Ross is also a corrupter though -- he knows Erik through the CIA work, and IIRC he's the only one in the film who calls him "Killmonger."
I don't remember him directly calling Erik by that name, but he does explain how Erik earned it.
He's helping out Wakanda but he already hurt Erik.
Yes. I was surprised that he got a redemption arc and I really enjoyed it—it felt earned—precisely because it was so secondary and so low-key. Because he takes a bullet for Nakia, because T'Challa breaks his non-interventionist rule to save him, because he does fight for Wakanda instead of destabilizing the country as his government trained Erik to do (and as Ross himself, if so ordered, might have done), it would have been almost inadvertently easy to make him a white savior, the modest, canny, important American heroically taking his place of pride in the mysterious African utopia where almost no white man has gone blah blah etc. Instead, he's a guy who helps some and doesn't screw up too much. He's not superfluous, but he's not central. And that's all right.
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I don't remember him directly calling Erik by that name, but he does explain how Erik earned it.
He's helping out Wakanda but he already hurt Erik.
Yes. I was surprised that he got a redemption arc and I really enjoyed it—it felt earned—precisely because it was so secondary and so low-key. Because he takes a bullet for Nakia, because T'Challa breaks his non-interventionist rule to save him, because he does fight for Wakanda instead of destabilizing the country as his government trained Erik to do (and as Ross himself, if so ordered, might have done), it would have been almost inadvertently easy to make him a white savior, the modest, canny, important American heroically taking his place of pride in the mysterious African utopia where almost no white man has gone blah blah etc. Instead, he's a guy who helps some and doesn't screw up too much. He's not superfluous, but he's not central. And that's all right.