REVIEW -- Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a 2022 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Black Panther. Produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, it is the sequel to Black Panther (2018) and the 30th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Directed by Ryan Coogler, who co-wrote the screenplay with Joe Robert Cole, the film stars Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke, Florence Kasumba, Dominique Thorne, Michaela Coel, Tenoch Huerta, Martin Freeman, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Angela Bassett. In the film, the leaders of Wakanda fight to protect their nation in the wake of King T'Challa's death.

Ideas for a sequel began after the release of Black Panther in February 2018. Coogler negotiated to return as director in the following months, and Marvel Studios officially confirmed the sequel's development in mid-2019. Plans for the film changed in August 2020 when Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman died from colon cancer, with Marvel choosing not to recast his role of T'Challa. Other main cast members from the first film were confirmed to return by that November, and the title was announced in May 2021. Production initially took place from late June to early November 2021, in Atlanta and Brunswick, Georgia, as well as around Massachusetts, before a hiatus to allow Wright to recover from an injury sustained during filming. Production resumed by mid-January 2022 and wrapped in late March in Puerto Rico.

Plot

*** SPOILERS BELOW ***

T'Challa, king of Wakanda, is dying from an illness which his sister, Shuri, believes can be cured by the "heart-shaped herb". Shuri attempts to synthetically recreate the herb after it was destroyed by Killmonger, but fails to do so before he succumbs.

One year later, Wakanda is under pressure from other nations to share their vibranium, with some parties attempting to steal it by force. Queen Ramonda implores Shuri to continue her research on the heart-shaped herb, hoping to create a new Black Panther that will defend Wakanda, but she refuses due to her belief that the Black Panther is a figure of the past. In the Atlantic Ocean, the CIA and U.S. Navy SEALs utilize a vibranium-detecting machine to locate a potential vibranium deposit underwater. The expedition is attacked and killed by a group of blue-skinned water-breathing superhumans led by Namor, with the CIA believing Wakanda to be responsible. Namor confronts Ramonda and Shuri, easily bypassing Wakanda's advanced security. Blaming Wakanda for the vibranium race, he gives them an ultimatum: deliver him the scientist responsible for the vibranium-detecting machine, or he will attack Wakanda.

Shuri and Okoye learn from CIA agent Everett K. Ross that the scientist in question is MIT student Riri Williams and arrive at the university to confront her. The group is pursued by the FBI and then by Namor's warriors, who defeat Okoye before taking Shuri and Williams underwater to meet Namor. Angered by Okoye's failure to protect Shuri, Ramonda strips her of her title as general of the Dora Milaje and seeks out Nakia, who has been living in Haiti since the Blip. Namor shows Shuri his vibranium-rich underwater kingdom of Talokan, which he has protected for centuries from discovery by the world. Bitter at the surface world for enslaving the Maya, Namor proposes an alliance with Wakanda against the rest of the world but threatens to destroy Wakanda first if they refuse. Nakia helps Shuri and Williams escape, and Namor retaliates with an attack against Wakanda, during which Ramonda drowns saving Williams. Namor vows to return in a week with his full army, and the citizens of Wakanda relocate to the Jabari mountains for their safety. Meanwhile, Ross is arrested by his ex-wife and CIA director, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, for secretly exchanging classified intelligence with the Wakandans.

After Ramonda's funeral, Shuri uses a remnant of the herb that gave Namor's people their superhuman abilities to reconstruct the heart-shaped herb. She ingests it, gaining superhuman abilities and meeting Killmonger in the Ancestral Plane, who urges her to seek revenge. Shuri dons a new Black Panther suit and is accepted by the other Wakandan tribes as the Black Panther. Despite M'Baku's urges for peace, Shuri is determined to exact vengeance on Namor for Ramonda's death and orders an immediate counterattack on Talokan. Preparing for battle, with Ayo assuming the position of general of the Dora Milaje, Shuri bestows the Midnight Angel armor upon Okoye, who in turn recruits Dora member Aneka to join her. Williams creates an Iron Man-esque powered exoskeleton to aid the Wakandans.

