Black Panther gave us not one but two “broken white boys” needing to be fixed up by Shuri’s brilliance. One, which you hopefully stuck around after the credits for, will definitely be seen next in Avengers: Infinity War. The other is Martin Freeman’s CIA handler Everett K. Ross, who tells Den of Geek that we haven’t seen the last of him in the MCU…
“They introduced me in Civil War and said there would be a couple of other films, one of which was Black Panther. So that was always on the cards. And I knew I’d have more to do in Black Panther than I had to do in Civil War. That was very much just the kind of introduction to who Ross was.”
I remember being disappointed initially that Freeman’s version of Ross wasn’t as nervous and funny as he is in the comics, but it turned out to be the right move. In the comics, at least the ones written by Christopher Priest (He had the best run, in my opinion), Black Panther is almost a background character. He’s so far ahead of everyone else that most other characters are just trying to figure out what he’s up to, and that includes Ross who is always getting into trouble because he doesn’t know what’s really going on. That kind of comical dynamic wouldn’t play as well on the screen, I think. In fact, Freeman agrees…
“I, to be honest, wasn’t massively keen to play that. I certainly wasn’t massively keen to play that in the context of Black Panther. Just because I think the trope of a nervous white guy, cool black guy, we’ve seen it a million times before breakfast. So yeah, I wasn’t mostly keen. Fortunately, Ryan (Coogler, director) and Nate Moore (producer) weren’t massively keen either on that. So we talked a lot about what he might be. It’s not like I shaped Ross into what he ended up being. I think, you know, that was he was going to be. But I definitely threw my 10 cents in as far as who he might be.”
Here’s hoping Marvel gives us more of Ross in a short film or something, perhaps in the Black Panther Blu-Ray set. He could be Marvel’s “everyman” agent in the way Phil Coulson used to be.
