a Time in Harlem actually shows us the Renaissance in real time and why, 100 years later, the history and the lessons of the era still resonate and are more urgent than ever. Filmed by legendary filmmaker William Greaves in 1972, Once Upon a Time in Harlem is a time capsule of a dinner party Greaves assembled of those great artists still living and available to attend and recount what the Renaissance was really like, with the benefit of hindsight. The same love, the same disagreements spring to life in this pure gift of a documentary that allows us to sit for awhile amongst legends long after their deaths, and Greaves’ as well. His son David, who was a young cameraman at the party, kept his promise to his father who died ten years ago, and took up the mantle of assembling and editing this treasure trove of film into a documentary and a living history I won’t soon forget. Paid subscribers can watch Barry Jenkins’ reaction to the film and the Q&A with David and his daughter Liani below.
Lady
I’ve never seen Lagos look so beautiful on screen as it does in Lady. Though her screenplay is critical of the Nigerian government and the crooks at the top who profit at the expense of the people, writer-director Olive Nwosu’s lens is so loving and tender, even as her cinematographer Alana Mejia Gonzalez photographs the slums where the title character, Lady, (Jessica Gabriel’s Ujah) lives. Lady is a taxi driver who has a dream to make it out of the slums and move to Freetown in Sierra Leone. While her fellow drivers want to organize against the government’s rising gas prices, Lady believes it’s her own hard work and hustle that will get her where she needs to be. But when her childhood best friend returns and hooks her into driving sex workers for a powerful and dangerous pimp for extra cash, she’ll soon learn that there are traumas in life and systems in place that you simply can’t out-hustle. This film is almost perfect, with standout performances from Ujah, and the actresses who play the sex workers, Amanda Oruh, Tinuade Jemiseye, and Binta Ayo Mogaji. That third-act shift would’ve been flawless if the mostly stone-faced Lady was given one moment in the end to breakdown and feel her losses before she makes her final choice. Still, a fantastic debut from a promising filmmaker.
This film is a reminder of what this country has taken from so many, and what it will take for us to reclaim what’s ours. Following an alliance of Michigan Indigenous tribes as they fight to repatriate the bones of their indigenous ancestors stolen and kept in private and state museums and archives, Aanikoobijigan shows how much American institutions have in common with grave robbers. What an enraging reminder of the generational violence of colonization. Colonizers will kill you and steal your bones as trophies, and their descendants will fight your descendants for their right to keep and study your remains. While there was a group of Black Indians present at repatriation ceremonies, my only criticism is their silence in the film. I would’ve been interested to hear from them directly on their joint struggle for repatriation and reparations as Black Indians—particularly considering how arduous Black recognition in Indigenous tribal communities has been for Black members. Nevertheless, this poignant film’s focus on the alliance of the Michigan tribes, is a brilliant reminder of how we win by banding together.
All About the Money
This roller-coaster of a documentary follows Fergie Cox Chambers, a Marxist-Leninist billionaire heir to the Cox family fortune—one of the richest families in America. On one hand, he’s dedicated to his communist principles, setting up and funding an all-expenses paid commune in Massachusetts, where people can live in homes he owns for free, be politically engaged and work the land together. He also co-founded the American branch of Palestine Action, the organization disrupting the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Palestine. On the other hand, he’s also a born-wealthy white male billionaire, so! The contradictions in his actions and treatment of others often moves between comical and concerning, underscoring the reality that a “good billionaire” doesn’t exist and will not save us—only the people banding together to build a society we all deserve can do that. But as a portrait of the distorting power of whiteness, maleness and extreme wealth? All About the Money is devastating in its clarity and one of my favorites of the festival.
Frank & Louis
The cruelty of the American prison system knows no bounds. Frank & Louis shows us a little-known truth about what happens to prisoners who get Alzheimer’s while incarcerated. Frank (Kingsley Ben-Adir) is serving a life sentence for murder and takes a job as a caregiver to dementia patients in an effort to gain his freedom at an upcoming parole hearing. Louis (an always-incredible Rob Morgan) is also a lifer who’s raised enough hell during his long stints in prison that even when the stress of survival triggers early-onset Alzheimer’s, he’s still not safe from his victims who see his vulnerability as an opportunity for revenge. Where’s the line between punishment and crimes against humanity when the people being punished can’t even remember what they’ve done? And who is healed when others are punished? Frank’s journey to empathy for Louis will hopefully inspire the same in the audience as we grapple with what our government does to incarcerated people in order for us at home to feel a false sense of “safety” and order.
TheyDream
The best films of Sundance were about memory and remembering, and TheyDream is no exception. This mixed-format documentary follows director William David Caballero as he grapples with unexpected loss and compounded grief through reenacting and animating scenes from his loved ones’ lives. After documenting 20 years of his Puerto Rican family’s lives, he stitches film, old tape recordings and voicemails of the departed together to bring peace, comfort, and understanding to those who have been lost and those who are left behind. My deepest held belief about the power of film is that it can bring healing. With this film, Caballero has done just that, not only for himself and his family, but for the viewers who need it.
Josephine
This is probably the most well-acted, well-shot film that I’m not sure should exist. Josephine (Mason Reeves) is a happy, 8-year-old kid who loves to play with her dad (Channing Tatum) in the park. TW:SA—One day, while hiding from her dad in the bushes, she witnesses a man brutally rape a young woman and it upends her whole world. We watch a child’s mental health totally unravel and her sense of safety evaporate. It’s devastating and Reeves plays the role incredibly well. And I want to know why we needed this movie. I can’t imagine what’s worse—that the film might be based on true events or born from the imagination of the writer-director. While I’m sure Reeves was not actually on set for the horrible rape scene, I’m still not sure what would justify putting a child actor through these devastating experiences for the sake of a movie—particularly the difficult mental health scenes. It made me consider where the line was in filmmaking with child actors; should all difficult material be off-limits? Or only the particularly heinous? I don’t have an answer. But my worry for the child actor consistently took me out of the film. Watching the young actress processing and reenacting what her character saw to a child psychologist was simply too devastating, as were her breakdowns. With love in my heart and peace to all involved, I’ll never watch it again.
I Want Your Sex
I know Olivia Wilde didn’t write or direct this film where she stars as a girlboss artist who has an unethical affair with her employee and causes a stir in the news that impacts her career, but, come on. A little on the nose, eh? Still, I Want Your Sex is a dark comedy that was funny, but I dare not call sexy, as the BDSM relationship between Wilde’s narcissistic artist Erika Tracy and her employee Elliott (Cooper Hoffman) is hardly consensual. Though Elliott is happy to have sex with his boss, Erika constantly undermines his choice by introducing elements that make him uncomfortable and reinforce their power dynamic. She laughs at Elliott’s need for a safe word; she emotionally and sexually manipulates him and his female roommate; and she films and shares their encounters without his consent. I’m pretty sure the crux of BDSM is consent, so, fair warning, the film is a lot of sexual abuse played for laughs with kitschy music and glossy cinematography reminiscent of a Dick Tracy comic book. In that light, it’s difficult to call the movie “fun,” but I did chuckle.
I hate it when movies don’t know how to end, and this movie had about three endings. But, people did laugh at the final finale, so, I’ll let them have it.
Extra Geography
I love a slightly sapphic high school buddy dramedy. In Extra Geography, we follow two best friends at a Catholic all-girls boarding school who have nothing but each other and lacrosse. When the girls make it their mission to fall in love with the first person they see—simply to say they’ve been in love—instead of competing together as they’ve always done, they wind up competing against each other in a game that jeopardizes their friendship and their future. The fragilities of girlhood are on full display in Molly Manners’ funny and heartbreaking feature film debut.
Soul Patrol
During the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, an all-Black special operations team was assembled. Dubbed the Soul Patrol by white soldiers, this team fought in the trenches for American interests while also suffering its racism. This documentary follows former member Ed Emanuel, who was excited to join up and see the world as a teenager, but quickly learned how devastating this war would be. Now in his old age, he’s reassembled the surviving members of the Soul Patrol to document this hidden history and try to get some joint healing after the decades-long toll of trauma they suffered during and after their tour.
At times, the former soldiers speak of their tour in Vietnam like something to be proud of. They speak of the Vietcong defending their own lands and people from U.S. invaders as enemies upon whom the soldiers needed to get revenge for their lost relatives and friends. While the men reference Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X’s protests against Black men enlisted and being drafted to invade Vietnam when the war for civil rights was going on at home, their criticisms of the invasion are dismissed by some of the surviving soldiers, as if it were the activists who did not understand what was at stake. Director J.M. Harper’s Soul Patrol is a complicated portrait of Black men who were exploited by their racist government and manipulated in their youth, and a detailed account of the fallout over their lifetimes and what mythology is necessary to cope.
Saccharine
Saccharine is the wildest film I saw at Sundance. This body horror film follows Hana, a medical student with body dysmorphia, who learns that eating the ashes of dead people can help her lose weight without trying. Unfortunately, cannibalism has physical and spiritual drawbacks, and Hana becomes haunted by a hungry ghost. The hungry ghost is a Chinese and Buddhist idea about animalistic desires and I wish the movie had explained that context explicitly; it would’ve added an interesting layer for those of us outside of that culture. Overall, I had a hard time knowing whether Hana was fatphobic or the movie itself was, during its deeply uncomfortable runtime.
