in the whole franchise; it’s a step above “Logan” for me and a small step below “X2.” But although I found “First Class” to be a thrilling (and refreshing) change of pace when it first came out, there’s one scene that always bugged me: the one where the villain murders Darwin (Edi Gathegi), a mutant whose whole thing is that he can’t die.
Making it stranger was the racial element: Darwin was the only Black man in the group, and he was murdered simply as a quick method for Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) to flex his powers. You might think some fans are looking too deeply into it by bringing up Darwin’s race, but it’s the movie that brings it up first. Shaw gives a speech to the young mutants urging them to join his cause; he says he can either join them or they can “be enslaved,” and as he says this, the camera cuts right to Darwin.
The movie is drawing a parallel here between the mutants’ struggle for acceptance and the struggle of African Americans throughout American history. (This parallel is made even stronger with the movie’s setting in the ’60s, as the civil rights movement was making strides.) Much like how the 2000s “X-Men” movies drew heavily on the LGBTQ+ movement for their mutant stories, the focus on Darwin’s race made it seem like “First Class” was interested in doing something similar with race. Instead, the movie kills Darwin quickly and callously, and the racial parallels in the movie are largely dropped from there.
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Edi Gathegi revealed that it wasn’t just the fans who were disappointed by his character’s death. When he first read in the script what would happen, he had some notes.
