‘Eyes of Wakanda’ Quietly Proves Killmonger Wasn’t Wrong

When Eyes of Wakanda premiered, I expected a bit of backstory, some cool animation, and maybe a nod or two to the Dora Milaje. What I didn’t expect was a four-part meditation on how Wakanda’s deepest strength, its secrecy, might also be its biggest flaw.

This isn’t a show about vibranium. It’s a show about the people sent to protect it. And by the time the final episode ends, one thing becomes impossible to ignore:

Killmonger may have been more right than we were ready to admit.

The series opens with Noni, a former Dora Milaje with a rebellious streak, being pulled back into service for a high-stakes mission. A Wakandan warrior known as the Lion has stolen vibranium technology and has begun building his own kingdom abroad. The mission is clear: bring him back to Wakanda before he becomes a threat.

But by Episode 4, that story fractures into something deeper.

We see War Dogs stationed across time, from ancient Crete to wartime Ethiopia, risking their lives to retrieve and protect Wakandan artifacts. The deeper we go, the more we realize: Wakanda’s secrecy has a cost. Not just to the people outside its borders, but to its own warriors.

One character, a prince, sees a future where Wakanda’s refusal to share what it knows leads not to safety, but to total annihilation. That vision forces a choice: continue on the current mission, or return a sacred object to its rightful place and save Wakanda from itself.

Sound familiar?

That object, the axe, ends up being the very weapon Killmonger steals from the British Museum in Black Panther. And just like that, Eyes of Wakanda becomes a spiritual prequel, one that threads his entire arc with even more weight.

Because for all of Killmonger’s violence and pain, his message was never just chaos.

It was clarity.

“You’re all sitting up here comfortable. Must feel good. There’s about two billion people all over the world that look like us, but their lives are a lot harder. Wakanda has the tools to liberate them all, and you’re hoarding it.”

What Eyes of Wakanda does is validate the question at the core of that speech.

We watch warriors spend their lives preserving history that will never be told. We see legacy erased from the records, like the Lion’s contributions, gone without recognition. We see War Dogs spend years among colonized people only to return to Wakanda changed, and in some cases, lost.

The show doesn’t scream “Killmonger was right,” it whispers it. Through the cracks in tradition. Through the weight of memory. Through the silence that comes when a nation builds its greatness on the decision to only protect itself.

It doesn’t need explosions to make its point. It doesn’t give us a big villain speech. Instead, it shows us ordinary warriors carrying out extraordinary missions and slowly realizing that protection and isolation are not always the same thing.