The manifestation of the hungry ghost of a woman was a grotesque being who looked like Fester Adams—an intentionally disturbing specter. But the film takes time to show us the woman when she was alive, to remind us of her humanity and that she was loved. Hana also has a classmate/best friend who is happy with her weight and confident, supporting Hana throughout her journey but cautioning her against dangerous fatphobia and self-loathing. These at least signal that the filmmaker considered the optics and didn’t intend to make a fatphobic film, though I’m not sure if she was successful. While my initial reaction to the film’s ending was negative, I did think more about it long after I’d left, which, I guess, is something. The message that no quick fix to weight-loss will heal your soul of fatphobia and disordered eating (cough, ozempic, cough) certainly resonates.
Paid subscribers can watch the Once Upon a Time in Harlem Filmmaker Q&A below:
I am so excited about this second episode of Another Possible World: A Black Girl Watching Podcast! Abolitionist and award-winning filmmaker Richie Reseda has been instrumental in my development as an abolitionist and in using those principles to build a creative life with integrity at the center—even in a business as dirty as Hollywood.
Richie is the producer of the powerful Netflix documentary and visual album Songs from the Hole, which follows a Black man convicted of murder as a teenager who uses music to aid his healing while in prison. Songs from the Hole is up for an NAACP Image Award for Best Breakthrough Creative Film (directed by Contessa Gayles) and you can vote for it here right now and stream the film on Netflix. His first project with Gayles was while he was incarcerated at the infamous Soledad, California prison, starring in her CNN documentary about his work creating a program for incarcerated men to deconstruct patriarchy called “The Feminist on Cellblock Y.”
In this paid-subscriber exclusive podcast, Richie and I talk about how he built his worker-owned production company Question Culture using abolitionist principles, how he filmed two documentaries while incarcerated, how Beyoncé’s Lemonade inspired Songs from the Hole and how moving in integrity allows us to build another possible world through art.
Take a listen. And check out Question Culture’s Healing Plan for people who want to go deeper with the lessons from Songs from the Hole.
It’s Sundance week! As I head out today to snowy Park City, Utah for the Dance’s one last hurrah in its city of origin before moving to Colorado next year, I had to get this weekly watch off my chest. Honestly, after the feast that is Heated Rivalry, everything else tastes like ashes in my mouth, so keep that in mind as I review (and try not to mention how much better Heated Rivalry is than everything that’s out right now. Or maybe ever). I’ve also got a great paid subscriber exclusive for the second episode of BGW’s Another Possible World podcast coming (paid subscribers can watch the first episode here), and I hope to get that out this week, but if I get bogged down on the mountain, charge my limited capacity and not my heart, and know it’s coming next week, along with all my Sundance coverage. Let’s get into it!
Black Girl Watching is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
The People We Meet on Vacation
They tried so hard! Through the screen, I could feel the actors trying to make this “love” story about a “restless” woman travel writer who can’t commit and a sturdy Ohio boy (who only has a personality when he borrows hers) work. But, alas. Seriously, the boring boy, Alex, only breaks loose and “gets weird” on his annual summer trip with “best friend” Poppy, whose endearing quirks and spontaneous energy he adores—until, of course, he doesn’t. As soon as Alex wants to “settle down” immediately, Poppy’s quirks and spontaneity get reframed as Poppy being selfish, uncompromising and unserious. And she believes that about herself—that she “ruins” relationships with her “too much” personality. And sure! I found her personality grating, but girl, stand up! Don’t let some boring Linfield, Ohio man emotionally manipulate you into a commitment! Though, I admit, I laughed out loud twice, this tired rom-com represents the worst of the genre that reinforces for women that their lives have no meaning or depth unless they commit to a man. Everything else is a shallow and empty wandering through life, but not living. Everything else is vacation! But there’s no place like (a boring man in my) home.
Spoiler alert Poppy fully quits a job she begged to get—a travel writer who explores the world on the company’s dime and writes about it—on the off-chance that this boring bozo might want to stay in Ohio, a place that traumatized her in childhood. I literally yelled WHAT THE F%#@! at my television screen as Poppy quite literally chases her man down the streets of Linfield to get him back. Never mind that she hates Ohio. Never mind that she hates running! Doing all the stuff you hate the most in order to win a relationship is the proof of love. Yes, ladies, give up your dream job and return to the site of your trauma, so he knows it’s real. We’ve seen this eye-roll-inducing story over and over and over in the romantic comedy genre, but the joke’s on me for thinking we would never see such blatant patriarchal propaganda or such lukewarm chemistry in the year of our Lord Heated Rivalry 2026. Return to sender. Let’s never meet again.
People We Meet on Vacation is streaming on Netflix. But I’d skip it and reheat the Rivalry instead.
Industry
My Harpsichord is back, baby! Harper Stern (My’ha’la) the chaos demon of stock trading has returned for season 4 of the hit HBO show. Reuniting with her former mentor Eric (Kenneth Leung), Harper is set to raise hell on these white people in ways I will never understand because genuinely, after four seasons, I have no idea what investment banking or shorting stocks is all about, but I feel the tension and the drama, and truly that is enough. I’d be remiss, though, if I didn’t mention how empty, gratuitous and leering the sex scenes seem now compared to—I’m just gonna say it—Heated Rivalry. These scenes aren’t about pleasure, they’re about power, and perhaps that reveals something about Harper’s mental state—we know she’s a (metaphorical) killer. But it’s probably never going to sit right with me again, knowing how sex scenes can be done, and seeing the male show creators and directors Mickey Down and Konrad Kay direct their cameras over women’s bodies the way men typically do. Instant ick.
And while the premiere episode gets us off to the races by mixing in some new characters with our familiar team of traders, it’s expecting a lot of us to care about these newcomers in such a short time period. Kal Penn has a guest starring role and meets an end that should feel more gut wrenching than it actually is, for his fate to be the crescendo of the premiere. And episode two proves that Kit Harrington’s Henry from season 3 will continue to play a major role in this season as the billionaire royal-adjacent nepo failson that’s married to original team member Yasmin (Marisa Abela) and I promise you, I could not care less about his sob story childhood (though, trigger warning for suicide and suicide ideation).
I’ve always said that Industry is Gen-Z Succession, but Henry’s Kendall Roy-adjacent character is not the anchor of the show in the same way Kendall and his siblings were. Harper Stern is our center. And, like Succession, we’re supposed to know better than to sympathize with any of them, but to sit back and enjoy the train-wreck that is obscene wealth corrupt the human soul. Maybe giggle at their inevitable comeuppance. But Industry seems hell-bent on having us pity Henry, and, no, absolutely not. But, perhaps, as a demonstration of what depression looks and feels like, the episode is worthwhile. I’m down to see where the rest of the season goes. Just don’t make season 3’s mistake of shelving Harper! Keep her and Eric at the center, and I’ll enjoy the ride.
His & Hers
Deep Ancestral Sigh.Where do I begin with this Netflix miniseries of trauma and murder? Starring Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal as the titular his and hers, this thriller centers on a news anchor and a police detective who’ve been separated for a year in the wake of their infant daughter’s death. Now back at home in Georgia after disappearing without a trace, Thompson’s Anna uses the gruesome murder of her former high school classmate as a chance to get her job back at the news station. But when its revealed that her husband, Jack, had been with the victim the night of her murder, both spouses wind up being suspects as bodies start to pile up. Every episode presents a new twist and points to a new suspect, but the finale reveal of the killer(s) is anything but satisfying.
*Spoiler alert for the killers*
And, fine! I did wish I was watching Heated Rivalry the whole way through, I admit it! The opening scene of this show features a naked, twitching dead woman’s body! In fact, the number of times this naked woman’s mutilated body is shown in episode one is so gratuitous as to be enraging. And that’s just the first episode. Several women’s naked bodies are mutilated and the ending seems to suggest that the audience should be grateful for the graphic ways we witness these women’s bodies and/or deaths. In a move reminiscent of one of the worst, fake-feminist films I’ve ever seen, Promising Young Woman, the bad-guy men rapists somehow get off scot-free while the bystander or complicit women all meet their violent dooms. Cause this is feminism.
But worst of all, a story about white motherhood carelessly becomes a story about Black motherhood in this book-to-screen adaptation. Thompson, who also serves as the show’s producer, inherently shifts the conversation by being a biracial Black woman in the lead role. While the actress who plays her mother could’ve been white like the book character, the mother in the series is Black, but not present enough to be a full character to preserve the twist. The final twist relies on an expository confession, which works fine in a Knives Out mystery because the whodunit is always less important than the why. But His & Hers relies on solving the mystery of who without letting the killer cook. There’s no richness, no layers to the reveal, because the audience is just supposed to accept that experiencing racism or fatphobia, violence and grief is enough to mold a person into a murderer or, a prolific, grisly, serial killer of women only.
