The Welsh accent has finally made it to Marvel

Marvel movies have travelled many galaxies and encountered many species, but one thing that has been missing is a Welsh accent.

However, all that that has changed with the launch of new Marvel series, Secret Invasion.

It stars fast-rising actor Kingsley Ben-Adir as well as an all-star cast that includes Samuel L Jackson, Martin Freeman and Olivia Colman.

In it the London-born actor plays arch villain Gravik – complete with an accent straight out of Butetown in Cardiff.

Gravik is the leader of the shapeshifting Skrulls, who can pose as humans, who hope to gain control of Earth.

When it came to decide what accent he was going to use for the role Kingsley, who has previously starred in Peaky Blinders, played Malcolm X and Barack Obama – and will play Bob Marley in a forthcoming biopic, said he was inspired by the community of Butetown in the Welsh capital.

“We were looking at different places he could be from–obviously Birmingham had been done, Peaky Blinders did it, so that didn’t work,” he told Buzzfeed.

“There’s a mixed race community in Butetown, and I just thought that might be a nice way in.

“It’s a large Caribbean community with a military history too, so I started speaking to people from around there to figure out the character.”

One of the wonderful aspects of his research was discovering the story of inspirational headteacher Betty Campbell.

“She was the first black head teacher in Wales,” he added. “There was a wonderful podcast on the BBC about her, which I listened to a lot. So yeah, I just know about Butetown and then a bit about Cardiff too.”

It isn’t actually the first time that Wales has featured in a Marvel vehicle – the Welsh flag flew proudly in a scene from the 2018 movie Black Panther that was set at the United Nations.

For their next trick we’d love to see Marvel create a Welsh superhero! Any suggestions for a name leave them in the comments below.

You can watch Secret Invasion on Disney Plus