Nile Freeman

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Character
Name: Nile Freeman
Occupation:
Relationships: Mother (Alive)

Brother (Alive)

Father (Killed in Action)
Fandom: The Old Guard
Other:
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Nile Freeman is a character from The Old Guard. She was played by American actor KiKi Layne in the Netflix adaptation.

Canon Overview

At the beginning of the graphic novel/film, Nile is a US Marine stationed in Afghanistan. After being mortally wounded in action, she has a dream of the other immortals and wakes up unscathed, drawing suspicion and distrust from her fellow soldiers. She is soon found by Andromache of Scythia, who tells her that Nile is one of them, unable to die, and promising questions and protection.

Promotional posters from Thailand give Nile's birthdate as 1994. She mentions growing up on the South Side of Chicago and is religious.

Nile appears to have an interest in, or at least some knowledge of art history, since she recognizes a Rodin sculpture in one of their safehouses.

Fandom

Spoiler Warning: This article or section may contain spoilers. If this bothers you, proceed with caution.


Nile as the youngest Immortal is sometimes referred to as the baby of the Old Guard. In canon, this term appeared once. Andy said, "she's only a baby", upon seeing a picture of Nile, before she'd met the newest Immortal. This has led some fans to headcanon that other members of the team would act as surrogate parents to Nile, within the found family dynamic of the Old Guard. There are also fans who view any pairing of Nile with another Immortal as problematic, due to the perceived age difference. There has been some push back to these ideas, from other fans, who point out that Nile is in her late twenties and an adult, and fandom's tendency to infantilize her is itself problematic.

Y’all don’t infantilize the others at the start of their immortality, so why are you doing it to Nile?[1]

Further, there are some fans who are calling for nuance in the discussion around Nile's age and experience relative to the other members of the Old Guard:

Nile can be both the baby of the group and an incredibly competant and capable woman. In fact, that’s exactly what the movie shows her to be.

Andy says it herself— Nile is a warrior, she comes from warriors. She proves her talent when fighting Andy; she pieces together Booker’s betrayal from just an empty clip; she fits seamlessly into the team during the battle at Merrick. And she isn’t just a fighter, she’s a leader. Again, Andy says it herself— I don’t make it out, next time, you go first. She brings a level of hope and determination that this impossibly old, tired, jaded family needed to see, and keeps up with their centuries of experience all the while. At the same time, Nile is the youngest. She’s lived through loss, but she’s never had to face this kind of transformation. It’s going to take time to learn to process grief and joy and fear in this new scope; it’s going to take time to learn to make decisions the way you must when you have to live with them forever. She literally has to learn a new way of life. She’s going to need the team’s love and help in these things, and because they are a family, and she is theirs, they’re all going to do what they can to guide her through it.

Life is vast, especially for literal immortals, and humans are complex, and experience and inexperience can coexist within them. Nile has so much to bring to the team, but she also has so much to learn from them. We can hold both of these things at once.[2]

Some fans have expressed appreciation for the way that Nile’s portrayal in the film and the way that other characters respond to her is a subversion of the Strong Black Woman stereotype:

Let’s talk for a minute about how The Old Guard shows Nile as a character who’s worthy of protection and caretaking without infantilizing her or minimizing her agency.

I’m thinking particularly of the scene when Nile wakes up from the nightmare about Quynh, which honestly might be one of my favorite moments in the whole movie. The three guys are all sleeping in the same room as her and they all immediately wake up and reach for their weapons, ready to throw down... their reaction isn’t just an ingrained response from a very long life of combat. They’re all very clearly focused on Nile and whether she’s safe, and once it’s clear that there’s no physical threat, they want to make sure she’s okay emotionally and help her understand what she saw in the nightmare. This is one of those moments where context sensitivity matters a lot. Because we can easily imagine a scenario where the exact same scene would play as overprotective, condescending or downright creepy. But when the focus of the scene is a Black woman, a moment that says this character is worthy of both physical, bodily protection and emotional support reads very differently.

We already know Nile is a tough and self-sufficient character. She’s an elite soldier who grew up in the inner city, raised by a single mom who pushed her to succeed. She has excelled in a dangerous, physically demanding, male-dominated career. She is, in many ways, the template of the Strong Black Woman, and a lot of movies would have left it there. But with this scene, and all the other little moments of care and attention she receives, the other characters are saying, hey, we know you are tough and self-sufficient, but you don’t always have to be. [3]

Some fans noted the difficulty of finding fics about Nile on Ao3 where she was the focus, especially when Joe/Nicky appeared as a tagged pairing within the fic. As of August 2020, there was a canon tag created for 'Nile Freeman-centric' fics, which can be applied as an additional tag to works and filtered for by readers.

Common Tropes

  • Nile learning to cope with immortality
  • Nile choosing to reach out to her family (or not)

Pairings

Immediately after the film's release, the femslash pairing Andy/Nile Freeman was the primary romantic pairing for Nile. Nile/Booker is a pairing that began gaining traction in some parts of the fandom during August 2020.

Based on works posted to Ao3, by 25 September 2020, the romantic pairing of Nile/Booker, also known as Book of Nile, had become the most popular relationship for Nile, overtaking the femslash pairing Andy/Nile Freeman.[4] It remains the most popular pairing for Nile and the third most popular pairing in the fandom. The gen pairing of Nile & Booker is also very popular.

Fandom Practices

Events & Challengers

Notable Fanworks

Fanart

Meta

Archives & Links

References

  1. ^ Nile is an adult, tumblr post by lukcskywalkcrs, July 29 2020.
  2. ^ Nile can be both the baby of the group and an incredibly competant and capable woman, tumblr post by magnus-and-the-dragon, Jul 15th 2020. Archived on October 21, 2020.
  3. ^ Nile as a character worthy of protection and caretaking without infantilizing her or minimizing her agency, tumblr post by fuckyeahisawthat, July 19 2020.
  4. ^ Archived page of Nile Freeman works on Ao3 as of 25 September 2020.
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