To be clear, I’m not against the final killer reveal—though, again, I think it’s just wack storytelling to focus on murdering women and not the actual male rapists who did all the raping. I just think you can’t take a white character and cast a Black actress in the role and leave it at that. Black motherhood onscreen doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but in a long, ugly, bastardized Hollywood context of stereotypes that pervert Black mothers out of being sources of life into vessels of death and destruction. Considering this context, more care should’ve been put into crafting this character and making them human so that when the reveal hits, we have reason to feel this path for the character was inevitable. In an award season that is hell-bent on awarding Teyana Taylor’s perversion of Black motherhood in One Battle After Another, it’s no wonder that His & Hers is #1 on Netflix. These stories told in these shallow ways will always find their audience.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
In a partnership with Sony Pictures last week, I wrote about this excellent film and its underrated Black woman director Nia DaCosta. Because I worked with the marketing team, I’ll refrain from an official review, but I had so much fun watching 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple in theaters and you can read my piece on Nia, ICYMYI last week, here, and watch the short video I made on IG:
Brooke Obie on Instagram: “I had to break out my #Candyman tee …
And we’re ending where we began! I make no apologies. It’s so rare to be impacted by a show as much as I have been by Heated Rivalry, and I tried to explain why in my piece. I just want to embrace the way it’s taken over my life and all my conversations. I’ll be talking and thinking about the show for a long time. If you’ve been lucky enough to hear my in-person ravings about the show, you’re welcome!! I’ve been so inspired by the filmmaking in the Heated Rivalry, that I even made an explainer video about an editing technique I saw them use in episode 3, one of my favorite techniques, the J-Cut. Check out my explainer on this technique and why it proves that showrunner/writer/director Jacob Tierney and team were locked tf in when they made this perfect show:
In 2026, Nia DaCosta will achieve a feat unheard of for Black women directors in Hollywood: premiering two feature films in less than a year. Fresh on the heels of the 2025 fall premiere of her award-winning period adaptation Hedda, DaCosta’s highly-anticipated addition to the 28 Days Later zombie franchise, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple will hit theaters on January 15. Poised to be the first cinematic event of the year, DaCosta’s film is projected to earn more than $20 million in its MLK Day opening weekend.
Black Girl Watching is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
A bastion of firsts, DaCosta holds the crown as the first Black woman director to premiere at #1 at the box office with her horror reboot Candyman (2021); the first Black woman director of an MCU film with The Marvels (2023); and, with the same film, she became the highest-grossing Black woman director in history. Now, taking the reins from director Danny Boyle, DaCosta’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, solidifies her as a bonafide visionary.
Shot on location in the U.K., The Bone Temple has been met with rapturous early screening reviews, premiering with a 97% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics praising the frightening, gory installment as the franchise’s most emotionally and physically brutal. Once again, DaCosta steps into a familiar franchise world and reinvents it, infusing it with her striking and distinct visual language.
Mirroring Britain’s isolationism in a covid-riddled, post-Brexit world, The Bone Temple continues the story of 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) who was saved in the last film from a pack of zombie-like humans infected with the rage virus by an even worse pack of humans: the Jimmys. Bone Temple picks up there, with Spike now fighting for his life and a spot with the Jimmys. Led by a terrifying and hilarious Jack O’Connell as Jimmy Crystal, the Jimmys are a sadistic, satanic cult that brings death and destruction to humans and infected alike.
DaCosta’s crescendo in a film full of inventive scenes comes at the end when three-time Oscar-nominated Ralph Fiennes’ Dr. Kelson performs the most electric, captivating dance for the Jimmys at the titular Bone Temple to Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast.” In this dance, DaCosta achieves one of her own, showing both the scope of this world and its minutiae with equal vigor and craft, making 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple a must-see on the biggest screen possible.
Brooke Obie on Instagram: “I had to break out my #Candyman tee …
Beyond being a reliable source of big-screen entertainment, DaCosta has also centered Black women’s survival in every film since her 2018 directorial debut crime thriller Little Woods. In DaCosta’s hands, the depth of Black women’s rage, love and humanity are safe and celebrated. Erin Kellyman’s stand-out performance in The Bone Temple is the latest example. Starring as Jimmy Ink, a badass killer in the Jimmys cult, Kellyman portrays a conflicted young woman with an extraordinary capacity for empathy, considering the ruthless ways she kills anything blocking her path. Doubting her leader and his beliefs, Ink leans into her own power and evolves her thinking to reckon with a new reality: there are no gods or devils; just human beings and the choices they make to create the world.
This message of the possibility of choice and hopefulness in a world of devastation couldn’t be more timely. Unlimited by genre, DaCosta’s films share this throughline, providing both entertainment and deft social commentary. At just 36-years old and five films in, DaCosta is beyond one to watch. An in-demand writer, director and producer, DaCosta is setting a new pace for what Black women filmmakers can achieve in this industry when their vision and genius get the support they deserve.
Let me start this first piece of the new year by reaffirming my belief in the power of cinema. By imagining other possible futures and turning them into art, we create space for their manifestation in reality. The hit Canadian TV series Heated Rivalry is already proving that excellent art can spark worlds to change. Created, written and directed by Jacob Tierney based on the Game Changers book series by Rachel Reid, this male-male love story of two rival professional hockey players, Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie)— one an autistic Canadian lover-boy with his heart on his sleeve and the other an emotionally unavailable bisexual Russian playboy with abandonment issues — has completely taken over the culture.
Black Girl Watching is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
And by “the culture,” I mean me. I’m obsessed with the show. I’ve reheated the rivalry at least 8 times already. It’s all I want to talk about. It’s the most perfect distraction during an unexpected strike of grief this new year and I keep going door to door like an evangelist, asking everyone I see if they have a few minutes to hear the good news about the Gay Hockey Show. And with good reason!
Full of smut and wholesomeness, Heated Rivalry will re-spark your flamed-out belief in romantic love and the possibility of meeting someone who can match your excellence (and your freak). Tierney’s incisive writing; the incredible cinematography; the dynamite performances of Williams, Storrie, and the whole cast; the editing; the addictive soundtrack; and two groundbreaking Happily-Ever-After endings for queer men make this one of the best seasons of television ever.
Though it centers on gay men’s relationships, with women very much in the periphery, much ado has been made of the large straight women audience, who, just like the women characters in the show, have been supporting it fiercely and driving this show to #1 around the world. Sure, we’re all absolutely feral for the two hot men with beautiful faces, great butts and steamy sex scenes. And yes, it’s about yearning, longing, desire, falling in love and much-delayed gratification. For me, it’s also nice to have a break from women’s bodies being gratuitously leered at and exploited the way misogynist filmmakers often do in steamy shows (see: Euphoria). On the contrary, Tierney’s lens shows Ilya and Shane’s bodies as desired, loved, reverent—almost worshipped—because we see them through the eye of the lover. (Sorry, Shane, I had to say it!)
We also see men being passionate and intentional, acting with that necessary bit of urgency about their love, rather than the nonchalance that plagues these stunted losers in real life. As opposed to common beliefs that women have too-high standards and want “perfection” from a potential partner, women’s love for Heated Rivalry shows that couldn’t be further from the truth. These characters are not perfect; they hurt each other, they miscommunicate, they are stubborn and oblivious to the needs of the other. But they’re also accountable for their own behaviors and apologize to repair harm. They address issues and change behavior for the better. What a concept!
But, a major draw for many is also seeing an emotionally unavailable man finally come around, open up and declare his love. To see Ilya’s incredible transformation from being emotionally closed off at their 2008 meet cute in episode one, to crying and baring his soul to Shane in the 2017 finale episode, it’s easy to get caught up in the rapture of love and hope and possibility. You’ll think of that ex…maybe I was too hasty! Let me just text that unavailable person and see if anything has changed…
And my love, I’m going to hold your hand when I say this: Heated Rivalry is a complete fantasy. It is Avoidant Man Propaganda. And in that regard, it is dangerous. Carrie Bradshaw didn’t suffer through more than a decade of ritual humiliation with Mr. Big over six seasons and two hideous movies for us to learn nothing from it! Emotionally unavailable men don’t become emotionally available in romantic relationships until they’re 60 years old with a heart condition and in need of a dutiful free nurse.
Don’t be this girl!
Stand up, girls (gender neutral). You don’t have nine years to waste! Don’t text that one. Leave ‘em where you left ‘em. (If you need more help, this incredible Thread breaks down the psychology of why people settle for less in love and how to stop!)
This game-changing show is calling us to something much deeper than rekindling an insecure anxious attachment to a dead end. The promise and hope that this show inspires shouldn’t be that someone else might change after all these years; Heated Rivalry is showing us how we could change ourselves—if we choose to.
Let the frenzy stir you to action!
(Paid subscribers and fellow HR obsessives can see my list of my favorite Heated Rivalry fan edits, video explainers, interviews and my HR Apple Music playlist at the end of the piece.)
Deconstructing Toxic Masculinity
Heated Rivalry may be better known for its sex and love stories, but the world of hockey couldn’t be a more brilliant setting to unfold multiple queer male romances.
The stakes are inherently extremely high for queer hockey captains Ilya and Shane (and the secondary couple, hockey captain Scott Hunter and smoothie barista Kip), as ice hockey is one of the most violent, toxic masculine, patriarchal sports in popular culture, with physical fighting listed as an “integral” part of the game. That aggression can also spill out of the rink, with National Hockey League players in real life being accused of domestic violence and sexual assault, and the NHL being the only professional sport of the top four n North America (NFL, NBA, MBL) with no standard domestic violence and sexual assault policy.
And despite the NHL’s efforts at “pinkwashing” (or using gay aesthetics to erase a history of homophobia, culturally and institutionally), the NHL is also the only sport of the top four with zero out gay players to this day. As Scott Hunter (François Arnaud) explains in his MVP speech for the fictional MLH in the finale episode, with millions on the line and a hypermasculine institution setting the tone, it is not safe to be openly gay in this sport.
