Black Panther: Wakanda Forever gracefully moves past the death of Chadwick Bosemanand triumphantly introduces one of Marvel’s most iconic characters
It’s obvious from the beginning of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever that something is missing. Chadwick Boseman, who played T’Challa, aka Black Panther, in previous Marvel movies, is absent after he tragically died from cancer in 2020. In addition, Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) is nowhere to be found at the beginning of the movie, and no one else has taken the mantle of Black Panther after the character of T’Challa died. In many ways, since the movie does not center around T’Challa, it feels less like a Black Panther movie, but instead a Wakanda movie centered around the loss of the Black Panther.
This was likely intentional, as Wakanda Forever has several tributes to Boseman. The movie takes plenty of time to mourn T’Challa and Boseman.
However, since this is Marvel Studios, a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut of franchise filmmaking, there’s more money to be made and that necessitates a new Black Panther to be chosen. And even with such a heavy loss hanging over the film, it’s not surprising that it’s so good, as it has the same director and writers as the first Black Panther, which is one of Marvel’s best movies.
A big part of the reason why Wakanda Forever works so well is because of its antagonist, Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía). Much like the antagonist of the first movie, Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger, director Ryan Coogler gives Namor plenty of screen time and character development, and explains his motivations. Why he goes to war with the Wakandans makes sense, at least in Namor’s point of view.
It’s true that Namor’s origin story has been changed significantly. In the comics he is half- human and half-Atlantean, whereas most of his people were fully Atlantean and could not breathe air. I won’t spoil his exact origin story in the movie, but he is Mesoamerican, as are his people, and their civilization is never called Atlantis. Instead, it is called Talokan. However, Namor’s disdain for surface dwellers is very much in line with his comic book self, and the movie goes to great lengths to explain why. Namor has seen some of the worst of humanity, as he witnesses the Spaniards’ enslavement of the Indigenous people. In the comics, he has disdain for the surface world because of the way they have mistreated Atlanteans, but the movie adds more depth to his character by having him be related to a people who were marginalized in real life.
Letitia Wright as Shuri
Another reason why the first movie worked so well is a trio of women who all gave fine performances, including Nyong’o as Nakia, Letitia Wright as Shuri, and Danai Gurira as Okoye. Each of them display a larger range of emotion in this movie, no doubt because of the loss of Boseman impacting their performances. The same goes for Angela Bassett, who plays T’Challa’s mother Ramonda. She had little to do in the first movie, but in many ways she anchors Wakanda Forever. She convincingly portrays a woman who must balance grief with enormous responsibility. In addition, new character Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), who is called Ironheart in the comics but never in the movie, is a delightful addition to the cast. She’s very funny and charismatic, and definitely ready for her spinoff that’s coming to Disney Plus in 2023. While she may have generated some controversy in the comics by initially going by the name Iron Man, this shouldn’t be a problem in this movie, as she does not seem to be related to Iron Man in any way. She’s just another character in a high-tech suit of armor.
Unsurprisingly, the biggest character arc goes to Wright’s Shuri. While I enjoyed her performance in the first movie, her main roles were tech support and comic relief. She takes on a central role in Wakanda Forever, having to deal with her feelings of inadequacy as well as her anger, grief and her struggles with morality and practicality.
Wakanda Forever’s biggest weakness is its connection to the rest of the Marvel cinematic universe, or MCU. Its connections worked better in the first film, as it was nice seeing Martin Freeman’s Everett Ross and Andy Serkis’ Ulysses Klaue, and to see T’Challa’s relationship with Ross continue in Black Panther. But Black Panther was merely a follow-up to Captain America: Civil War, and didn’t have to deal with the earth-shattering ramifications of the events of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Wakanda Forever doesn’t even acknowledge that T’Challa has died twice within the past decade. First, he died when Thanos snapped him away at the end of Infinity War, then he was resurrected after five years along with half the planet. He dies for a second time at the beginning of Wakanda Forever due to an undisclosed illness, to coincide with Boseman’s real death. That means his mother, Ramonda, had to deal with losing him twice — three times if you count the time she briefly thought he was dead in the original Black Panther. If the events of the larger MCU didn’t have such a big impact on the Black Panther franchise, this would have felt a lot less jarring.
Overall, this is definitely a movie worth seeing, at least to fans of the previous movie and Marvel fans who have been waiting for Namor’s live-action debut. If the MCU wasn’t such a money-printing machine, it’s possible that no sequel would have been made without Boseman. But the show must go on, and because of that we have a new Black Panther — and a very capable one.