Using a seafaring vessel, the Wakandans lure Namor and his warriors to the surface as a battle ensues. Shuri traps Namor in a fighter aircraft, intending to dry him out and weaken him. The pair crashes on a desert beach and fight. Shuri gains the upper hand, but realizes the similarities between their paths and implores Namor to yield, offering him a peaceful alliance. Namor accepts, and the battle ends. Namor's cousin, Namora, is upset at Namor's surrender, but Namor reassures her that their new alliance will allow them to conquer the surface world one day. Williams returns to MIT, leaving her suit behind, while Okoye rescues Ross from captivity. Shuri plants more heart-shaped herbs to ensure the future of the Black Panther mantle. In Shuri's absence, M'Baku steps forward to challenge for the throne. Shuri visits Nakia in Haiti where she burns her funeral ceremonial robe in accordance with Ramonda's wishes, allowing herself to finally grieve T'Challa.

In a mid-credits scene, Shuri learns that Nakia and T'Challa had a son named Toussaint, who Nakia has been raising in secret far from the pressure of the throne. Toussaint reveals his Wakandan name is T'Challa.

The Verdict:

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is essentially what I thought what it was going to be going into it: a love letter to the late Chadwick Boseman, honoring his life and impact in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and upon the Black Panther character as a whole.

With that being said, I should warn viewers that this film is a tearjerker at multiple points of this story, starting with the opening scene where Shuri fails to recreate the Heart-shaped Herb to save/heal T'Challa from an unknown/undisclosed illness, Queen Ramonda's death by drowning after saving Riri Williams' life, and finally the moment where Shuri meets Nakia and the late T'Challa's son, Toussaint. 

This film seems to handwave away that entire notion that T'Challa established at the end of the first film in terms of opening the doors of Wakanda to the rest of the world, only for that to blow up in their faces following the events of Avengers: Infinity War. After all that has happened in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since the end of that film, I can totally understand backpedaling on that matter, but to see this film never address that at all, is completely jarring.

Namor is confirmed as a mutant in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He and his Mayan people originate from mutations given to them as a result of ingesting an underwater plant that was affected by vibranium. Namor's mother was pregnant at the time when she was convinced to ingest the plant which caused her to give birth to her child (Namor) who could live freely in the water and on the land. When she died, her final wish was to be buried with the rest of her (Mayan) people. Namor's name is revealed to mean "no love" after a flashback shows that the name was given to him by colonists who had enslaved his mother's remaining people on the land. Namor didn't hesitate to slaughter the colonists with the aid of his empowered people and freed the enslaved Mayans. 

I have to admit that Namor's initial debut in this film was a horrifying display of power that we haven't seen for singular antagonist in the MCU since Captain America: The Winter Soldier's Winter Solider/Bucky Barnes. I'm not counting Thanos in that conversation as his presence was felt throughout The Infinity Saga and not just in a single film. If Namor's shocking show of force wasn't enough, then that scene that the chilling imagery of his people luring the CIA and Navy Seals' soldiers to their doom with their hypnotic melody like the stories of the Sirens in The Iliad. I thought we were long overdue for a "scary" villain on par with the Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes' debut. 

Shuri drowns herself into her work and technology (irony ringing its ugly head again) instead of taking the time to to properly mourn T'Challa's death. Namor approaches Shuri and Queen Ramonda about dealing with the scientist who gave the Americans the technology to detect and locate vibranium. I'm honestly surprised that Howard Stark nor Tony Stark never cooked up this technology first, especially in Howard's case after creating Captain America's shield. One would think that they would go crazy over the scientific applications of that rare metal, especially when they were in the business of creating weapons to support the war effort(s). 

The scientist in question is revealed to be a college student by the name of Riri Williams. She's a gifted prodigy, who cooked up the technology after being "dared" to do so by her college professor. Here's one of the first issues that I have with this film's plot. How did she deduce the means to locate and find vibranium when the substance has NEVER been acquired by anyone outside of Howard Stark, Tony Stark, and Captain America? Wakanda took great care not to make it available for just anyone to get a hold of it. Even Ulysses Klaue had a time getting it for Ultron in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Unless something changed about that during the Snap and the Blip, then Riri Williams shouldn't be able to cook up the means to find and locate a substance that she has never seen before without any hard data on its composition, density, etc. on a whim. That fact alone made Riri feel like she was tacked on this plot just to be here only to setup her upcoming Disney+ series. The sad part of that fact is that a minor revision to the plot could have corrected that matter by simply stating that she was one of the students that Wakanda allowed to study at their embassy in the United States and she was tricked into giving those secrets to the American government. 

Queen Ramonda and the Dora Milaje put on an impressive show of force to demonstrate to the United Nations that Wakanda is not showing any signs of weakness despite the lost of their king AND the Black Panther. They capture the mercenaries who were attempting to steal their vibranium by attacking one of their Wakandan embassies and lay them at the feet of their fellow embassadors during an United Nations summit meeting. 