Add to that real life culture fictional Ilya’s Russian homeland where anti-LGBTQ laws are rampant and even positive depictions of queer people—especially a show like Heated Rivalry— can lead to imprisonment or expulsion from the country. Unlike Shane, whose Canadian homeland has just the standard-grade homophobia where Shane could lose his job (considering, again that there are ZERO out players in the league), Ilya could lose his job and wind up a refugee if he were outed.
In that regard, being queer is inherently a challenge to the patriarchal structure that puts masculinity into a narrow box of aggression and domination. But on its own, queer representation is not enough. Look no further than the Log Cabin Republicans or Caitlin Jenner.
Showrunner Tierney, on the other hand, has done something crucial: he made a show that is both politically and culturally queer, in community with queer people. Harrison Browne—who made history by being the first transgender man to play professional hockey—has a guest starring role in episode 4 of Heated Rivalry as Ilya’s teammate. And trans actress Miss Niki Nikita appears briefly in episode 5 as Rose’s make-up artist.
Tierney has also taken the representation of queer love so much farther than we typically see on screen, by making sex scenes that aren’t gratuitous but reveal character, reveal story, reveal emotional growth. Take the (NSFW!) “frotting” scene in episode four, for example, an act that Shane does for himself and Ilya that is so intimate that Ilya calls him “Shane” for the first time, instead of Hollander. Shane reciprocates, saying “Ilya,” and it’s clear to both of them, by this sexual act, that they are more than a casual, years-long fling, but something deeper. Something terrifying. Which causes Shane to run away immediately afterwards.
But the tenderness, vulnerability and romance isn’t limited to the intimate spaces, like with Shane and Ilya. Tierney has also included Scott Hunter and Kip for the series’ most romantic grand gesture in episode 5, one of the greatest episodes of television ever made. Hunter calls his secret boyfriend of three years Kip, down to the ice to kiss on live international television as he celebrates his first Stanley Cup win. This inspires Ilya to believe in a future with Shane and accept Shane’s invitation to his cottage for the summer.
But Tierney doesn’t stop there. Knowing our level of anticipation to see Shane and Ilya at the cottage, Tierney edges us by opening the finale episode with Scott’s MVP acceptance speech instead. It’s a narrative beat that I found annoying at first because we literally just saw him declare his love publicly for Kip and we don’t need it again. Scott also gives two big speeches in the show, so my first instinct was that this one was overkill. But by the end, it’s clear: Scott is Heated Rivalry calling out the NHL. The institution that teases Pride nights and then cancels them when homophobic players protest; the league that pretends to care about queer fans only to let them down; and has an environment so hostile that—again, this is major—in 2025-2026, there are still no out gay players in the league.
Queerness and queer romance aren’t enough of a game-changer for Tierney. He’s using this show to make space for queer people and spark institutional change in real life. This is what the best cinema and TV can do and we can do it IRL too! Do some research. Ask yourself, what can I do to make queer people safer around me as an individual and within the institutions we share? And then do that!
Transforming Trauma into Love
Fans don’t call Ilya the King of Consent for nothing. Ilya and Shane’s first encounter aside — Ilya mistakes Shane’s erection in the shower for consent and an erection is not consent! — Ilya explicitly asks for permission to engage sexually with Shane at almost every turn. “Is this okay? Still okay?” He asks throughout. “What do you want to do? Would you like to [try this]? Did you like [doing that]?” King shit. Ilya’s paying attention to Shane’s body language when introducing the idea of anal sex for the first time and he sees that Shane is scared, even though Shane says he isn’t. Ilya immediately backs off and makes a future plan with Shane when he’ll be more ready. Even when he’s being a complete menace in the finale episode, teasing oral sex while Shane is on the phone with his best friend, Ilya makes sure to give Shane plenty of time and space to stop, and shows how sexy consent can be.
Considering Ilya’s history of being emotionally and physically abused by his police officer father and older brother, and living under oppression as a closeted bisexual in Russia, it’s not hard to believe that Ilya did not have an experience of being asked his consent often, if ever. Even the trauma of finding his mother dead after her suicide was not something he consented to. As a hockey player, as well, his job is to sell his body in service of a corporation and at the direction of a coach. It’s no wonder that Ilya’s frequent sexual encounters began as a rebellion and middle finger, not just to his father, but also hockey itself, represented by him having a forbidden fling with his coach’s son. Throughout all of his inability to consent in his life, Ilya has chosen to make consent front and center, transforming his trauma into the ultimate thoughtfulness and love for his partner, and himself. And we can too!
Flipping Toxic Tropes
One of the most devastating questions I’ve seen queer people ask before watching Heated Rivalry is, “Does one of them die at the end?” There’s good reason to fear that Ilya and Shane’s love story would somehow end in trauma. If there’s one thing Hollywood is committed to it’s the toxic Kill Your Gays trope. Even my favorite show of 2025, Andor, kills off its only brown lesbian badass. What this reinforces—not only for queer audiences, but everyone—is that tragedy is the assumed and normal end for queerness in real life. That is incredibly damaging to the psyche.
But this is not a Hollywood production. Heated Rivalry was made in Canada by small streamer Crave using public access funds. Most importantly, to ease any fears or nervous hearts: this is a true romance. Shane and Ilya are getting their Happily Ever After (or, more likely, Happy For Now) ending, as is characteristic of the genre, not only for those two, affectionately dubbed Hollanov, but also for Scott and Kip. This is still, sadly, groundbreaking, considering the few representations of happy queer life available on screen. With the success of this show, let’s hope that Thrill Your Gays is the new wave.
Another tired Hollywood trope Heated Rivalry attempts to subvert is the GBF, or, Gay Best Friend. This sassy friend is there for the hetero main character’s emotional support and growth, while having no life or interests of their own. Because gay characters are the center of the universe, with hetero best friends in the typical supporting roles, Heated Rivalry almost achieves it. Unfortunately, many of the best friend supporting characters are women of color. If I have any criticism of the show, this would be my biggest. Because the Black/Brown Best Friend is also a tired trope, and there’s no subversion by simply replacing a GBF with a BBF.
Svetlana (Ksenia Kharlamova), who is both Ilya’s Black Russian lover and childhood friend takes on the role of his emotional support system. She conveniently lives in both Moscow when he’s there in the summers and in Boston where they both work. She’s also an American citizen whom Ilya considers marrying for citizenship. She swoops in to save him from his father’s criticism at the Olympics gala and again from his brother’s wrath at their father’s funeral. She helps coax him into accepting his feelings for “Jane,” whom she knows is a man by episode 4 and probably even knows is Shane. What do we know about her, besides her father was a famous Russian goalie and she sells luxury cars? She loves Ilya, but besides being good at sex and willing to beat his brother’s ass for insulting her, what does he do for her?
And then there’s Elena. This queen, played by Nadine Bhabha, is Kip’s best friend who bursts Skip’s bubble by telling Scott that keeping Kip in the closet is killing him. She pushes them both to look at the reality of their situation, and reminds them both of the love—and sunshine!—that they deserve. And that’s why she exists. And finally, there’s Maria, Kip’s co-worker at the smoothie shop. A fan favorite, she exists affirm to Kip that Scott is flirting with him and say “girl!” in ever-increasing tones.
Tierney deserves credit for fleshing Svetlana out more than the books. And still the BBF trope is alive and well. It’s tricky because, while making these women white would successfully flip the GBF trope on its head as intended, the show would be a lot less diverse. And I love these characters and the actresses who play them. Hopefully we’ll get more depth for them in season two.
But what’s beautiful about these women characters, and Shane’s A-list celebrity lover-turned BFF Rose Landry (Sophie Nélisse), is the space they give the characters to accept themselves fully. When sex goes disastrously with Shane, Rose isn’t cruel or dishonest about it. She doesn’t fake it or pretend like it’s working when it’s not. Fully secure in herself and what she deserves, she doesn’t take Shane’s disinterest in her personally and actually launches a conversation that helps Shane come out as gay for the first time. It’s one of the most beautiful scenes, acted luminously by Nélisse and Williams, in the epic 5th episode, and is a blueprint on how securely attached people can be a loving, safe landing space for people to live in their truth and for real friendships to blossom.
My Threads feed and group chats have shown me countless people sharing that they’ve been inspired to seek hormone replacement therapy, accept their sexuality and/or gender orientation, or get tested for autism because of Heated Rivalry. That alone is an achievement that Tierney and the entire cast and crew can be proud of. And that means even more opportunities to build community with people who need support and love. When the opportunity arises to be someone’s Rose Landry—take it!
Dismantling the Patriarchy
Systemic patriarchy perpetuated by literal fathers is at the root of both homophobia and liberation experienced by the characters. Ilya’s stoic, cruel Russian father can only demean Ilya when he speaks to him. On the day Ilya is the #1 draft pick for the MLH, his father tells his new coach that Ilya is “lazy” and “lacks discipline.” Nothing is ever enough. (Bowlsha, Ilya, bowlsha, bowlsha, bowlsha, bowlsha!).
“I wish he could know me,” Ilya says of his father, but his father never created the space to know Ilya and never will. Ilya’s father won’t know that Ilya is bisexual; nor that Ilya is sweet and thoughtful and incredibly funny; a great leader, a great teammate, a great son—because Ilya’s father didn’t even know himself.
