Hulu War Epic With DC Star Based On Real Life Conflict

Drawn from actual events, The Woman King takes place in 1823, in the Kingdom of Dahomey, where a young new king, Ghezo—portrayed by John Boyega—has taken the throne with his fearsome army led by the unyielding Agojie warrior Nanisca, portrayed by DC’s Viola Davis. Following a confrontation with the neighboring nation’s slavers, Ghezo prepares for an all-out war against the Oyo Empire, with Nanisca training the new generation of Agojie warriors, whose role is to protect the kingdom.

What makes The Woman King so great, besides really good action sequences, is the relationship between the aging Nanisca and the willful and young Nawi. Both of them have led hard lives, but the former doesn’t favor the latter; instead, she acts like a tough-love teacher, which leads to shocking revelations later in the movie.

Needless to say, Peacemaker’s Viola Davis is great in what seems to be the most physically demanding role of her career, and her character really ends up becoming The Woman King, though we won’t spoil how that is achieved.

We mentioned previously that The Woman King has some historical accuracies; Agojie really existed, and though they were initially recruited from among the king of Dahomey’s wives, the recruitment pool widened significantly during King Ghezo’s rule. In fact, under Ghezo, Agojie grew from 600 warriors to approximately 6,000, comprising one-third of the Dahomean military. That’s 6,000 women going into battle backed by pent-up rage and pain caused by a life in a land where women weren’t treated as men’s equals.

However, while King Ghezo was an actual historical figure, and while Agojie did help him liberate Dahomey from being a tributary of the Oyo Empire—as depicted in The Woman King—the characters of Nanisca and Nawi were fictional and based on real Agojie warriors. The former was based on a rather fierce teenage recruit, while the latter was named after the last surviving Agojie warrior with actual combat experience.

The Woman King was and remains a massive success among critics and audiences, with a 94 percent Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 99 percent audience score based on more than 5,000 verified ratings. The movie earned nearly $100 million against a $50 million budget, which can be regarded as a commercial success, considering that the world was fresh in recovery from COVID-19 lockdowns.

Furthermore, it received a total of 124 nominations from different film organizations and won 28 awards. Though it has been criticized for its historical distortion of slavery, The Woman King is definitely a fantastic movie to spend 135 minutes of your life on. However, you’ll need an active Hulu subscription to do so.