Here's one of the first major issues I have with this film's plot. Why is Wakanda acting like now only now of all times is that their country is being seen as "weak"? Wouldn't their country have been a similar state of disarray when King T'Challa, M'Baku, and Shuri were snapped out of existence like the millions of other people after Thanos acquired all seven Infinity Stones? I was hoping that we (the viewers) would have gotten some insight into how Wakanda adapted and survived that situation over the course of those five years that they thought that they lost their king before he was brought back during the Blip in Avengers: Endgame. Instead, the plot feels like Ryan Coogler didn't watch any other Marvel Cinematic Universe film other than his own film and made this film a direct sequel without any thought whatsoever about what happened to these characters and better yet, the nation of Wakanda as a whole, between those two films. For Christ's sake, no one even mentions how Wakanda was nearly wiped out by Thanos and the Black Order in Avengers: Infinity War. There weren't any of T'Challa's friends from the outside world at his funeral either. Between Black Widow and now this, the MCU doesn't know how to honor their dead properly with these funerals on a consistent basis. Everyone around the galaxy and around the world were in attendance for Tony Stark's funeral at the end of Avengers: Endgame, but they couldn't fly everyone in for a quick cameo for this?

The CIA are convinced that Wakanda are responsible for destroying their offshore mining rig that was searching for vibranium. This puts their mutual ally, Everett K. Ross, into a tricky position to stay loyal to his own country AND to his Wakandan friends who saved his life in the first film. 

What's even more interesting is that Ross is being monitored by his ex-wife and CIA director, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. For those who were looking for any connecting threads between titles in Phase 4, it's Valentina Allegra de Fontaine herself. She's had her hands in just about every major incident in this Phase since we saw her in Black Widow, Hawkeye, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, and finally here in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Since Kevin Feige already revealed the slate for both Phase 5 and Phase 6, we already know that a Thunderbolts film is in the works with "Val" recruiting individuals to make up his team of anti-heroes and former villains. For those keeping track, she has already recruited John Walker/U.S. Agent (The Falcon and The Winter Soldier), Yelena Belova/Black Widow II (Black Widow and Hawkeye respectively), and now she's here pulling the strings as the CIA director. 

This entire ordeal puts Everett into an awkward position since Valentina Allegra de Fontaine has been appointed as his superior officer that he has to answer to. I think this film missed out on a bigger opportunity in terms of making the fear of colonization a bigger threat in this film instead of merely talking about it instead of showing what that looks like to a bigger audience. Talokan and Wakanda are both nations isolated from the outside world to preserve their own ways of life out of fear of colonization. This film pits them against one another out of the fear of exposing themselves to the world, but the viewers never see these outsiders that they fear so much do anything outside of that minor raid that they attempted in the opening moments of the film that the Dora Milaje thwarted easily. The CIA talks about taking action against Wakanda for what they assumed were hostile actions against them, thanks to the attack by Namor and the Talokanil, but we never get to see any action taken whatsoever outside of Ross being arrested for treason. Wakanda is largely stuck in the middle fighting a war against entire the world, specifically Talokan all while keeping their existence a secret at the cost of their own nation's safety in the future. 

Shuri and Okoye are tasked with extracting Riri Williams before Namor comes for her with murderous intentions. Queen Ramonda urged Okoye NOT to take Shuri with her, but convinced this was best for her grieving process. Okoye should have heeded the Queen's warning as Shuri was taken by Talokan warriors that Namor sent to capture Riri. Fortunately, they were taken alive after Shuri surrendered herself willingly after Okoye was bested in combat by Attuma. Queen Ramonda strips Okoye of her rank of general and status as a member of the Dora Milaje after losing the only family she has left. Nobody can blame her since Okoye contributed to Killmonger's coup of their country, which was indirectly responsible for the death of King T'Challa since Killmonger destroyed all of the Heart-shaped Herbs that could have healed him of his mysterious illness. One couldn't blame Ramonda for that reaction after it looking like that she's lost everyone in her family, from her husband to her two children, leaving her the last woman standing in the royal family. Ramonda is left with only one person left that she could rely on bringing Shuri home - Nakia. Nakia was estranged from the rest of Wakanda, but has been regarded as one of their best infiltrators for espionage missions, so Ramonda went to Haiti to seek her out. One thing that I didn't notice on my initial viewing is that Toussaint (who we'll talk about in-depth later) is right there among the rest of the children that great the queen when she arrives in Haiti, but Ramonda doesn't acknowledge him at all. You have to admit that was a little strange.

