New Black Panther: Wakanda now has a new champion, and another hero is poised to take his place now that King T’Challa has left for his great reward. After Chadwick Boseman passed away from colon cancer in 2020, the director of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Ryan Coogler, had to choose a successor to carry the storied Marvel Cinematic Universe character into Phase 5 and beyond. The solution, which is not entirely surprising, is that Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright), who took on her late brother’s superhero duty, enters the picture. However, she makes a point of personalizing the Black Panther super-suit.
However, Coogler has a huge surprise planned for Wakanda Forever’s mid-credits scene. It finds out that T’Challa Jr. has the potential to inherit the mask in a few years. Shuri encounters the young prince-in-waiting, who goes by the name Toussaint outside of Wakanda while she is visiting her brother’s lover, Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), in her present residence in Haiti. But he is aware of his family’s history: “I am Prince T’Challa, the son of King T’Challa,” Toussaint informs Aunt Shuri with pride.
According to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) timeline, Toussaint would have been born sometime between the conclusion of the first Black Panther movie and the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War, which resulted in T’Challa becoming one of the “blipped” — the people who lost five years of their lives as a result of Thanos’s finger-snap. Toussaint is six years old after the Blip time jump and the year that passes after T’Challa’s passing, so he still has a lot of maturing to do before he’s ready to take up his father’s role, which is likely to happen when The Multiverse Saga is finished.
In interviews, Coogler has disclosed that in his initial version of Wakanda Forever, T’Challa dealt directly with the consequences of the Snap, and it’s possible that one of those consequences was missing his son’s first five years of life. According to the Creed director, “It had comparable ideas, but it was very much based on his perspective.” And he was experiencing some relatable things, unlike Shuri and Ramonda’s expertise in this film.
Speaking of Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), Nakia reassures Shuri that despite being unaware of Toussaint’s existence, her mother had contact with the youngster before meeting her demise. (More on that below.) Nakia explains why she and Toussaint moved to Haiti: “We believed it was better for him to grow up away from the pressures of the throne. She also discloses that T’Challa asked them both not to attend his Wakandan funeral in favor of a private memorial to ” prepare” them both for the reality that he was going to pass away.
For the record, “Toussaint” is undoubtedly a reference to the Haitian Revolution hero and 18th-century general Toussaint Louverture. Additionally, as Wakanda Forever shows, the fiercely anti-colonialist Wakanda is coming under growing pressure from the outside world to open its borders to other countries – if not voluntarily. Therefore, the nation will require leaders who are prepared to confront bullies and exploiters from abroad. Prince T’Challa will follow Nakia and Aunt Shuri’s example and develop into the hero his native country both needs and deserves.
Here are our responses to some of the other frequently asked questions about Wakanda Forever, including who joins T’Challa in the Ancestral Plane and which MCU characters appear to set up Phase 5 and beyond.
Image Source: Looper
T’challa Died in What Way?
It has to be a broken heart in the end. When word of Boseman’s tragic death surfaced two years ago, Marvel fans undoubtedly felt their hearts break. And when they were filming Wakanda Forever, Black Panther’s cast and the crew openly discussed the emotional toll of his passing.
According to Wright, who recently spoke with Yahoo Entertainment, “It was difficult because you’re trying to figure out your feelings as you’re going through pre-production.” It’s bro [Boseman] telling you, “You could do this. One day at a time, you can do this.” And I think it’s just us pouring our hearts out for him into this movie. How we care for him, how we miss him. We pour it all into this film. “Some days you’re like, ‘Can we snap & wake up? This has to be a dream.’
In the film’s first scene, T’Challa passes away off-screen while Shuri rushes to her lab in search of a means to save him. Wakanda’s monarch hasn’t revealed to his followers or his court that he has a terminal sickness that directly affects his heart, much like Boseman, who kept his struggle with colon cancer hidden from the public. As she attempts to create the heart-shaped herb that is the source of the Black Panther’s powers and was eradicated by Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) in the last movie, T’Challa’s sister quips, “T’Challa’s heart is failing.”
She’s sadly too late to help T’Challa. Ramonda sobs as she tells her, “Your brother is with the ancestors,” as mother and daughter get ready to oversee T’Challa’s painful funeral. The Black Panther’s coffin ascends into the sky and enters the hold of an airborne vessel as the ritual finishes, heading for his ultimate resting place.
Ramonda reclaimed the Wakandan kingdom a year later, but the herb’s destruction has left the Black Panther’s position vacant. When Talokan, a realm governed by the aquatic god-king Namor, is discovered by Shuri’s nation, she loses interest in everything outside her lab (Tenoch Huerta). The herb and the priceless metal vibranium, which the rest of the world lusts after and comes from Wakanda, are also in possession of his people.
As tensions rise, Ramonda loses her life in the ensuing armed war between the two countries. When Namor leads an attack on Wakanda’s capital, large swaths of the city are destroyed, and the country’s queen’s throne room is transformed into a murky cemetery. Shuri, now an orphan, must deal with the loss of another family member and the thought of taking on the two roles that her mother and brother used to play.
Who Assists Shuri in Becoming the New Black Panther?
To be clear, Shuri is the sole author of the solution to the Black Panther equation involving the heart-shaped plant. The princess intensifies her attempts to create the plant after Namor attacks Wakanda, even utilizing her brother’s DNA as one of the components for the lab-grown kind. She develops an experimental serum through trial and error that is a 97 percent match for the natural herb, and she doesn’t hesitate to use it on herself, albeit with help. She pauses before taking a sip of the purple potion, saying to Nakia, “I might go into cardiac arrest.”
Fortunately, Shuri’s heart keeps beating, and she eventually makes it to the Ancestral Plane, where she fully anticipates seeing Ramonda. Instead, she encounters her cousin Killmonger, who Jordan once more portrays in a fleeting but impactful cameo. Shuri lashes out at T’Challa’s usurper, claiming that he killed T’Challa by destroying the heart-shaped plant out of rage that he is the family member waiting for her in the afterlife. She says, “You’re the reason he’s dead.”
Killmonger has a different message for his cousin: Their meeting wasn’t a coincidence. When she confronts Namor again, he responds, “You picked me,” remarking that T’Challa was “too honorable” to carry out the necessary actions. “Can you handle business like me, or are you noble like him?”
Shuri wonders this as she returns to the living world while still possessing all of the Black Panther’s abilities. She creates her outfit and commands Wakanda’s troops in Talokan’s second battle, which ends with her duel with Namor. Both are severely injured after the fierce fight, but Shuri emerges victorious. Ramonda beams in from the Ancestral Plane to grasp her daughter’s hand at precisely the moment when one fatal strike will exact revenge for the loss of her mother. As it turns out, Shuri is just as noble as her brother, and her noble character is not a defect.
Shuri is introduced in Wakanda Forever as the MCU’s Black Panther for the upcoming Phases, but she doesn’t seem to be usurping her mother and brother’s position as monarch. She misses the coronation to fly to Haiti to visit her nephew at the movie’s end, leaving Jabari chieftain M’Baku (Winston Duke) to declare his intention to take the throne. As a result, Shuri is free to develop new and improved technology, which will be helpful once the Multiverse Saga antagonist Kang the Conquerer (Jonathan Majors), begins to make his move.