This is what patriarchy does. It teaches men to cut off emotions that aren’t aggression, making them distrust their own emotions, deny themselves, and be strangers to themselves.
This adds another layer to why showrunner Tierney was so genius to include Scott Hunter and Kip from Game Changer, the first book in the series, to the show. Like Hollanov, Hunter is closeted due to the aggressively toxic culture of their sport and the world writ large. Kip, however, is proudly open and secure in his sexuality with his loving family and friends as a generic, art-loving smoothie maker at Hunter’s favorite juice shop. And a major part of why Kip is so comfortable with himself is because of his loving father. Throughout episode 3, which is Scott and Kip’s standalone episode, Kip’s father tells him he loves him and even gets on him for not saying it back. When Kip lies to his father for two months when he first starts dating Scott, it’s not because he’s afraid of his father, it’s because he’s trying to be fiercely loyal to Scott’s need to remain closeted. But when being put into the closet by Scott is too much for Kip, Kip finally goes home to his father.
Noticing Kip’s distress, his father immediately opens up his arms to his son and lets him sob. He rubs his son’s back and comforts him and tells him it’s okay to cry—validation of emotions; physical touch; and audible crying, is a veritable checklist of what not to do under the rules of patriarchy. And yet here Kip and his father are, flourishing, even through a heart-break. By throwing out these patriarchal ideas of manhood, Kip’s father gets a chance to know his son and become even closer to him, sitting right next to him on the day Scott finally declares his love for Kip in public. Ilya’s father could never.
There was a good chance that Ilya would never know himself or know love either. Ilya’s father was probably once a boy full of as much love as Ilya is, and it was likely abused out of him too and he succumbed to it. In episode 5, though, Ilya takes that first step to open up to Shane about his traumatic past. Shane gives him space to speak freely in Russian simply for Ilya’s release, since Shane can’t understand, and it’s such a loving gesture that gives Ilya the safety to share his heart (and give us this pitch perfect monologue in Russian by Storrie who is not at all Russian but a West Texas boy. Storrie, the actor you are!). Later, after the All-Star game, Ilya chose vulnerability again, to be seen and to be loved by someone safe. This moment, where he cries and lets Shane hold him is immediately preceded by Shane coming out as strictly gay to Ilya. Shane’s vulnerability opens up the doorway for them to have this moment where they can no longer brush off their years-long sexual encounters as merely physical, emotionless flings (and therefore still in line with a toxic concept of masculinity). They’re in it, now: real, true love. And that love begets bravery.
Shane can be brave and come out to his parents because Ilya was brave enough to accept his invitation to the cottage. And Ilya’s brave because Scott was brave, and Scott was brave because Kip was brave and Kip was brave because Kip’s father was brave first, raising a healthy and loved gay kid. This is what liberty in community looks like. And they can only access it when they liberate themselves from toxic masculinity.
I look at Ilya and Shane’s actors, Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, and how playful and loving they are with each other on the press tour for this show. Though they have not publicly shared their sexuality, there is already an (ignorant) assumption as to their identities because of the characters they play on the show. This assumption of “not straight” actually liberates them to be who they are and not hold back their apparent love for each other in public. They have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, as fans of the show fall more infatuated with them with every interview.
I think about the outcry from homophobes when Michael B. Jordan cradled the head of Ryan Coogler in a photoshoot for Vanity Fair. How frail cultural masculinity is when you can’t embrace your brother without backlash. To be so deprived of physically touching your male friends that you have to invent violent sports like football and hockey just for it to be excusable to have a man hold you for awhile. To invent a whole competition to win just to make it finally acceptable to kiss another man in public or slap each other’s asses. To think: men could’ve just been cuddling and holding each other and slapping ass with their men friends platonically all along, just because they love each other. This is what patriarchy stole from you!
We know too well the violence patriarchy enacts upon women and other non-men. But patriarchy kills men too and it starts in the soul.
Ilya could’ve had a soul-death and become the same empty, angry vessel his father was, until he forgot his own self and died, disconnected, without knowing and without being known. Instead, he was brave. He chose love. And we can too.
Healed Parenting
And that brings us to “The Cottage!”
I’ll just say it: the Heated Rivalry finale episode “The Cottage” should be required viewing for all parents, hopeful parents, and anyone with children in their lives whom they love. In the finale, we see Shane’s deep secrets—being gay and being in love with Ilya—accidentally revealed when Shane’s father David makes an unexpected trip to Shane’s cottage to recover a lost phone charger. (Dude, just buy a new one!) Panicked by the revelation and his own invasion of Shane’s privacy, David leaves without a word.
When Shane and Ilya come to David and Shane’s mom Yuna’s home to explain, David immediately apologizes for the intrusion (and the implied outing of his sexuality). Ilya, a child of abuse, is bracing for the worst. But David and Yuna, even in their confusion and shock, are warm. David pours Ilya a shot of Russian vodka even as he asks Shane if there weren’t any nice men in Montreal instead of dating his arch-rival. David notices Ilya chowing down on spaghetti and passes him the pot for a refill and hands him the parmesan, immediately accepting him as a son. Shane is clearly a well-loved son. And still, he didn’t feel comfortable telling them the truth about his sexuality sooner.
Overwhelmed and regretful, Yuna goes outside to think and Shane mistakes that for disappointment. He follows her and immediately apologizes to her for disappointing her. He’s always tried to be the perfect son and he tried to not be gay but couldn’t help it. She shuts him down and tells him he has nothing to apologize for, but it’s she who must apologize for not making him feel safe enough to tell her the truth.
THIS is the energy parents need to bring when a child of any age tells you their truth in a way that feels belated. The problem isn’t that they waited so long to say anything. The problem is the environment you created not feeling safe. Yuna gives her full and unconditional apology and asks for Shane’s forgiveness. He forgives her, and something deep-rooted is heals. Now, from this place of truth, Yuna can know her son fully, and gets a bonus son in Ilya that (spoiler alert for season two!) she calls her “favorite son.” (For two longtime rivals, it’s the sweetest, cutest scene when Shane melts at the realization that Ilya gets to have a mother again!)
The Trevor Project reported in 2024 that anti-trans laws in America have increased youth suicide attempts by 72%. These are our children. ALL OF OUR CHILDREN! And they deserve to live. Be the kind of parents—whether biological or as a community member—that makes environments safe for these children to live.
Paid subscribers and fellow HR obsessives can see my list of my favorite Heated Rivalry fan edits, video explainers, interviews and my HR Apple Music playlist below:
James Cameron would like us all to know that no generative A.I. was used in the making of the third Avatar flick, Avatar: Fire & Ash. A featurette with his special message to the audience played before a screening at the Disney lot that I took my parents to over Thanksgiving. So, don’t worry: the appropriation of African and other Indigenous people, as well as their aesthetics and culture, was all done by real humans, not a bunch of environment-destroying, plagiarizing robots. Phew!
Black Girl Watching is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
In a world where studios are partnering with A.I. start-ups at the expense of people’s jobs and copyrights to their creative works, this distinction matters. Yet the spiritual difference is slight and par for the course in Cameron’s Avatar franchise. It has always been a colonizer tale where the benevolent white saviors think they’re actually the good guys and not exactly like all the other colonizers. It’s right there in the title. This franchise is about white people cosplaying in an Indigenous body, both on screen and behind the camera. From its very first film—a blatant rip off of the animated classic Fern Gully where a white male logger falls in love with an Indigenous fairy and learns why killing the environment is bad—Cameron puts a disabled white male U.S. marine in a blue alien avatar body and turns him into a hero of Indigenous people.
A World of White Saviors
The white savior in question is named Jake Sully, played by Australian actor Sam Worthington whose commitment to not even trying an American accent is hilarious, considering the whole point of these movies is ripping off other people’s cultures. A former U.S. marine who became disabled while minding Venezuelan people’s business in Venezuela (times never change), Sully is too broke to afford the spinal surgery that will make him walk again. But he is a genetic match for the lab-grown avatar of his dead scientist twin brother (who was killed in a robbery! Irony!) and is thus valuable to the American corporation’s mission to colonize the moon Pandora and control its Indigenous population and resources. And if Sully is successful, he will get his surgery.
The Na’vi are a tall, blue feline species indigenous to Pandora. These African-coded aliens rock cornrows, beads, locs and even boho passion twists depending on the region and tribe. They are fierce warriors who have been fighting back to protect their land and their people against the invaders they call the sky people, which is genuinely too kind of a term for the genocidal freaks who have come to destroy their planet. Cameron swears he got the idea of blue humanoid aliens in a dream that he had. We don’t believe you. But with how much Avatar rips off actual African people and white imperialist history around the world, it seems more likely that Cameron just tapped into his ancestral memories.
King Nasir Media on Instagram: “Tall, toned, and touched by the…
The Na’vi can recognize a sky person in an avatar based on their five-fingered hands—as compared to the Na’vi’s four fingers. But the saving grace for the Na’vi is that human invaders can’t breathe the air on Pandora without a mask or without being in their avatars, which prevents the invaders from taking over Pandora in larger numbers. This built-in defense mechanism, however, becomes jeopardized in Fire & Ash due to the Na’vi’s consistently ignorant choices to welcome colonizers into their communities with open arms.