Namor and Shuri seem to bond on a friendly level after he shares his backstory and home of Talokan to her. I have seen a lot of people confuse this relationship as one with romantic undertones to it and I didn't see that at all. There's been a confirmation of romance scenes between the two being cut as well. Namor was charming yes, but he was looking to gain a powerful ally against the rest of the surface world, so naturally, he would roll out the red carpet to make himself look as non-threatening and friendly as possible to get what he wants. That's manipulation 101. Namor maintains his stance on wanting to kill Riri and the rest of the surface world in order to protect Talokan. Shuri is adamant for a peaceful resolution until Nakia is forced to kill two of Namor's people who were guarding Shuri and Riri's cell while she was attempting to rescue them. Shuri attempts to save their lives but she is too late once again, much like her fruitless attempt to save T'Challa at the start of the film. 

Namor retaliates for those lost lives of his people with an attack on Wakandan soil. This is a pretty one-sided battle with a high toll of casualties and injured incurred as a result of this battle to the Wakandan people. Namor singlehandedly deals the most damage to Wakanda's military forces and even dispatches M'Baku with a single strike, crushing his armor in the process. I thought he died from that blow when I saw it at first glance. He ends up surviving without any problems, but there was a different character who ended up losing their lives in this battle - Queen Ramonda. She drowns rescuing Riri Williams from the watery tomb that Namor leaves them in. Shuri was powerless to save another person she held dear from losing their lives and found herself forced to watch her mother die. For what it is worth, Ramonda brought this fate onto herself by enticing Namor's wrath in the first place by threatening to reveal his existence to the rest of the surface world. You can combine that with Nakia's actions that added more fuel to that fire.

Shuri and the rest of Wakanda are forced to bury yet another member of the royal family while M'Baku is consulted to step up to defend Wakanda from any future threats by the elders. Out of respect, M'Baku mentions this to Shuri after the funeral. She gives her blessing to him to accept that promotion while she opts for a different approach to secure Wakanda's safety - by recreating the Heart-shaped Herb. Ironically enough, she manages to do so without any issues within a single montage while Riri Williams works on a new exosuit armor. I want to take a moment and applaud both Ryan Coogler and Marvel Studios for this imagery of two intelligent black women working together. That maybe something small for some, but the sight of that in a superhero film like this is worth its weight in gold to people of color in terms of positive representation, especially for young women to look up to. 

Shuri combines traces of the underwater plant (that was gifted to her by Namor in a bracelet) that was responsible for mutating Namor's mother and the rest of his people since it was affected by vibranium along with a sample of T'Challa's DNA to create the new Herb. I thought this was a nice touch in a meaningful way to honor both T'Challa and Chadwick Boseman since every future Black Panther will be infused with a portion of his DNA. I have to wonder if that will mean that every future Black Panther will inherit whatever disease that killed him too.

Shuri drinks the artificial Herb and is horrified that she doesn't see her ancestors nor lost loved ones. Instead, she sees Killmonger in one hell of a surprise cameo in this film. How the hell did Marvel Studios keep that cameo under wraps is beyond me, but bravo for pulling it off. Additionally, I had to laugh at this turn of events as what else was Shuri expecting when she made the Great Value Brand Heart-Shaped Herb to get new powers? She had to be a goddamn fool to think it was going to work PERFECTLY like the original. She was lucky that she got a vision at all instead of some hallucination and started foaming at the mouth after ingesting that thing. Killmonger sees that Shuri's heart is full of rage as she wants revenge and wants to see the world burn along with Namor's head on a pike for killing her mother. This was where I was shaking my head in the theater at this plot. Shouldn't she be more mad at Killmonger for setting all of these events into motion? C'mon. If he didn't burn all of the Heart-Shaped Herbs then T'Challa wouldn't have died in the first place. 

