[Spoilers] Black Panther: Wakanda Forever [Analysis & Easter Eggs]

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever opened on Friday 11 November, and this one is nothing but spoilers! I’ll write about the film as a whole plus Namor, T’Challa II and Val, the key points, the analysis, the Easter eggs and my predictions for what comes next.

In this article I’ll write briefly about what stood out on a first viewing and the Easter eggs, and then get into the analysis.

Spoilers ahead

Episode-by-episode reviews of the shows that aired earlier are behind the images below — click through!

[Massive in-depth commentary, including the last one] “Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness” [Discussion, Easter Eggs].

Contents

Recent hobby

I’ve started shooting all sorts of things for fun lately. The camera is an α7 IV, shooting RAW and editing in Lightroom.

Easter eggs, trivia and analysis

A tribute to Chadwick Boseman

Mourning and respect for the man who played T’Challa / Black Panther come through everywhere in this film. Wonderful. The funeral at the start, and the Marvel Studios logo cut together out of Boseman’s scenes so far — it made me so sad… Boseman’s death had never quite felt real to me, so I was in much the same place as Shuri, but at the scene near the end where the funeral clothes are burned… ah, he really has gone. I could accept it too. They could have brought him back with CG or something, but that would have thinned out the sense that he really did die, so I felt that may be why they didn’t do it this time.

Shuri, the new queen and Black Panther

Shuri… well, I think she got dug into pretty deeply. Unlike her high-minded brother she’s all too human, and that was good. The reason she doesn’t kill Namor — remembering the people of both nations and stopping — and the vomiting, which felt like self-awareness starting to grow in her. Really liked that

Putting her strength, her science, to work to bring Black Panther back — magnificent!! Can she protect a Wakanda that ends up isolated from the world… Really looking forward to it!

That last scene burning the funeral clothes was genuinely fine acting…

T’Challa’s son

T’Challa and Nakia had a son all along!!!!! And his name is T’Challa too!! Common enough outside Japan! If both were alive you’d tell them apart as Senior and Junior. But the first one has passed away, so T’Challa II is probably the way to put it

That was a massive surprise! I’d assumed Nakia had left the country and was living alone, but it turns out it was for her son as well… I cried.

What was really lovely is that it was something Nakia, T’Challa and Ramonda decided between them, I suppose. That detail means T’Challa and the others did have proper time with Nakia and the child before they died, so I think that maybe in the MCU they lived a short but happy life…

He must surely be the Black Panther who takes over from Shuri!!

Mutants

The film comes right out and states that Namor is a mutant!!!! The Ms. Marvel finale vaguely hinted that Kamala might be a mutant too.

So is this film the start of the groundwork being laid for the X-Men joining in!? Ahh, too exciting!

The bit that nags at me: to become a mutant, does the mother have to eat the plant grown on vibranium and then a mutation has to happen on top of that?

[X-Men?!] Ms. Marvel Episode 6 [That Shocking Ending!]

Namor / K’uk’ulkan, biding his time and eyeing the world

Ahh, Talokan under Namor is far too strong lol

In the comics his full name is Namor the Sub-Mariner

A mutant who has lived for hundreds of years, of all things… His powers were pretty much the same as in the comics, but is the mutant setup original to the film? Then again, reading the Wiki, he joins the X-Men at one point — a complicated character. And his first comics appearance was in 1939, so he’s actually a seriously old character. Still, just as in the live-action version, he’s a villain at times and a hero at times and never simply a good man, so his stance in the MCU looks likely to end up along these lines!

In this film he’s pretty exclusionary towards the surface, refusing to see a single good thing about it and set on wiping it all out lol Way too much lol In the comics he switches sides during Secret Wars, going from the heroes over to Doctor Doom’s villain team, so he looks likely to do the same sort of thing in Avengers: Secret Wars, due out in 2025!

In this film he never has a change of heart in the end. He sees through to Shuri’s sympathy for Talokan, and settles on a plan to worm his way in and form an alliance once Wakanda is isolated from the world. Where on earth does that go…

Doctor Doom

A despot of the small nation of Latveria who schemes for world conquest, and one of the world’s foremost scientists. Overbearing and full of himself, but big-hearted, high-minded and proud.
— https://dic.pixiv.net/a/Dr.%E3%83%89%E3%82%A5%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A0

Doctor Doom is famous as the arch-enemy of the Fantastic Four, and he’s actually a character whose popularity stands alongside Darth Vader’s.

He was born in the small nation of Latveria, so perhaps he’s involved somehow with the destruction of Sokovia in the MCU and the countries around it… something like that seems possible!

A meta point, but in the comics Doom goes after Wakanda’s vibranium, and Fantastic Four is due out in 2024, so I thought he’d show his face in the credits of this film — and he never turned up at all. I cried.

Val is Ross’s ex-wife. What she is after

Turning up again and again in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and elsewhere, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine — and she was Agent Ross’s ex-wife and the current head of the CIA!!! Far too unexpected lol

From the conversation between Ross and Val at the house, it looks like she has ambitions of monopolising vibranium and making America the strongest nation on earth!! And she looks set to put together the Thunderbolts, the MCU’s version of the Suicide Squad, so she’s one to watch!

Ironheart / Riri Williams

Ironheart finally arrives!! In the comics she knows Tony Stark personally and stands in for Iron Man when he falls into a coma, but in the MCU it seems there’s almost no connection to Tony Stark. Still, if there were a genius engineer in the MCU, building an Iron Man feels like an entirely natural line to take, I think. For example, in the real world too, when someone sets out to build a bipedal robot, plenty of them pay homage to Gundam or Evangelion, right

Flying up to an altitude of 900 metres, and the scene hammering the heart-shaped piece of metal — both brought Tony Stark back to mind. Lovely…

Apparently an Ironheart spin-off is coming, so I’m seriously looking forward to it!!!

Talokan, the kingdom beneath the sea

In the comics Namor was the king who ruled the undersea kingdom of Atlantis, but in this film the name became an original one, the kingdom of Talokan. According to interviews it seems to draw on Maya civilisation and the like. Fleeing the smallpox brought by the Spanish comes up as well, and that got an ooh out of me

Killmonger

Killmonger back, of all people!! In the spirit world, mind you lol

Shuri’s motives really are similar to Killmonger’s, so him showing up is inevitable

The other characters

The other characters all got a good balance of screen time too, which was great. The Dora Milaje under Okoye get a power-up, M’Baku supports Shuri exactly as T’Challa’s last wishes said he should, and the Talokan commanders Namora and Attuma looked cool as well. All good

Predictions ahead, Black Panther 3 included

• Wakanda’s isolation from the world (with Namor pulling the strings?) as the main theme?
• Val’s bid for world domination tangled up in it too?
• Namor and Doctor Doom as a tag team
• T’Challa II becoming Black Panther (still a bit young, maybe)

Those are the sorts of things I can imagine!