And there’s the “stop making it about racism” reply already.
[image description: screenshot of a reply reading : Theyre killing off a character that was poorly written and universally badly received, I dont get why you need to instantly tie it to racism.” end image description]
Locke was disproportionately hated due to his being Black. The tone and speculation about his character took an INSTANT shift the moment that Mike Colter was announced as his actor.
The only other character in Halo 5 that saw this amount of hate and vitriol was Holly Tanaka, a Black and Malaysian biracial woman. Vale also saw some, but she is white and didn’t draw the level of ire that arrives from racism.
It’s a constant we see in all fandoms whenever Black characters - ESPECIALLY Black characters who are not supporting a white character’s arc (i.e. don’t come in with “people love Romeo (support for Buck) and Johnson (support for Chief.)”).
Also, Locke wasn’t badly written. Not in Halo 5, not in Nightfall, but fandom (any and all fandoms) does not give Black characters the same degree of effort into understanding the way they tick, or discovering the subtleties in character motivations or portrayals.
Further Reading:
White Prioritization
Convenient Excuses
Furthermore, if Locke was indeed badly written, it was no worse than any other character in Halo 5, and again, he and Tanaka received the disproportionate amount of hate.
If he was a bland blank slate, that’s no different than Chief in Combat Evolved - 3. So why did not the fanbase project upon him the same way they projected upon the Master Chief? It’s because Black is never seen as the default. White always is.
Further Reading: Beige Blank Slates.
People being gleefully vocal about Locke’s potential demise and always being in a rush to find reasons to dislike him for things that both Do Not Exist and are things that white characters have been given a pass or even been beloved for