For the sake of the narrative, I can understand what Killmonger's presence and the imagery of Wakanda in flames represented on a symbolic level. I saw it as a reflection of Shuri's inner turmoil - her rage and feelings of helplessness that she lost her entire family now. She said it herself. She wanted to see the entire world burn in her grief. I saw that vision also as a reflection of her religious faith being shaken. From everything that has transpired since the events of the first film, it is not a stretch to find out that maybe she was questioning herself about maybe Killmonger was right and her brother's methods were the wrong course of action. The only thing that this "vision" of sorts did was solidify her complete dismissal of her religious faith as she didn't see her ancestors nor Bast came to enlighten her like so many before her. It's sad to see this play out as everything is going downhill in her life. She already lost everything with the only ace up her sleeve that she had left to resort to - restoring the Heart-Shaped Herb was looking to be another tally in the L column if it failed to give her the powers of the Black Panther. In contrast to the first film, Killmonger didn't see the Ancestral Plane the same manner that T'Challa saw it earlier in that film either. It seems like the Ancestral Plane manifests itself to show the consumer of the Herb whatever heavy on their heart and offers someone to give advice in that situation. Let's not forget that T'Challa turned his back on his ancestors and former leaders in the first film after citing their mistakes in the past and refused to take his place among them on the Ancestral Plane, so I had no expectations whatsoever of seeing him among this vision for Shuri. Whether Shuri liked it or not, the one person who she could identify with was Killmonger given their similar circumstances, specifically with his own experience in acting with vengeance in one's heart. The Ancestral Plane saw that he was the only individual who was qualified to advise Shuri with the vengeance in her heart and desires for revenge. 

Contrary to her beliefs (or rather lack thereof), she was still bestowed with the powers but the viewers are never given any particular reasoning to why this synthetic Herb was able to replicate the powers without any complications. The film just continues on as if we don't need to understand the why of this turn of events, but only care about the fact that Shuri is new Black Panther and we should just deal with it. The film up to this point has been urging Shuri to take action, but when she finally does, it's the wrong course of action. It is at this very moment where Shuri's grieving process is poorly portrayed here. I'm not saying that she shouldn't be angry as she has every right to be after everything that has happened. She was calm and level-headed throughout this entire process until she has this one vision and all of a sudden her character takes a complete 180 in terms of acting like her cousin (Killmonger) in the previous film. This change in her character didn't feel natural at all and only felt like this switch was made to proceed into the final battle. Killmonger merely asked Shuri what she was going to do next after Namor and his army return to attack Wakanda again. Will she be honorable like her brother, or will she choose the path of vengeance? As soon as the dream was over, she went full into a heel turn - taking a turn eerily similar to what the Scarlet Witch went down in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. The major difference was that Shuri didn't go to the extremes that Wanda did - at least didn't cross that point. The viewers had the chance to process what was going on with all of the grief that she has endured since throughout the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, and finally WandaVision before she fully was consumed by her rage. With Shuri, this film accelerates her trauma and grieving process just to hit the home run stretch of this film and it doesn't come across as natural at all. Shuri was becomes unhinged at this point and nothing wasn't going to stop her until she got her hands on Namor for he's done. Maybe if Letitia Wright was a better actress that point would have hit home harder, or maybe the lackluster writing of this film didn't give her anything to work with. Whatever the case was one thing was certain, this film needed more time to convey those heavy emotions a little better. Grief makes people do some questionable and irrational things in the heat of the moment, yes, but there had to be a better way to get that across onscreen.

At this point of the film, this is where I had a lot of issues with a few things. You can't tell me that Wakandans would have all of this advanced nation in the world, yet they don't have any means to treat possible drowning victims and still are fighting their battles primarily with spears like savages. Let's not forget that the rest of the world already recognized the destructive potential of weaponized vibranium without even having possession of it, yet Wakanda hasn't even considered that for their own defensive counter-measures, especially after how Thanos and the Black Order flattened their country with their invasion? You can't tell me that Wakandans would have all of this advanced technology and would still have their people living in primitive villages within fragile looking huts. It doesn't portray this advanced culture of people of color in a positive light. One would think even those tribes who were against the adopting advanced technology would be singing a different tune after Avengers: Infinity War. 

As a person of color (namely a black male) watching this, I can't condone yet another Hollywood representation of black culture in a negative connotation under the veil of a celebration of the life of the late Chadwick Boseman. A lot of people aren't going to look that deep into this and will continue to blindly applaud this film for it's cultural significance and what it means for diverse representation in this medium and more importantly this genre as a whole, but much like the original film, I can't overlook these narrative and visual shortcomings that present what should be the apex of black culture as no different than their primitive roots. The film goes out of its way in two pivotal battles to make Wakanda come across extremely stupid to their adversaries - an opponent that they have gathered data on at least multiple points in this film prior to their invasion of Wakanda. Let's not forget that Nakia made it look like child's play to kill the Talokanil when she stormed into their prison to rescue Riri and Shuri, so what was so different about the full scale invasion? M'Baku even flat out asks the question as a joke: what exactly were the river tribe doing in terms of defending Wakanda from attacks from the water?

