How X-Men: First Class Star Edi Gathegi Really Feels About Darwin's Controversial Death

Like a lot of "X-Men" fans, "X-Men: First Class" is one of my favorite movies 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.

"They gave me a couple of hours to read the script to determine whether or not I wanted to do it," Gathegi explained. "So I read it, and I called my agents to say, 'Hey, listen, I have a problem with the fact that this character is the only Black character in the film aside from Zoë Kravitz's character. I am also the only mutant who meets an untimely demise halfway through the film.' It was 2009 at the time, and I was like, 'Killing the Black guy first is so played out. I can't do this.'"

The worst part, however, was how he was given false hope about Darwin's fate. As he explained:

"There were conversations that happened, and then they assured us that it was essential for the storytelling in order to motivate the mutants to avenge my [character's] death. They also fully intended to bring my character back as they do in the comics. [Darwin] can't die; he regenerates. So we held onto the hope that they would honor their word."

Spoiler alert: they did not. Darwin stays dead for the rest of this "X-Men" timeline, and nobody even mentions him in any of the sequels. In his mere minutes of screentime, Darwin comes across as a compelling character with a lot of potential, and "First Class" seemingly threw all of that away without much thought. As Gathegi saw it, "The message that I received as an actor and as a man of color in this world is you can be the most powerful mutant in the world and they'll never let you reach your full potential." It was only 14 years later that Gathegi would star in a superhero movie that sent him the opposite message. 

"The pendulum has swung in the complete opposite direction," Gathegi told THR. "With Mister Terrific in 'Superman,' the message that I'm receiving is you can be one of the most intelligent characters in the universe, and you can help save the world. It's a different level of conversation."

Sure enough, the new "Superman" film establishes Gathegi's character early on as an important, intriguing person, and then it actually follows through. It gives him arguably the coolest fight sequence in the entire film, lets him play a crucial role in saving the planet from Lex Luthor's black-hole rift, and lets him live to return in the inevitable sequel. "Superman" did everything "First Class" should've done and more. 

The experience was thrilling to Gathegi, and he explained how nice it felt to play a character who was not only important to the narrative but undeniably cool: "When I looked at myself in the mirror, I felt like I was looking back at a person who could save the world," he said. "So, standing next to Superman, there are no words to describe the magic of that."