Black Pan­ther: Wakan­da Forever

II 2018’s Black Pan­ther, when T’Challa meets his deceased father, King T’Chaka, in the ances­tral plane, he mourn­ful­ly pro­fess­es, ​“I am not ready to be with­out you”. Two years lat­er, in August of 2020, the world mourned the death of its star Chad­wick Bose­man. So, as its pre­de­ces­sor opened with the death of a King, so begins Black Pan­ther: Wakan­da For­ev­er – writer/​director Ryan Coogler’s heart­felt and the­mat­i­cal­ly ambi­tious fol­low-up to his crit­i­cal­ly and com­mer­cial­ly adored original.

The key events of this epic sequel take place one year after T’Challa’s death. Queen Ramon­da (the ever-majes­tic Angela Bas­sett) now sits on the throne and must deal with the con­se­quences of T’Challa’s deci­sion to pull Wakan­da from the shad­ows and onto the world’s stage as a pow­er­ful and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced nation. With­out T’Challa, Wakan­da no longer pos­sess­es the heart-shaped herb that imbued the Black Pan­ther with their pow­ers; the result of Kill­mon­ger (Michael B Jor­dan) burn­ing their stores in order to hoard the abil­i­ties for himself.

And yet, as Ramon­da defi­ant­ly asserts at a UN sum­mit, Wakan­da has not lost the abil­i­ty to pro­tect itself. The Dora Mila­je, led by Gen­er­al Okoye (Danai Guri­ra) are as for­mi­da­ble as ever, more than capa­ble of foil­ing the efforts of out­siders to infil­trate their research out­posts in search of the high­ly desir­able super min­er­al, vibra­ni­um. Where Wakan­da faces its true threat, how­ev­er, is from the secret under­wa­ter king­dom of Talokan which is ruled over by Namor (Tenoch Huer­ta), a wing-foot­ed demi-god who beseech­es Wakan­da to join forces and wage war on the colo­nial­ist states of the sur­face world (rep­re­sent­ed by the US and France) to stop their con­tin­ued efforts to steal the pre­cious resource.

Despite Boseman’s death trig­ger­ing obvi­ous changes to Coogler’s plans for the sequel, the director’s com­mit­ment to impact­ful sto­ry­telling is unfal­ter­ing. Wakan­da For­ev­er fur­thers Black Panther’s geopo­lit­i­cal explo­ration of respon­si­bil­i­ty ver­sus preser­va­tion, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly choos­ing to meet the unavoid­able spec­tre of loss and lean into it in ways that are both bold and surprising.

Coogler deploys strik­ing com­men­tary of both exter­nal and inter­nal strife as two nations of colour attack each oth­er while the world’s white gov­ern­men­tal super­pow­ers remain almost entire­ly unaware (but are poised to scoop their prize from the result­ing rub­ble). A moth­er and daugh­ter are both charged to lead and must do so as they reck­on with insur­mount­able grief. In the for­mer, Coogler con­tin­ues to tap into the very real duty peo­ple of colour feel in defend­ing their cul­ture – a mas­sive uphill bat­tle in the face of wide­spread colo­nial plun­der and brazen his­tor­i­cal rewrit­ing at the hands of the oppres­sors. Through the lat­ter, Coogler presents a mov­ing med­i­ta­tion on bereave­ment and the notion of forg­ing a new path.

In telling this sto­ry almost exclu­sive­ly through Black female char­ac­ters we see not only a tri­umphant cel­e­bra­tion of the strength of Black women, but an excep­tion­al dis­play that grants the rare oppor­tu­ni­ty for an audi­ence to see a vari­ety of Black women – each with dif­fer­ent traits, each essen­tial to the plot and grant­ed both depth and agency. In a Hol­ly­wood where Black char­ac­ters fre­quent­ly tend to exist with­out any plot-essen­tial rela­tion­ship to oth­er Black peo­ple shown on screen, or where white char­ac­ters man­age to avoid hav­ing more than one Black per­son in their friend­ship group, Wakan­da For­ev­er offers an embar­rass­ment of rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al riches.

Yet, an inevitable ten­sion aris­es with­in the film in its need to feed the over­ar­ch­ing MCU direc­tive. This caus­es chop­py edit­ing choic­es as well as scenes and char­ac­ters who feel beamed in from an entire­ly dif­fer­ent film. In part, Coogler man­ages to make this oblig­a­tion work to the film’s ben­e­fit with the intro­duc­tion of the thor­ough­ly enjoy­able Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), a bril­liant MIT stu­dent the Wakan­dans must pro­tect from Namor.

RiRi brings a humor­ous, relat­able, fish-out-of-water per­spec­tive to pro­ceed­ings and bounces eas­i­ly off Okoye and Shuri (Leti­tia Wright), who aren’t just sub­lime in their por­tray­als of inte­ri­or suf­fer­ing, but as comedic foils for the film’s many laugh-out-loud moments. How­ev­er, for all the effort tak­en to bal­ance the demands of its nar­ra­tive, the film’s two-hour forty-minute run­time is rid­dled with pac­ing issues that, at times, threat­en to tip it into tedium.

Tak­ing the long view of things, Wakan­da For­ev­er her­alds the end of the MCU’s ​“Phase Four”, a phase that, save for the near-uni­ver­sal praise for 2021’s Spi­der­man: No Way Home, has at best been divi­sive and, at worst, felt like an under­whelm­ing con­vey­or belt of hol­low, mish-mashed place­hold­ers with its tit­u­lar heroes com­ing sec­ond place to the desire to get us excit­ed about inter­di­men­sion­al space wars.

The orig­i­nal Black Pan­ther soared because it sat large­ly inde­pen­dent of its MCU oblig­a­tions. But where Phase Three offered a well-oiled and expert­ly seri­alised super­hero spec­ta­cle, Phase Four has shown much more of its machin­ery, so its pres­ence here – par­tic­u­lar­ly with the emo­tion­al­ly charged pur­pose of the film – feels much more like bag­gage that inter­rupts rather than intertwines.

It’s no easy feat for a film to act as pall­bear­er to the late Bose­man and deliv­er a tale that is fresh and future build­ing. Wright, Guri­ra and espe­cial­ly Bas­sett rise to the occa­sion, with Lupi­ta Nyong’o and Win­ston Duke also giv­ing com­mit­ted and excit­ing per­for­mances. As the well-rea­soned vil­lain of the piece, Huer­ta is engag­ing even when slight­ly con­strained by some of his expo­si­tion­al functions.

Coogler admirably takes a big swing with Wakan­da For­ev­er and it pro­duces a fea­ture that is flu­ent­ly in con­ver­sa­tion with its pre­de­ces­sor, but less so with its posi­tion inside the wider fran­chise uni­verse. There are some notice­able miss­es, but the val­ue of such intri­cate and ele­vat­ed sto­ry­telling can­not be dis­count­ed. Indeed, it’s worth stress­ing that many of the film’s ail­ments may still have occurred had Bose­man lived. Yet Wakan­da For­ev­er pays mov­ing trib­ute to Bose­man and rep­re­sents a chance for all of us to move for­ward. Which, ready or not, is a les­son we’ll all face at one time or another.