Here's another point as a person of color watching this film: did we really need more death as a motivator in this film? The death of T'Challa was more than enough to move the people of Wakanda into action, but we had to kill off Queen Ramonda too? People of color see their own kind being killed off in reality more than enough on a regular basis from various sources - police brutality, hate crimes, medical malpractice, gang violence, random shootings, and so on. I can't speak for anyone else, but it felt extremely tone deaf and in bad taste within a film that was already mourning the real life death of Chadwick Boseman. If death is the only thing you can cook up to as a call to action in your writing, then you need better writers. Trauma isn't resolved with more trauma. 

During that same montage where Shuri creates the new Heart-Shaped Herb, Riri Williams creates her own prototype exosuit like Ironman, much like her comic book counterpart. I have to be honest, but when I saw the toys that were part of the merchandise promoting this film, I thought her armor looked pretty bad, especially when I saw her Marvel Legends figure and other assorted toys associated with this film. When I saw her exosuit in action during the film's final battle, I thought it looked even worse, especially with the CGI (computer-generated imagery) not doing it any favors in terms of how weird and cheesy it looked. What made things even worse was the fact that Shuri made two more exosuits, dubbed the Midnight Angels, for Okoye and Aneka to level the playing field in terms of their fighting power against Namor and his people. To Marvel Studios' credit though, those suits looked just as ugly as they looked in live-action as they did in the comics. I can understand that they didn't want to distance themselves too far from the original design but in action, these exosuits look extremely stupid and needed a better design to compliment their inclusion into this film to say that resources were wasted on this when they could have been used to elsewhere to improve other aspects of this film. That being said, it made for a rather clumsy looking final battle with all of these wannabe Ironmen flying around. To be fair though, it wasn't anywhere as bad as the horrible looking final battle in the original film with the computer-generated animals running around, so we can take satisfaction in that regard.

Speaking of weird and awkward, Shuri's new Black Panther costume looks really bland without any muscle tone on her scrawny/rail thin body. It should be noted that Shuri's new costume is a hybrid of both T'Challa and Killmonger's costume designs. 

Shuri's new inventions and acceptance of the mantle of the Black Panther weren't the only new tricks up her sleeves. She devised a means to take the fight directly to Namor before they could return to Wakanda to finish them off. I should mention that I thought it was pretty stupid of Namor to retreat when they had the Wakandans beat, only to give them time to mourn and bury their dead - along with time for planning a counterattack. He didn't even kill Riri like he intended before leaving. Nope. He gave them an entire week to get ready for a counterattack. 

Shuri creates a sonic weapon that is housed to the hull of a Wakandan ship to use against Namor's forces underwater. The device only slows them down for a while until they destroy it. Fortunately, they couldn't use their siren song tactic again since all of the Wakandans were wearing protective earplugs to counteract against it. Meanwhile, Shuri sets a trap for Namor after Ironheart lures him into her ship where he is drained of the moisture in his body to level the playing field. Namor destroys the device regardless, but Shuri manages crashes the ship on the beach of the desert nearby. To say Shuri is supposed to be so smart, I was left wondering why didn't she develop some sort of alcohol-based weaponry or a prison to confine Namor within?

(Laughs) I guess she didn't see that episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends ("7 Little Superheroes") where Chameleon just tricked Namor into diving into a pool of alcohol and it dried him right up. By the way, it's on Disney+ if anyone wants to revisit that for a good laugh if the video above isn't working.

Shuri's plan didn't change much of the outcome of this battle for the most part as it was another example of making making Wakanda look stupid just for the sake of this film's plot to work. Why would the Wakandans take the fight to Namor and the rest of the Talokanil in the middle of the ocean where the Talokanil would have the greatest advantage? To say that Wakanda is supposed to be most technologically advanced civilization on Earth and the smartest, this film does absolutely nothing to convey that in these battles. Namor still dominates majority of this fight since he is actually a seasoned warrior with over 500 years of experience in battle while Shuri is goddamn scientist with little to no combat training (at least to the audience's knowledge). After being impaled in the abdomen by Namor's spear, Shuri busts out a Hail Mary play in the form of roasting Namor with the boosters from her crashed ship. She then motions to avenge her mother by impaling Namor with his own spear but at that moment, she receives a vision from Queen Ramonda, reminding her who she is. Shuri spares Namor's life, who then orders the Talokanil to yield when they were on the verge of completely overwhelming the Wakandans. This moment bothered me a lot, especially when I know the comic book version of Attuma would have seen Namor's surrender and defeat as a clear cut sign of weakness and opted to lead the others against the surface world himself, but we didn't get any sign of that here. 

