Praise the ancestors! We are less than one month away from the premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The highly-anticipated sequel is expected to honor but not replace King T’Challa, played by the late Chadwick Boseman, and introduce some new faces, including a revamped look at the fable of a lost underwater city.
Not to mention Queen Mother Angela Bassett, whose iconic, regal performance will no doubt command our attention. Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Danai Gurira, and Danny Sapani are also reprising their roles.
The emotional first trailer debuted at Comic-Con on July 23 during Marvel’s epic presentation, which confirmed T’Challa’s death would be a part of the storyline, following Boseman’s tragic death from colon cancer in August 2020. The movie also marks the debut of Namor, played by Tenoch Huerta, one of Marvel Universe’s oldest characters, and it will bring Phase 4 to a close.
Wear your white or African attire to see Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in theaters on Nov. 11. Below is everything you need to know about the movie before you check it out.
What will Wakanda Forever be about?
According to the synopsis, Queen Ramonda, Shuri, M’Baku, Okoye, and the Dora Milaje fight to protect their nation from intervening world powers in the wake of King T’Challa’s death. As the Wakandans strive to embrace their next chapter, the heroes must band together with Nakia and Everett Ross to forge a new path for their beloved kingdom.
“Ramonda realizes that it’s been a year since T’Challa’s passing and Shuri’s still not healing,” Black Panther director Ryan Coogler explains in an interview with PER IGN. “She’s not taking steps to move forward in a healthy way. They take a retreat—stepping away from the city, from the technology—to sit with no distractions and perform what is essentially a grief ritual. That’s when Namor shows up.”
Wakanda Forever shines a light on the Atlantis legend
According to the comics, the character Namor and Atlantis fought with Wakanda, who wants to take control of the nation. In Infinity, another Marvel crossover comic story Shuri, who is the Black Panther decides to attack Atlantis to take revenge for Namor’s previous actions in Wakanda.
But in Wakanda Forever, instead of Atlantis, Wakanda’s nemesis hails from the underwater city of Talokan, based on a mythical Aztec city that was sunk by the gods.
Incorporating the Mesoamerican culture has been praised in the Latin culture, as one person tweeted, “As a Mexican-American actor with darker skin and a child of indigenous parents, I’ve felt firsthand the colorism inflicted on Latin-Americans in entertainment.”
Rihanna’s new single is a tribute to Boseman
After a six-year hiatus, Rihanna has finally blessed us with new music. On Oct. 28, she debuted her newest single, “Lift Me Up,” as part of the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack. The gospel ballad is a tribute to the life and legacy of Boseman.
Coogler said when visualizing the soundtrack, he wanted an artist whose overall message felt aligned with the sequel.
“Rihanna was at the top of that list,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “We knew she was at a point in her life as well where she was focusing on different things — you know, focusing on business, motherhood, which is a big theme in our film — so we were holding out hope that maybe it could work out and, boy, did it.”
In addition to Rihanna’s single, the soundtrack features Future, Burna Boy, Tems, and more. The soundtrack was released on Nov. 4.
The movie honors Boseman, whose character is not recast
Like Boseman, Coogler incorporates Boseman’s death into the story and has T’Challa pass away as well. The latest trailer, released on Oct. 3, pays homage to Boseman by showing the funeral of King T’Challa.
The trailer then switches from the funeral memorial to the new world without The Black Panther.
To honor his memory, the studio opted out of plans to recast the role of T’Challa or use a digital version of him in the sequel, despite a petition with over 60,000 signatures to recast his character.
It just felt like it was much too soon to recast,” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said in an interview with Empire. “Stan Lee always said that Marvel represents the world outside your window. And we had talked about how, as extraordinary and fantastical as our characters and stories are, there’s a relatable and human element to everything we do. The world is still processing the loss of Chad. And [director] Ryan [Coogler] poured that into the story.”
Feige added, “The conversations were entirely about, yes, ‘What do we do next?’ And how could the legacy of Chadwick — and what he had done to help Wakanda and the Black Panther become these incredible, aspirational, iconic ideas — continue? That’s what it was all about.”
Boseman never saw the script
As a matter of fact, Boseman had the opportunity to read the script for the sequel before he died but he declined.
“I just finished it, man. My last conversation was calling him, asking him if he wanted to read it before I got notes from the studio,” Coogler recalled. “That was the last time we spoke. And yeah, so I, you know, he passed maybe a couple of weeks after I finished.”
He added that Boseman, “didn’t wanna read it because he didn’t wanna get in the way of whatever notes the studio might have. So he was like, ‘It’s better if I can read it later.’ But I found later that he was too tired to read anything.”
Is Shuri the new Black Panther?
Despite the decision not to recast T’challa, there was never any speculation on whether there will not be one. The trailer shows possible hints of who the new black panther will be and all fingers point to T’Challa’s sister, Shuri, played by Wright.
The two shared a close bond. Wright said she felt the late actor’s spirit while recovering from an injury she experienced during filming.
“And I could hear my brother [Chadwick Boseman] just tell me that I could do it. I didn’t feel like I could do it,” she shared during an interview on Tamron Hall. “I didn’t feel like I could go back. […] Yeah, and in those moments I admired his journey even more because he dealt with something that we didn’t know about until he passed away and you know, I’m trying to contain it, but I never got to say goodbye to my brother [Boseman], so just going through that situation, it was another opportunity for leadership and strength to come out, and just for him to be such a leader at a time when he was facing so much, and I just felt like once I got the healing I needed and I went back, I finished stronger.”
When Will Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Be on Disney+?
According to the Decider, Disney typically streams movies on Disney+ up to 45 days after their theatrical debut. If that is the case, it’s possible to see Black Panther: Wakanda Forever streaming on Friday, December 30, before New Year’s Eve. But if Disney wants to release it earlier, it could make a great Christmas surprise.
