He was a king

The death of actor Chadwick Boseman is unexpectedly hard.

It was bad enough that he died young, but it was seeing the tributes and reaction on Twitter that brought it home. What he brought with his performances meant so much to so many people – especially his work as T’Challa, the Black Panther, in four movies.

People had wanted to see a hero like him for so long.

Losing a hero is hard. Even (maybe especially) a fictitious one. 

Before I saw Captain America: Civil War, I read an interview with one of the filmmakers, who nailed what Boseman brought to the role of T’Challa. Boseman’s performance didn’t blow you away: it made you lean in. When I saw the movie, that was exactly it. It wasn’t a showy performance, but it was intense and magnetic and compelling.

And what else has been clear in the last few days was that he was so much more than his acting roles and much more than T’Challa. By all accounts, he was just a decent human being.

In one of the most famous scenes in Black Panther, Killmonger says, “Is this y’all’s king?!”

Yes. Yes, he was.