Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

The sequel is haunted by the loss of Chadwick Boseman, but it finds a different way to do something radical. By Dana Stevens. Nov 10, 2022 ...

Namor, a Mesoamerican god who gets around via tiny fluttering wings on his ankles, first appears to the queen and the princess of Wakanda in the guise of peacemaker, asking for their help in resisting the colonial superpowers that seek to rob both cultures of their resources. This overstuffed plot means that some of the film’s most emotionally powerful scenes, like an electrifying dreamworld encounter between Shuri and an unexpected figure from her past, get sandwiched between CGI-crammed battle sequences and left too little time to resonate with the audience. Especially within the superhero genre, built around the presumptive indestructibility of both its individual protagonists and its larger brand identity, the sudden and irreversible loss of a character like T’Challa is a hard blow to reabsorb into the MCU’s system. To a much greater degree than I would have thought possible, Wakanda Forever is a gajillion-dollar comic-book blockbuster about something as complex and interior as the act of female mourning, split among at least four different strong woman protagonists. Boseman’s death in mid-2020 came as a complete shock, the actor having kept his diagnosis of colon cancer secret from all but his closest loved ones. In place of the familiar Marvel intro—a comic-book–style flip-through montage of heroes from throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe—comes a somber, elegiac tribute to a single figure: the Black Panther himself, T’Challa, beloved leader of the Afrofuturistic utopia of Wakanda, as played by the late Chadwick Boseman.