Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – now in cinemas – already had the grand task of following its universally beloved 2018 predecessor, which I dubbed the king of Marvel movies. But then in 2020, after the death of Chadwick Boseman, the franchise was forced into an impossible turn. What do you do with a sequel when the actor playing your main character is gone? Returning director Ryan Coogler, who nearly quit acting after the tragedy, has tried to instill the loss of his friend and colleague, and the feelings associated with it, into wakanda forever. But although the second Black Panther the film is thrown into the shadow of grief, unfortunately it’s not too poignant. (Perhaps Coogler is just too overwhelmed. You could hear it in his voice during the film’s press tour.)
Instead, the newest chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is sometimes more of a meditation on cycles of violence. While his commentary is far from convincing or successful, it’s what Black Panther: Wakanda Forever spends the most time on. This is mainly thanks to the introduction of Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), the flying king of a new underwater civilization called Talokan. Atlantis having already come into play in the 2018 DC movie Aquaman, Coogler and his co-writer Joe Robert Cole moved Namor’s comic book origins in a Mayan direction, with a story tied to Spanish colonization. But the world of Talokan seems eerily quiet – you can’t help but compare it to Aquamanis the richest and most dynamic Atlantis.
It never invokes the same sense of awe you had with Wakanda’s Afrofuturism in the original. Black Panther. An even bigger problem for wakanda forever it’s disjointed. (That may be because there are three credited editors: Michael P. Shawver, Kelley Dixon, and Jennifer Lame.) It’s also longer than it should be at 161 minutes, Coogler only manages not to impress with the few action sequences there are, and the sometimes incoherent narrative doesn’t know how to put its promising pieces together. At the same time, Wakanda Forever is very moving at times; gloomy and unlike most superhero movies. It also wants to unpack ideas that other MCU movies are eager to avoid. Unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good – I just wish everything had been thought out better every step of the way.
Everything you need to know about Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
A year after the death of King T’Challa/Black Panther (Boseman) from an unspecified illness, all responsibility for the Kingdom of Wakanda rests with the Queen Mother, Ramonda (Angela Bassett). Publicly, she’s trying to carry her son’s torch to make Wakanda more open to the world – though opportunistic powers think it’s the perfect time to get their hands on some vibranium, with Wakanda having lost its protector. Privately, she tries to get her daughter, Shuri (Letitia Wright) forward, but T’Challa’s younger sister has buried herself in her technology to avoid facing the pain of her loss. Shuri is the gateway through which Coogler channels his grief onto his dear friend.
With the absence of the main star and protagonist, from a narrative standpoint, Coogler had to find a way forward. So he rearranged the world of Black Panther around his wise former sidekick. In the original version Black Panther movie, Shuri did elaborate handshakes, bristled with tradition, and showed off her cool innovations. Most of that went into wakanda forever – although there are remnants, such as Shuri believing that the Black Panther himself is a figure from the past. She becomes more of her past each time she leaves Wakanda. It’s almost as if being at home, in the shadow of his brother’s legacy, weighs on him. In some ways, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is like a rite of passage for Shuri. She not only finds out what kind of person she is, but also if she has what it takes to be a leader.
This is all highlighted after Namor gives Ramonda and Shuri an ultimatum: if they don’t deliver what he wants, he will attack Wakanda. This conflict drives much of the new MCU film, as the Wakandans and their allies – including T’Challa’s former spy Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), Special Forces chief Dora Milaje Okoye (Danai Gurira) and CIA agent Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman), all back from the first Black Panther movie – try to keep Namor at bay, without giving him what he wants. But given that no one has dealt with the Talokanil before, this is uncharted and underestimated territory for Wakanda. Namor, who is called K’uk’ulkan (the feathered serpent god) by his people, rules a nation that is more than a match for the Wakandans.
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Tenoch Huerta Mejía as Namor in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Photo credit: Eli Adé/Marvel
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever strives to serve its ensemble cast, feeling smaller than its predecessor despite introducing a whole new world. While Ramonda, Shuri, and Namor are at the center of things, everyone else is overlooked. The new MCU movie leaves as much room as possible for Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), the MIT wunderkind who creates armor just like Iron Man. She’s set to get her own Disney+ series next year, but in wakanda forever, she’s more of a MacGuffin than an actual character in development. Nakia, closest to T’Challa’s heart, feels protected in some ways. Okoye and the others – including Wakandan Mountain Tribe chief M’Baku (Winston Duke) – receive even less. Ross, and another surprise return, seem so incidental to the whole story that they feel like a producer’s call.
The problem with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is that it’s never quite as exciting as the 2018 original. For one thing, it lacks those juicy characters who operated on a different moral and ethical level. Michael B. Jordan’s villain, Erik “Killmonger” Stevens, and Andy Serkis’ smuggler, Ulysses Klaue, were magnetic and enigmatic in a way that Namor simply wasn’t designed to be. Sure, it roars, takes charge, and has a powerful backstory — but it’s quieter at the end of the day. And two, wakanda forever fails in terms of satisfying action scenes. The third act calls for something special, but Coogler isn’t good at designing action sets. Talokan’s water bombs are cool, but that’s it. There’s so much wasted potential here, it hurts me.
While the Black Panther sequel is definitely an attempt at a Boseman homage, I kept trying to think about what T’Challa would have wanted for Wakanda after he died. He was against his father’s isolationist practices, and spurred on by Killmonger saying almost all the right things, he opened up at the end of the original film. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever posits that this huge, bold move essentially backfired. By exposing vibranium-rich Wakanda, he made the world envious. No country is satisfied with such an exclusive resource, especially such a valuable resource as vibranium.
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Winston Duke as M’Baku in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Photo credit: Eli Adé/Marvel
And so, although T’Challa had the best intentions, it didn’t go as he planned. With T’Challa gone and Wakanda facing sneak attacks from Western forces trying to get their hands on the Impossible Metal, the country has become even more defensive and isolationist than before in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. At the start of the new MCU movie, Ramonda delivers public rebuttals that make for great theater, but aren’t great foreign policy. The depressing lesson the news Black Panther the film invokes is that the world is messy – and idealistic approaches are not welcomed.
wakanda forever is also messy; unable to hammer out its themes in a meaningful and resonant way as the original managed. Ultimately, it feels too much like standard Marvel fare. It feels like it was created because Black Panther’s legacy needed to be continued, not because those who created it had any ideas. Now, thirty movies into the MCU, we’re at a stage where content is the product that keeps the machine running.
Following what has been a largely disappointing “phase” since Avengers: Endgame, it fell to Coogler to save the day. But the director of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever already had too much to do. Just like Shuri is unable to move on, Coogler also struggled to move on with wakanda forever. The film grapples with the gaping hole left by Boseman’s death – and it finds it has no answer. It seems appropriate, although frustrating.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever hits theaters worldwide on Friday, November 11. In India, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is available in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.
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