Led by U.S. marine Col. Miles Quaritch, the invaders rob Pandora of its resources—unobtanium in the first film; amrita, which stops human aging, in the second and third films; and the whole planet for earthlings to live on by the end of the trilogy. Sully is Cameron’s self-insert who lives up to the key tenant of being a white savior: he’s not like the other guys! Sure, he willingly joined the Let’s Colonize Pandora mission alongside other mercenaries like Michelle Rodriguez’s character, and the group of sociopathic scientists who use avatar bodies to study the Na’vi in order to feed information back to the Let’s Colonize Pandora mission, but they feel bad about it, and that’s what counts!
“I didn’t sign up for this,” Rodriguez’s character says in the first film as she flies her armed military helicopter away from the Armed Military Helicopters Genocide the Na’vi portion of the mission. Babe, yes, you literally signed up for this. Yet in each film, there’s always a group of “good white people,” scientists or mercenaries, who decide to work together against the American corporation that they voluntarily traveled years away from Earth to join. This about-face happens after, of course, helping the mercenaries get all the information that they needed to attack the Na’vi in the first place.
The Demonizing of Resistance
Still, the defectors are seen as brave and good, and the Na’vi are so grateful that they let Sully and the other white defectors into their most sacred traditions, like blessing Sigourney Weaver’s scientist character with access to their sacred tree, because Sully asked them to and they believe Sully was chosen by their god Ewa to lead them as Toruk Makto, an honorific for only the fiercest chosen warriors. This is Cameron’s most insidious act: turning the Indigenous god against them to anoint their oppressor.
At every turn, when the Na’vi would defend themselves against the death and destruction white people bring, “Ewa” sends them little signs saying “don’t kill these white people.” Ewa intervenes twice in the first film for Sully and it’s boring and predictable. Every colonial story features an Indigenous god choosing the white man that’s colonizing them to lead them. And lead them, Sully does, with his mercenary-issued machine gun—even though it’s against the customs of the Na’vi to use the metal weapons of the sky people.
Though Sully has married the chief’s daughter Neytiri (played by Zoe Saldaña), the spiritual leader of the Na’vi tribe he infiltrated in the first film, he is, as he said in that film, still a marine. “You may be out, but you never lose the attitude,” he said and continues to prove. The blue alien body that the Na’vi infused his brain into in a ceremony solidifying him as “one of them,” does not change that. He thinks like a white colonialist trained by the U.S. military, and that’s how he raises the three half-avatar, half-Na’vi children he has with Neytiri.
The child actors who play Sully and Neytiri’s children are also white—despite their characters’ African-coded locs, cornrows and beaded braid hairstyles. Their adopted virgin-birth-born daughter Kiri, the product of Sigourney Weaver’s comatose avatar from the first movie and Ewa’s “blessing,” is also played by 76-year-old Weaver who tries very hard to sound like a teenager. The last kid is Spider, the fully white human son of Quaritch, who paints himself blue. If it’s not appropriation at every level, James Cameron doesn’t want it!
“Sullys stick together” is the family motto with which Sully indoctrinates the children, because, at the end of the day, the white nuclear family is what Sully knows. Despite the fact that this is against everything Neytiri has been raised to believe in her Indigenous community where even trees and roots and rocks are family, she goes along with it, taking their nuclear family on the run from Sully’s comrades-turned-enemies. Because of Sully, all the Na’vi are consistently in danger.
Like a scorned lover, Quaritch chases Sully across all three movies for daring to betray him and join up with the Na’vi. No matter that the real Quaritch is dead, killed by Neytiri in the first movie. His memories before his death were uploaded into an avatar. The villain is literally a sentient ChatBot. Why should we take this seriously? They weren’t even friends, there is no justification for Quaritch to be this pressed except for “the title of this movie is Avatar” so the dude with the avatar has to be the center.
But all of the white characters have an inexplicable sense of importance in this narrative. Sully’s youngest half-avatar, half-Na’vi son Lo’ak, the black sheep compared to the oldest boy, is so bonded with Quaritch’s white son Spider who has been raised among the Na’vi, that Lo’ak risks his older brother’s life to save Spider. Predictably, the white boy is saved and the oldest son dies in his place.
“A son for a son,” Sully says in an outrageous scene as he embraces Quaritch’s son and hovers over the lifeless body of his own. Mind you, for the entire second movie, Spider has helped Quaritch learn Na’vi ways, speak Na’vi language and even translates for him as he threatens the Na’vi while looking for Sully. The Na’vi are consistently expendable in the place of the white heroes, whether Sully or Spider or, worst of all, even the villain himself.
When Quaritch was near death at the end of the second film, who stepped in to save him? Spider. He knew the monster that Quaritch was. He knew the danger that he posed to the Na’vi. How many Na’vi have been killed over three movies because of Quaritch and Spider? Immeasurable. Supposedly, the Na’vi are Spider’s “family,” but Quaritch is his father. That nuclear family thinking will always matter most. It’s insanity for Sully to embrace this walking threat to the Na’vi as his own family until you remember that embracing white threats to Indigenous life is what these movies are all about. Also, obviously, Sully is a white man inside of a blue body. Just like Spider, when it comes down to it, white folks “stick together” too.
By the third film, Neytiri is the only one bitter about this. She blames Spider for her son’s death instead of blaming herself for falling in love with the sky person who betrayed her people, like that Disneyfied caricature of Pocahontas. When she pronounces her hatred for Spider and all sky people, Sully tries to chastise for it. “Do you hate me and your children too?” He scolds her and the answer should probably be yes. He is literally the reason for all of her people’s suffering. What he didn’t do directly, he helped the other sky people do by feeding them information, by joining their mission to Pandora in the first place. They have all more than earned her rage.
But Neytiri’s chasting isn’t restricted to the events of the film. Recently, Zoe Saldaña has come under fire during her press run for the movie for calling Neytiri a “racist,” for hating her literal oppressors. Yes, the Zoe Saldaña whose blackface/prosthetic nose performance of Nina Simone in a biopic is a literal hate crime, thinks hating the colonizers who murdered your father, your people and destroyed your forests is racism. The Zoe Saldaña who was dragged to hell by the Nina Simone estate (and everyone else who’s Black American) for this obscene disgrace of a performance and stood on it anyway, only to apologize for it years later during the racial reckoning of 2020 when she first learned that colorism is bad, calls the character she plays—and not the franchise she plays in—racist. Girl.
Maybe…hush.
Anyway, Neytiri is outnumbered; her son Lo’ak, who jeopardized his brother’s life to save Spider isn’t going to start regretting that choice now. And Neytiri’s adopted daughter Kiri is born of a sky person’s avatar and is a total op too, rejoicing over Spider’s rescue more than she mourned her brother’s death at the end of the second film. When Spider’s gas mask breaks in the third film, leaving him in distress and on the brink of death, Kiri uses her powers from Ewa (why did Ewa grant this child of a white woman’s dead avatar magical powers?!) to make it so that Spider is reborn in symbiosis with Pandora’s ecosystem. Now he’s a sky person who can breathe the air. Never mind that if the colonizers get ahold of Spider and recreate his restructured DNA to make it possible for all sky people to breathe Pandora’s air, the Na’vi will be overrun, outnumbered and destroyed for good. Kiri’s in love with Spider, and that matters more. Are you seeing the pattern? When it comes to Indigenous struggle for liberation, romantic love can be used as a weapon to undermine it.
A Different Choice
In yet another example of how Fire & Ash regurgitates every problem of the original film and amplifies it, Spider and Kiri kiss. But the actor who plays Spider is an actual child, and Kiri, you’ll remember, is played by 76-year-old Sigourney Weaver. To avoid an “age-gap kiss,” to put it mildly, Weaver kisses some stand-in when her character is supposed to be kissing Spider, and the child actor kisses someone else age-appropriate, according to Weaver, and they fixed the two characters kissing in post. But why are we here at all? Why hire a 76-year-old woman to voice a teenager, when you could just, you know, hire a teenager? Why hire white people to play African-coded characters and then make them do a funny little accent (Kate Winslet, when you did that stereotypical ululation when your character went into battle, were you not embarrassed?). Why, why, why?
By the events of Fire & Ash,the foolishness of the franchise comes to a head. Seemingly jealous of Sully and the family he’s built among the Na’vi with Quaritch’s own son, Avatar Quaritch finds himself a Na’vi woman and a tribe of his own. Another white woman in Indigenous cosplay, Charlie Chaplin’s granddaughter Oona Chaplin plays an ashy Na’vi and pyromaniac named Varang (something I discovered only upon Googling just now, even though I suffered through this 3.5 hour tedium twice). A mass-murderer of other Na’vi tribes, Varang and her tribe kill for no stated purpose beyond the thrill of the game. She teams up with Quaritch because they match each other’s freak and she’s impressed by his machine guns that make fire. Besides the fact that she hates Ewa for letting her village burn up in a fire as a kid—Ewa really does seem to be on the side of the oppressor, so, fair—there’s absolutely no good reason beyond Quaritch getting her machine guns that she would team up with him or that she was hunting random Na’vi for sport in the first place.
Cameron doesn’t flesh out her character or the tribe that follows her beyond what the plot needs because he is not interested in the Na’vi. He’s interested in his own avatar. Like Paul Thomas Anderson’s exploration of his anti-Black and misogynistic fetishes of Black women in One Battle After Another through the self-inserted characters of the hero Bob and villain Lockjaw, Cameron has also introduced Quaritch as the freaky other side of his hero Sully in Fire & Ash. When Quaritch mates with Varang and later confronts Sully with Varang’s tribe as back up, you can practically hear him paraphrasing One Battle’s Lockjaw: Oh you like blue girls? I LOVEblue girls!
