10 Film Characters Who Were Secretly The Villain All Along

If Black Panther has any message about family, it's that you shouldn't repeat the mistakes of your ancestors, and that any mistreatments you dole out to people ultimately will have dire consequences.

Take, for example, T'Challa's father, T'Chaka. He's a good father, a good leader, and generally appears to be a good man - until you find out the backstory of Black Panther's villain, Killmonger.

Killmonger is the son of T'Chaka's brother, N'Jobu. Having moved to America, N'Jobu grew increasingly upset that the technology of Wakanda wasn't being share to help the world. After stealing vibranium, N'Jobu came into conflict with his brother, who would ultimately kill him after N'Jobu tried to murder T'Chaka's advisor Zuri.

After this is done, nobody thinks to check the dead man's apartment - which contains his son, Erik, who would become naturally antagonistic towards Wakanda, since the only thing he knew about them was that they murdered his dad and left him alone.

Killmonger does terrible things, but he is ultimately motivated to do them due to a great injustice in his life - which doesn't justify his actions, but does set the film up to have another villain, in everyone who allowed him to grow up estranged from Wakanda due to no fault of his own. This is more or less addressed by T'Challa himself, who learns from the mistakes of those who led before him - or at least, tries to.