I've said it multiple times now in the past and I'll say it again here for Marvel Studios: STOP WASTING YOUR VILLAINS!!!

Shuri promises Namor that Wakanda would protect them as an ally. Namor would later confide in his sister Namora that he sees this as a weakness to be exploited at a later date as Wakanda is surrounded by enemies at all angles. 

The challenge for the throne ritual returns but M'Baku answers the challenge in Shuri's absence. This scene came off really weird and odd to me since it needed a better explanation. Apparently, M'Baku is the new "king" of Wakanda after Shuri showed no interest in becoming queen. Wakanda is in great hands as M'Baku has shown great leadership qualities in these two films, despite losing to T'Challa in his challenge for the throne in the first film and finding himself in a minuscule role in this film for the most part. From the way how I interpreted this ending, they are setting it up to where that M'Baku sits on the throne and rules over Wakanda with his underrated amount of wisdom while Shuri continues to do what she has always done, acting from the sidelines and strengthening their defenses with her keen intellect and prowess. 

In the closing moments of the film, Shuri visits Nakia in Haiti and engages in the burning of the funeral garments ritual to finally mourn and process her pain for losing both T'Challa and Ramonda. In a mid-credits teaser, Nakia introduces Shuri to her and T'Challa's son, Toussaint, that they raised outside of Wakanda's traditions and pressures from the royal family. Toussaint reveals to Shuri that his Wakandan name is T'Challa. 

My question with all of this above all else is WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN!!???

If I'm doing my math here properly, then Nakia and T'Challa had to have had their child together immediately following the events of Black Panther and even before Avengers: Infinity War to say that their child is already that old at this point. Upon my first watch/viewing of this film, I thought the idea of T'Challa's son was another nice gesture to honor the late Chadwick Boseman, but the more I thought about it after the fact as I was working on this review, I'm seeing it more as a cop out to silence the demands of Boseman's recasting. It paints the picture that Marvel Studios and Ryan Coogler had cold feet about killing off T'Challa in the first place. It shows to me that they aren't confident about the future of relying on Letitia Wright's Shuri carrying on the mantle of Black Panther. With Kang the Conqueror being setup as the next big bad who will challenge the Avengers as we're right in the middle of what Kevin Feige is calling "The Multiverse Saga" then what's stopping Marvel Studios from aging up this kid to bring in his adult counterpart from a future timeline or pulling one of T'Challa's alternate selves that survived that mysterious illness or never contracted it altogether from popping up in the near future? They left the door wide open for that. 

This whole situation just adds to this film's laundry list of issues of having T'Challa's fate mirror the real life tragedy of losing Chadwick Boseman. Artists and writers change all the time in the comic book medium where these characters have originated from. Why should this situation be handled differently when an actor passes away? If they have done the same for James Bond, then that franchise would have ended when Sean Connery died in 2020. I have said it numerous times on social media and I will say it again in this review: absolutely NO ONE can take away the fact and honor that Chadwick Boseman was the first African-American to portray the Black Panther/T'Challa in a live-action setting/feature film. That is in the history books forever. Recasting another actor in that role isn't going to erase what he did nor take away his significance. 

Characters

Closing Thoughts

Going into Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, I knew I wasn't too enthusiastic about where they were going in terms of setting up Letitia Wright's Shuri as the new Black Panther going forward. The events of this film didn't change my opinion of her character either as it left me in a state of flux in terms of wondering where are they going next with this corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The state of the MCU as a whole throughout Phase Four and where do we go forward is a completely different topic that I will discuss in a future article, but concerning Wakanda and the key characters within feel like they were merely glossed over in this film. The more I think about this film after watching it, the more I feel like this film was washed up into the emotions of mirroring Chadwick Boseman's real life tragedy into T'Challa's fate that Ryan Coogler and the rest of the think tank at Marvel Studios completely missed the boat about what would have been a better story to tell in this situation. The biggest story to tell here would have been highlighting what happened in those five years after the Snap in Wakanda following Thanos' attack on Earth. It seemed like a massive missed opportunity to tell that story with the remaining cast, especially when you wouldn't need Chadwick Boseman to do it.