One of these things is just like the other…
The greatest irony of making Quaritch someone who also seeks community among the Na’vi, is that it merely emphasizes how much Quaritch and Sully (and James Cameron) are the same. They want the culture, the connection, the community that Indigenous people are known to create, but they don’t want to give up the power of their systemic whiteness in order to receive it. Sully has buried his white disabled body in the earth and fully synced with his blue avatar body, but he does not let go of his militaristic mind, the hypermasculine ideals that keep his sons from being close to him, and his paternalistic desire to be the (humble) leader.
Though he chastises Quaritch about not accepting a new way of being, Sully also can’t help but maintain the white supremacist, patriarchal ways of his own indoctrination which are in direct conflict with the matriarchal society of the Na’vi. He’s the liberal to Quaritch’s MAGA, but at their root they are the same. Without surrendering to matriarchy, they will always be destructive to the cultures and the people they claim to admire or even love.
When Quaritch brings his new love interest and her tribe back to the corporate base, the general of the mercenary military mocks them. It’s clear: they can be used, but they will never be accepted by the colonizers. That doesn’t stop either of them from fighting on the colonizers’ team. This could have been a fascinating plot line, exploring tokenism and the ways that white supremacy demands people of color to contort themselves for a crumb of belonging. But that’s not what we’re here to do, and Cameron is the exact wrong messenger for that story anyway—though clearly that has never stopped him before.
But it’s through Spider in Fire & Ash that Cameron makes his goal of these films most clear: receive access to these communities that he so desires; benefit from them; give back far less than you receive; and remain fundamentally unchanged.
The undercarriage of Spider’s nasty-work “dreadlock” wig now contains the same connector to Ewa that the Na’vi were born with. This means he can also access the spirit realm where all the ancestors of the Na’vi rest. And so, in the final scene, he does. Kiri’s mother, also played by Weaver, is there, raising the white population in the spirit world to two. And all the ancestor Na’vi, including those who died in his place, reach their hands out to anoint Spider as a member of their tribe, mirroring the scene from Sinners of vampire Remmick, encircled by the undead Black musicians whose souls he stole, soaking up their magic, soaking up their power, bringing them eternal death in return. Despite the damage that Spider has done and could do to the future of the planet, he wants what he wants: access to the club. And the stereotypical, good-natured, magical Indigenous folks exist to grant him his wish. This is the culmination of a colonizer’s wet dream. Let Kiri tell it, Ewa has willed it.
Totally okay that we’re dead and you’re still alive! You’re all that matters, you aptly-named pest!
Cameron has undeniably contributed technological advancements to the craft of filmmaking through this franchise. But craft always begins with story. He could have made a Na’vi franchise, focused on Indigenous resistance to American imperialism. He could have hired marginalized co-writers instead, if he was so pressed to write it, and cast actual marginalized people to play all of the Na’vi. He could have centered their stories and made them their own saviors. If he wanted so badly to center himself, he could have based the Na’vi on his own Scottish ancestors and their struggle against English invasion and the white supremacy that has choked out European ethnic identities and cultures to solidify a homogenous power over people of color.
But it’s way more comfortable to maintain the status quo and be the center of Indigenous struggle, instead, I guess. As a result, his franchise simply perpetuates the colonialism, destruction, and counter-revolution that he pretends to critique. And that makes Cameron his franchise’s own worst enemy and its true villain.
Sure, he’s made $6 billion dollars and counting from this project that’s taken him 20 years to produce, but the only conversation around this best-selling movie series of all time is about Saldaña being a clueless shill for white supremacy again. The 3-D experience may keep theaters going another month in the Hollywood hellscape that studio executives and tech overlords have wrought, but it’s like a trip through a fun house mirror. You go in, you see your warped reflection, you leave, and you never think of it again.
Since 2009, Avatar’s lack of quotable lines and cultural impact have dogged the franchise. It doesn’t move the girls, it doesn’t move the gays, and it doesn’t move the Black people who sit at those intersections and make the Culture that’s being appropriated in the first place.
Because just like the Na’vi, the Culture can spot a lifeless, soulless, empty-suited, five-fingered fake from a mile away.
I’ll admit, I started off 2025 not that excited about the movies. There were some TV shows I was really looking forward to, but outside of Wicked: For Good (which turned out to be a real stinker), I was skeptical about what the year would bring. I never thought I’d wind up seeing Sinners 15 times in a theater, or that I’d launch Black Girl Watching live events based on dissecting and recreating its themes; that I’d brunch with the filmmakers and tell them all how much life this movie gave me, or write the script for the cast to present the Director Award to Ryan Coogler at the Black Critics Choice Awards! Life comes at you fast. And the biggest lesson of all: never underestimate the power of cinema to shock, surprise and restore life. Though nothing came close to Sinners for me this year, here are my picks for the best 15 movies of 2025 alongside my favorite critiques.
Black Girl Watching is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Straight out the gate, January brought us a Black girl buddy comedy unlike anything on screen since B.A.P.S.during the golden era of Black cinema. Keke Palmer and SZA star as two besties whose rent money gets stolen by a triflin’ man and they have 12 hours to make it back before eviction. I never wrote a formal review of the film because I got the chance to do consulting work with the marketing team on it and that would be unethical. But I love working on projects that align with my values—calling out gentrification, capitalism and all the other anti-Black systems that try to keep us down. Just like in real life, in the end, it’s community that helps us survive. If you need a genuine laugh and a bestie in your head that knows what you’re going through, this film is it.
I’m not a huge superhero person—superhero films tend to be copaganda and pro-imperialism, with many being made in cooperation with the U.S. military. This is not that! James Gunn’s Superman is anti-capitalist, anti-genocide, anti-US military punk rock that said Free Palestine with its visual language, and dropped a Netanyahu stand-in from a very high height. My kinda carrying on. 10/10. No notes.
Watch Superman on HBOMax and read my full review, “James Gunn’s Superman Said ‘Free Palestine!’” here:
Danielle Deadwyler deserves! In this psychological horror feature, Deadwyler stars as a widowed mother of two, battling grief and depression after her husband’s death when a haunting spirit infiltrates their home and terrorizes them. It doesn’t quite stick the landing, but A for effort. We need more films exploring Black women’s rage and mental health. And we need more Danielle Deadwyler. She was also in the movie 40Acres this year, which was a bit too violent for my sensibilities, but did feature Black and Indigenous people teaming up against white colonizers, and that’s right up my alley.
Stream The Woman in the Yard on Peacock and 40 Acres on Hulu.
This is the most heart-warming and urgent documentary of 2025. Part-visual album, part-abolitionist manifesto, Songs from the Hole tells the story of rapper JJ’88, his teenaged murder conviction and his lifelong fight for healing, accountability and forgiveness, as told through the songs he wrote while trapped in solitary confinement. I interviewed the film’s producer Richie Reseda, a brilliant abolitionist and filmmaker, for the next episode of the BGW podcast Another Possible World, so paid subscribers, be on the lookout for that soon! I’m telling you, the convo was life-changing for me, and I can’t wait for y’all to hear it.
I’ve seen so many documentaries about Palestine at this point, but Palestine 36 is the first Palestinian narrative feature film I’ve seen and it is glorious and urgent. Set in 1936, a pivotal year in Palestinian history, this film tells the story of a nation and her people, resisting under British occupation and fighting back against the first Zionist infiltrators of their homes and homeland. This genocide, ethnic cleansing, and whitewashing of Palestine, Palestinians and history by the West is older than October 7. It’s older than 1948. And that’s why this film—and this year—are critical. Shot on film in nearby Jordan, Palestine 36 is gorgeous and devastating, showing Palestinian life and the birth of resistance in a way I hadn’t seen before. It’s a gift of a film and should be required viewing. As a result, the powers that be have made sure this film hasn’t found a distributor yet. But stay tuned to its production company Watermelon Pictures for more.
I almost left this one off the list because there is still no release date for this great film and I’m sure it will not be released until 2026 at this point. But I saw it in 2025, so I’m gonna rank it in 2025! Of course, I have my critiques, which I laid out after seeing it at TIFF in September, but Eyes of Ghana is a spectacular achievement and oral history of Ghana’s radical first president, Kwame Nkrumah, and his vision to capture African life and stories on film. Following Nkrumah’s 93-year-old personal cinematographer Chris Hesse as the titular Eyes, the film recounts Hesse’s life in his early twenties as the right-hand man to the hope of a decolonizing Africa. After the overthrow of Nkrumah, the footage that Hesse shot and so many films that Nkrumah had commissioned, were ordered to be destroyed. But many reels of film survived and Hesse is fighting to have them digitized and screened for all of us to understand that African cinema dates back farther than the whitewashed history would suggest. Hesse reminds us of the power of cinema and of telling our own stories, and I can’t wait for the world to see this film and be inspired.
Zootopia 2
In this animated sequel, bunny and fox team up again—this time as official partners on the Zootopia police force—to get to the bottom of the racist, genocidal founding of Zootopia. Yes, both Zootopias are copaganda. And yes, in both films, in order to solve crimes and bring justice, bunny and fox have to act AGAINST the demands of the police force and the state. What makes this a utopian child’s fantasy is that once bunny and fox solve the mystery, they are rewarded by the state that they had to defy the whole movie in order to solve the mystery in the first place.
