Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

There’s a line from the original Black Panther film that seems to hang over its sequel, Wakanda Forever: King T’Challa sees his late father on the ancestral plane and admits tearfully, “I am not ready to be without you.” No one reprises the line in Wakanda Forever, though someone might as well have; the subtext of every scene (and, in many places, the literal text) is that no one is quite sure how to proceed in the absence of the late Chadwick Boseman, or even whether anyone should. In the course of processing the loss of his friend, director Ryan Coogler turns in an almost poetic elegy that manages nonetheless to close out Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with dynamite action and somber grace.

A year after the passing of King T’Challa, his mother Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) has been protecting the throne in his absence while her daughter Shuri (Letitia Wright) grieves in her laboratory. The world thinks Wakanda is weak, and several attempts to steal vibranium bring the underwater king Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía) into conflict with the surface world. While Namor hopes for an allegiance with Wakanda, the African nation is not so sure that there can be peace.

 

It might have been easier to recast the role of T’Challa, carry on as though Wakanda hadn’t lost its king – and one has to imagine there was a corporate suit or two pushing for exactly that. But Coogler and crew have chosen the more difficult path, to make a film that confronts Boseman’s passing head on and to make the film into a kind of celebration of life. Each character feels T’Challa’s absence acutely, reacting multifariously to a world without him. In this way, the film reminds of the more tender scenes in The Rise of Skywalker, in which both audience and performers grappled with the loss of Carrie Fisher and the mournful directionlessness of grief. There’s a metafictional bent to sequences where you’re not sure whether the film is commenting on T’Challa, Boseman, or both, but it’s highly effective all around.

 

Wakanda Forever is emotionally weighty, but it’s also narratively dense, teeing up at least two Disney+ series as well as wherever Namor, sometimes-foe to the Fantastic Four, might turn up next. At two hours and forty-one minutes, there’s probably a joke to be made about Wakanda “Forever,” though I think the film might just as easily have been called “World of Wakanda” – in the sense of both the various factions within Wakanda and the reaction of the geopolitical world to the loss of T’Challa. If there’s anything to be cut, it’s the ties to the other projects: Martin Freeman reprises as Everett Ross, ahead of his turn on Secret Invasion; meanwhile, Dominique Thorne debuts as Riri “Ironheart” Williams, a spunky and precocious inventor who drives but never quite fits into the plot at large. Both are charming and affable presences, but they do more world-building than “World” building.

 

All of the performances in the film are exceptionally strong, almost certainly because of the powerfully true aspects of the story. Wright and Bassett are stellar as the royal family of Wakanda, but it’s a blessing to see Danai Gurira take center stage. Gurira had quietly stolen the show in the first Black Panther as General Okoye, a spirited and deadly warrior, and seeing her as arguably a co-lead is a terrific development. Huerta Mejía, however, is the latest Marvel “find” as Namor; he captures perfectly the character’s unique blend of romantic charm and arrogant swagger. What’s more, the film’s update on Namor, from Atlantean royalty to Mayan ex-pat, is roundly successful, especially in a dazzling sequence when Coogler takes the time to introduce us to his underwater kingdom, Talokan. (One wonders, though, what James Cameron makes of Wakanda Forever featuring blue-skinned ocean dwellers a full month before Avatar: The Way of Water.)

 

Wakanda Forever doesn’t appear that it’ll have the same seismic cultural impact as its predecessor, but then how could it? And isn’t that exactly the point? The film refers several times to a Wakandan mourning ritual, suggesting that the film itself is an extended period of grieving. Its solo mid-credits sequence isn’t a prologue to a new story, but it is the epilogue to this one, a hopeful moment that reminds us, as the Wakandans would say, “Death is not the end. It’s more of a stepping-off point.” And rather than being the end, Wakanda Forever is itself a kind of “stepping-off point” for its characters and for the World of Wakanda, an elegiac coda to what came before – but no less emotionally potent, particularly when the immortal salute “Wakanda forever!” is uttered at a climactic moment. It’s hard not to feel a thrill of excitement after going through the grieving process with this cast. Long live the king.

 

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is rated PG-13 for “sequences of strong violence, action and some language.” Directed by Ryan Coogler. Written by Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole. Based on the Marvel Comics. Starring Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke, Tenoch Huerta Mejía, Martin Freeman, and Angela Bassett.