The same story about Namor threatening Wakanda in their moment of weakness and mourning (as T'Challa was already gone as a result of the Snap) could have been told here with little to no changes to that part of the narrative since it would not have been much of a stretch to see that he (like many others) wanted to take advantage of the universe's instablity as a result of that turn of events. If the bigger point of this film was conveying the strength of Wakanda and its people then that would have been an equally powerful film without toying with the emotions of viewers with a real life tragedy by blurring the lines of reality and fiction. Ryan Coogler's original plans for this film (if Boseman was still alive) was going to follow T'Challa dealing with his grief after being robbed of five years of his life thanks to the actions of Thanos. That would have been interesting to explore, but I doubt it would have much different than what we got here unless they went into detail concerning what T'Challa missed out on. 

Update (12/24/22): Ryan Coogler revealed in yet another interview that his original plan for this film would have seen T'Challa and Toussaint in a father-son narrative where T'Challa attempts to make up the time that he lost with his son that he missed over the five years that he was away during the Snap. Namor would have remained in the film as an antagonist, but would have joined Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Val as the core conflict of the film would have been triple threat between Talokan, the US, and Wakanda. Like previously mentioned, I wished Coogler would have leaned more into that for this film instead of blending too much of reality into this story in terms of mirroring T'Challa's death with Chadwick Boseman's own. 

Watch It or Don't Bother?

This one is a tough call. This isn't a bad film by any means, but it's hard to recommend this film depending on what viewers would be looking for going into it. If you are looking for a homage to the life of Chadwick Boseman, then you definitely got that here and definitely go out of your way to check this out. On the contrary though, if you're looking for Phase 4 to be wrapped up with a bow to tie all of the threads together and lay out of the groundwork for the next chapter in the Multiverse Saga, then you're going to be painfully disappointed with this film.

For the last film of Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I thought Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was a decent film, but one that wasn't without faults. For casual viewers, this film being a love letter and celebration of the life of Chadwick Boseman in the wake of his real life death would be enough to see this in it's own right, but hardcore fans might be left looking for a bit more by the time the credits roll. I can't say that I cared for the decision to blend a real life tragedy into this fictional narrative either if I was perfectly honest. 

This is a film does nothing to remedy the majority mindset that pegs Phase 4 to leading to nowhere when it was the contrary. Phase 4 was essentially the road to recovery among a lot of these heroes and heroines as they navigate through their own grief and other assorted mental trauma as a result of the Infinity Saga. Phase 4 also echoed the theme of identity throughout all of these projects with all of these heroes struggling to find out who they are and/or who will they be going forward. Phase 4's projects conveyed this throughout the introduction of the Multiverse as our established heroes and villains encountered alternate versions of themselves. New heroes that were introduced juggled with the responsibilities of their newfound powers and legacies that come with them in terms with these successors. Other heroes struggled with who their own identities going forward following the events of the Infinity Saga. 

Phase 4 started with Natasha Romanoff confronting her past and making peace with those past decisions while we saw other heroes, such as Sam Wilson, Shang-Chi, Steven Grant, She-Hulk/Jennifer Walters, Thor, and the Eternals to name a few, choose to ignore the call to action until circumstances outside of their control pulled them in regardless. We saw other heroes, specifically Dr. Strange, Spider-Man, Loki, and the Scarlet Witch, bear witness to the consequences of their own actions of allowing their emotions, specifically their grief, have cataclysmic consequences that could ripple across not just their singular universe, but ALL universes, thanks to the introduction of the Multiverse. After all that has transpired, these heroes can all agree on one thing - life goes on. Their struggles and triumphs have not gone unnoticed as they are constantly inspiring a new generation of heroes to join their fight - Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel, Kate Bishop/Hawkeye, and Yelena Belova/Black Widow to name a few. 

Shuri's journey in this film is no different as she has to navigate her own grief following T'Challa's death in her own way while finding the inner strength to answer the call to action. Wakanda still stands. Shuri still has her home and family to protect. Most importantly above all else, she still has a reason to fight. She still has a reason to keep going. If not for the nation of Wakanda, Shuri has a reason to fight not just to protect Wakanda from outsiders, but to pave a way for a future where her nephew Toussaint, thus maintaining her family's legacy.