Still, this film is what Wicked: For Good should’ve been: a powerful reclamation of history and territory for the animals and working in community to get it done. Though the themes of whitewashing history, cultural theft and genocide to build one’s utopia are apt and timely as we think about the founding of the U.S. and the Zionist state, I’m still not a fan of the neoliberal copaganda endings where one bad guy—or in this sequel, a family of bad guys—gets arrested. As usual, the rest of society easily embraces a change that the small group of bad guys were preventing, and now that they’re in prison, “justice” has been served. At no point do bunny and fox think: how come every time we want to do the right thing, we get punished by the state?!?! Maybe we should no longer be agents of the state!! Yet, I still think the movie is a great way to bring up hard issues with kids in a way they’ll understand and empathize with, after seeing the discrimination against predators in the first film and reptiles in the second, and the way society accepts without question the erasure of the genocidal foundations of most countries. At least use the film to help explain to your kids why they should never be cops.
Watch Zootopia 2 in theaters.
Wake Up, Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
This is my most-watched Knives Out film yet, simply because when I present options for friends and family of what to watch, they all keep choosing this movie! And it’s always a crowd-pleasing success. Josh O’Connor, I see your value now, you cutie. O’Connor puts his heart and soul into the role of Father Jud Duplenticy, a priest with a deadly past who has been accused of murder. Benoit Blanc is back to solve the case with his hilariously absurd, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Foghorn Leghorn accent, and Daniel Craig is still genius in the role—this time as an agnostic foil to Jud’s devout Catholicism. Craig and O’Connor have incredible chemistry and I think they should kiss. Glenn Close gets effortless laughs as rigid church secretary, Martha. And Kerry Washington rounds out a dynamite cast (save for Mila Kunis, who is stiff and out of place as the town sheriff investigating the murders). But it’s the questions that the characters wrestle with rather than any one performance that sat with me the longest. What is the purpose of faith? What anchors it? How do you contextualize it within the horrors “believers” have inflicted and currently inflict on the world?
Writer-Director Rian Johnson takes aim at right-wing, Christian nationalist cults and the personalities that rule them, deconstructing faith as a weapon, while presenting in Father Jud a true picture of what it means to love and serve people. Somebody, Somewherecreator and star Bridgett Everett has about 5 minutes in this movie but completely steals the show in a comical and heartfelt performance that justifies the entire existence of the movie. Father Jud’s choices make little sense without this brief and beautiful interaction; this is great character development, great writing. I tip my hat, Rian Johnson. I didn’t forget what you did to our Black jedi Finn in The Last Jedi though.
Stream Wake Up, Dead Man on Netflix.
Frankenstein
I owe Frankenstein a deep dive and, before the season’s up, I will deliver. Guillermo del Toro’s achingly beautiful ode to forgiveness and healing reveals the consequences of the generational curse that is patriarchy. Rooted deeply in Mary Shelly’s iconic source material, del Toro still makes the iconic Frankenstein story his own, shaping it as a continuation of the father-son stories he’s told of late—most recently in 2022’s Pinocchio. Del Toro doesn’t get enough credit for how amazing he is at adapting a story for the screen. His Frankenstein follows both the depraved Dr. Frankenstein and his creation, the Creature (Jacob Elordi in his best performance to date). Watching this film, I had the same feeling I have when I watch vampire lore: I should probably be vegan. I’ll save that thought for the deep-dive coming soon! In the meantime:
Stream Frankenstein on Netflix.
Oh, Hi!
I was gonna use this slot to talk about My Father’s Shadow, one of my favorites out of Nigeria and TIFF this year, but it’s another one no one can see right now because it doesn’t have U.S. distribution and likely won’t this year. Boo! So, here’s one of the most fun and funny movies I saw this year that you can watch right now. Oh, Hi! follows Iris and Issac on a romantic weekend getaway to High Falls in Upstate New York. Iris misreads the town welcome sign as “Oh, High,” where the title comes from, serving as foreshadowing that Iris and Isaac aren’t quite seeing things the same way. Iris believes, after four months worth of great dates with Issac, that this weekend will solidify them as a committed, monogamous couple. When she finds out that Isaac never saw them as “dating,” at all, let alone as on the way to being a monogamous couple, Iris, to put it mildly, loses it. This kicks off a dangerous and comical end to the weekend, eviscerating the “psycho girlfriend who’s just crazy for no reason” trope and the trope of the “nice guy” who is pleasant to women so he can get all the perks of a woman’s physical and emotional labor and investment, without having to commit or be accountable for his actions. This movie is for the ladies who are exhausted with unintentional men, and who quote early-Cardi B when dealing with them: “I am being nice to you! Have I stabbed you? No? Exactly!” There’s cry-laughing, BDSM, witchcraft, sisterhood and healing. My kinda carrying on.
Watch Oh, Hi! on Netflix.
Sorry, Baby
Eva Victor, you beautiful genius, you’ve done it! The writer-director and star of Sorry Baby pulls off a heartwarming story about friendship, grief and what it takes to survive, that’s both laugh-out-loud funny and a tear-jerker. It’s a slice-of-life indie dramedy that follows Agnes in the non-linear telling of her life as a student and then a professor at a liberal arts college. Naomie Ackie is delightful as Agnes’ best friend whose love and humor gets Agnes through a difficult period. Trigger warning for talk of r*pe and assault, but thankfully there is no depiction of any assault on screen. This is a survivor-centered story that reminds us of why we keep choosing life and hope. And Victor is a promising new filmmaker with much to say. We should listen.
Watch Sorry, Baby streaming on HBOMax.
Hamnet
No movie had me bawling this season as much as Hamnet. Okay, probably Sinners, but Hamnet is a close second. Chloe Zhao is all the way back in her bag as co-writer and director of this adaptation of the novel of the same name, fictionalizing the story of William Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes, their children, and their role in Shakespeare writing the play Hamlet. In the best lead actress performance of the year, Jessie Buckley is Agnes, the outcast town witch in the woods. Like her mother before her, Agnes is very connected to nature, making friends with animals and using herbal medicine to heal. But her gift of reading the soul of a person and seeing their future isn’t used as some manic pixie dream girl trope to help Shakespeare on his journey—she is the center of the story. We live with her as she navigates motherhood and grief alone, while her husband is off in London making a name and a fortune for himself. There are costs to ambition which we’re rarely made to reckon with because these stories are so often told from the stand point of history’s “great men,” not the women (and children) who sacrifice everything for them to be great. Young actor Jacobi Jupe is outstanding as their 10-year-old son in the titular role. Like Sinners, this film is about the power of art to heal and sustain life, and there won’t be a dry eye in the building when it’s over.
Watch Hamnet in theaters now.
Sentimental Value
There are (at least) three films this season that show the impact of an absentee, career-driven father on his wife and children, Hamnet, Jay Kelly and Sentimental Value. Though strangely a film-bro favorite, Jay Kelly is the worst because it centers the absentee, career-driven father. Like Hamnet, Sentimental Value does not. Starring Renate Reinsve as a burgeoning actress tortured by stage fright thanks to her filmmaker father’s early rejection of her, Sentimental Value is a film about going back to retrieve (or heal) what was lost, in order to move forward. It begins with sisters Nora (Reinsve) and Agnes burying their mother. Their father, (my favorite, Stellan Skarsgard) who left them and their mother to pursue filmmaking when the sisters were young, returns to reclaim ownership of their childhood home. Fallen off but ready for a comeback, he presents Nora with an opportunity to be the lead of his next film—a personal story that disgusts Nora and threatens to hit too close to home. This is an excavation of generational trauma on display, with healing at the center. You know I have a type!
I’ve written about Hedda thrice now, including my breakdown of Nia DaCosta’s brilliant adaptation and how much more genius it is than the original play. It’s Tessa Thompson’s best performance and by far DaCosta’s best film and it’s going under the radar, but not on my watch!! It’s deliciously wicked, it’s decadent, and to quote my friend Dino Ramos, it’s “absolutely cunty.” Though there is a queer love triangle, this is not a love story, it’s a power struggle, and the evidence of what happens to a queer Black woman’s mind when she’s silenced, suppressed, and trapped in a box by racism, patriarchy and queerphobia. That anger is bound to go somewhere, and it’s bound to be everybody’s problem. This breakdown of Hedda was one of my favorites to write this year:
What else could I say about Sinners that I haven’t already said in threeessays and a syllabus, two live ClubJuke events, in person to the filmmakers at brunch, and in a script I wrote for the cast to read to honor Ryan Coogler with the Director Award? Even with all that, I’m sure I haven’t told the half. It’s not only by far my favorite movie of the year, it is my favorite movie of all time. It is a technical masterpiece and a spiritual one. This movie reconnected me to myself, to my ancestry, and to my purpose as a film lover and a filmmaker. It’s a gift, and my love for it conjured so many opportunities to share it on a bigger stage than I ever imagined. I’m grateful. Read the incredible Sinners script here and watch the cast of Sinners read the script *I* wrote (!!!!) honoring Ryan Coolger with the Director Award at the Critics Choice Celebration of Black Cinema & TV below:
What are your top movies of the year? Let me know!
