Killmonger Cut

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Part of a series on Black Panther. [View Related Entries]

About

Killmonger Cut, also known as the Swoop Haircut, refers to a haircut popularly sported by the character Killmonger from Black Panther in which the sides of one's head are faded and the top is braided into dreadlocks, which fall by the side of one's face. The hairstyle became controversial when multiple video game franchises featuring Black characters redesigned those characters to give them the haircut in the 2020s, irritating fans who felt the haircut had become a cliche.

Origin

In January 2018, Black Panther was released and introduced Michael B. Jordan's Killmonger, as well as his now-iconic haircut (shown below).

Starting in 2023, gamers began realizing that several Black characters in upcoming video games had been given a similar haircut. One of the first known posts to remark upon Black characters receiving the same haircut was posted on March 13th, 2023, when Twitter / X user @tearswhenyoucry^[1] noticed it had been applied to four new Black characters in League of Legends (shown below). The tweet saw little spread in one year.

Spread

Chatter about the presence of the Killmonger haircut in media, particularly video games, began increasing over the following months. On July 31st, 2023, Redditor Juicexandski noted how four characters were given the Killmonger cut, including Phoenix from Valorant, Ekko from League of Legends, Lor-Zod from Young Justice and Miles Morales from Marvel's Spider-man 2 (examples shown below). The post gained over 450 points in /r/dreadlocks in seven months.^[2]

On January 14th, 2024, Tekken 8 revealed that Eddy Gordo would be a playable fighter in the game, showing off his design for the game. The game had redesigned Gordo's hair to be the Killmonger cut. That day, user @FGC_daily^[3] claimed "Tekken has fallen," comparing Gordo's haircut with various other characters that had been given the style. The tweet gained over 2,700 retweets and 15,000 likes in two months (shown below).

IGN^[4] identified Eddy's redesign as the moment the presence of the haircut became oversaturated in a February 28th, 2024, piece. On February 23rd, Kotaku published a video asking video game developers to stop using the haircut on Black characters, calling it the "Killmonger Swoop." The video gained over 2,000 views in two weeks on YouTube (shown below).