Image via Disney
Spoilers for ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ below.
When we are at our lowest point, we’re susceptible to the most change. This was the crossroads that every fictional character and real-world actor faced in Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Going into the film, director Ryan Coogler was tasked with the impossible: to somehow make a sudden tragedy make sense on the silver screen while simultaneously grappling with it in his own personal life. The result is one of the most grounded superhero films in recent years that reminds viewers how nothing that is lost is truly gone forever.
The film opens by answering one of the biggest questions viewers had going into the film, how would the movie address Chadwick Boseman’s passing. Coogler and Marvel dealt with the difficult situation in the most tasteful-yet-painful way possible, by having T’Challa pass away in a similar fashion as the actor—from the onset of a sudden illness.
“In my culture, death is not the end. It’s more of a stepping-off point,” the late Chadwick Boseman, a.k.a. King T’Challa, says in Captain America: Civil War after his father’s murder. “You reach out with both hands and Bast and Sekhmet, they lead you into a green veld where you can run forever.”
Shuri sees it a bit differently. In Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, she is fighting an external battle against Namor and the people of Tlālōcān, and a moral conflict between her scientific rationality and the mystical beliefs of Wakanda, the very thing that grants the Black Panther their powers. The first words uttered in the film are Shuri praying to Bast, the mythical Black Panther deity, that she will believe in her if she saves her brother. This doesn’t happen and sends Shuri down a spiral struggling to deal with T’Challa’s passing while also refusing to accept Wakanda’s religious traditions.
The anchoring theme in Wakanda Forever is the different ways each character goes about handling their grief. Like in real life, everyone deals with it differently. Following T’Challa’s death, Shuri copes by burying herself in her work. Queen Ramonda, played by the amazing Angela Bassett, looks to her faith and still manages to lead Wakanda despite already losing half her family. Seeing colonialism and the evils of man at an early age, Namor deals with grief by being vengeful. Pain is the common denominator, and how these characters’ grief manifests ultimately decides their fates. Namor will do anything to protect his people as well, but by using brute force to never allow his citizens to be colonized again, he ultimately puts them at risk. And Shuri allows her wrath to guide her decisions until the very end, and almost loses herself because of the pain and grief she never acknowledges.
Image via Marvel
The score and CGI allow these concepts to feel tangible as they permeate every scene. Coogler and Wakanda Forever music director Ludwig Göransson worked together to create the heartbeat for not only Wakanda but Tlālōcān as well. The introduction of the mythical city, soundtracked by Foudeqush and Göransson’s “Con La Brisa,” adds a new depth to the moment and makes it even more memorable. Likewise, the beautiful percussion that scores T’Challa’s emotional all-white homegoing service at the beginning of the film makes viewers feel like they’re there with the people of Wakanda, which ultimately makes them feel for Shuri even more as she struggles to let go of her brother’s coffin. The subtle fusion of music from different regions also flows seamlessly throughout the movie.
Shuri’s journey to healing is at the forefront, but the ways Namor and Riri Williams are incorporated into the story are also just as important. The dynamic between Namor and Shuri is compelling because we can understand both leaders’ points of view. Since Wakanda and Tlālōcān are the only nations with Vibranium, they both want to protect their people from outside threats, they just go about it in different ways. And teenage protégé Riri Williams is the glue that brings these two worlds together, adding levity to the film with her comedic timing and impressive ingenuity. With Iron Man gone, the MCU has felt empty without someone flying iron in a metal suit (besides War Machine), and Riri fills that role perfectly and reflects a bright and diverse future.
Wakanda Forever is the most honest film Marvel has released thus far because there is tangible trauma attached to it, so watching the characters struggle to overcome hits home even more. Shuri initially does not want to become the Black Panther because she does not believe in mystic Wakandan traditions. She takes on the mantle out of necessity, not desire, because her people need their protector, but the film makes it clear that this role is less about the physical strength associated with it but the mental fortitude it requires. A surprise cameo from Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger also reveals that because Shuri has not dealt with her grief and is tethered by rage to the ancestral plane, she cannot see her brother or other ancestors.
If there’s ever a moment where Wakanda Forever falters, it’s in how quickly Shuri transitions from mournful to wrathful as she pursues her revenge against Namor following his siege on Wakanda. But like in real life, there is no outline for how someone should react when facing immense loss. Like M’Baku tells her later on in the film, Shuri has dealt with too much in such a short period of time to still be considered a child. The Black Panther mantle is thrust upon her, along with her people’s traditions that she does not fully believe in, and by the end of the film, she doesn’t conform to tradition or become what people expect of her. Instead, she finds her own path and handles her grief the best way she knows how, which is the only victory she really needs.
Even though Boseman is gone, his presence can still be felt throughout the entire film. Beyond the epic aerial fight scenes with Namor (the first MCU character to call themselves a “mutant” on-screen), the introduction of the Midnight Angels, and all of the beautiful depictions of Wakanda and Tlālōcān, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is the shining light of Marvel Phase 4 because it does not rely on these things to be powerful. As the Wakandans believe, death is not an ending but a stepping-off point, and though Shuri struggles to accept that concept at first, we still end with her embracing her mother’s mystic traditions, finally being able to sit with her grief.
There was no wild post-credit scene to set up future MCU movies outside of Black Panther, and there didn’t need to be. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will be remembered as a film that somehow picked up the broken fragments from loss and pieced them back together into a powerful tribute to everything Chadwick Boseman built and was able to leave behind. The person wearing the Black Panther mask may change, but Chadwick and T’Challa’s legacy will live on forever.