“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” (2022) is the thirtieth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and a sequel to “Black Panther” (2018), “Avengers: Infinity War” (2018) and “Avengers: Endgame” (2019). Five years after Thanos’ snap, Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright) is unable to save King T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), her brother and best friend, from a mysterious illness. A year later, Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) and the Dora Milaje thwart Western enemies in the UN and the field respectively as the Western powers use different approaches to steal vibranium. Undeterred the US finds a new source, which uncovers Taloka, a secret underwater Mesoamerican civilization. The Talokans view the search for vibranium as an act of war. Talokan King Namor to the surface dwellers, K’uk’ulkan to his people (Tenoch Huerta), delivers an ultimatum to Queen Ramonda: deliver the scientist who made the vibranium detector or the Talokans will destroy Wakanda. Without T’Challa or the heart shaped herb, can the Wakandans beat a superpowered armed subterranean people with vibranium weapons?

“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” is an elegiac film that acts primarily as a tribute to Boseman as T’Challa and is focused on how our favorite characters and Wakanda will be able to move on without him. Ryan Coogler’s films are usually mournful affairs and how a survivor will carry their iconic ancestor’s legacy. Because “Black Panther” was perfect, Coogler’s latest falls short because each strong section does not always feel like a cohesive, seamless trajectory to the denouement, but the movie ultimately sticks the landing and sets the stage for an exciting new direction. 

Making “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” was almost impossible. The script was finished when Boseman unexpectedly died so it had to be revised. Then the revision was done, and production could not start because of the pandemic. After filming began, Wright got injured, and they had to film around her. 

Queen Ramonda dominates the first third of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” as she maintains her country’s stability and tries to steer her daughter back to their spiritual tradition, the source of her strength. Bassett always looks regal so with the sumptuous setting and majestic wardrobe, she could easily be the protagonist, and no viewer would mind. If she became the next Black Panther, I would have been psyched. Namor steals the screen in the riveting middle by revealing his kingdom and their motivations. Like “The Woman King” (2022), the vengeance flashbacks against invading, enslaving colonizers were too short for me and made him sympathetic despite being the antagonist of our heroes. 

If Wakanda represents Afro Futurism and provides an utopian alternative history of African greatness without colonizing interference and slavery, Talokan holds a similar cultural space for Mayan Futurism. Coogler makes a space for Indigenous Americans to be as moved by the spectacle of confronting colonizers while occupying a glorious, undisturbed kingdom without European influence. Mayan Futurism combines the greatness of the past with advanced technology without erasing the painful past lived experiences of surviving and thriving after invasion. Representation matters, and seeing people of color/the global majority as royalty is psychologically elevating. A lot of people may overlook how hard it must have been to film underwater, to make the Talokans look like ordinary people in their quotidian clothes when underwater then like Titans on the surface. Notice the brownness of their skin underwater and how amazing the clothes looked. Having a large part of the action unfold in Mexico and Haiti was meaningful to me though I have no personal ties to either country. King Namor honors Queen Ramonda and Princess Shuri, which at least the latter respectfully reciprocates and relates to, which makes the denouement harder to watch.

We are rooting for two powerful nations of color then must watch them fight and hurt each other. Coogler makes the conflict hard to watch though it is exquisitely staged. He delivers an effective lesson about conflict and not seeking catharsis through armed conflict, but I also felt a little fucked with. “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” devotes more time with the American colonizers, which were an afterthought and barely played a role in the first film, but are villains here (along with the French). So it was frustrating that Namor, who knows what true aggression looks like, would decide that Wakanda needs to get destroyed first. Logistically it makes sense-destroy your fiercest opponent on the surface so they will not intervene when ready to defeat the weaker ones. Namor’s motivation against Wakanda echoes Queen Ramonda’s conflict with Okoye (Danai Gurira). You understand that their point of view is valid, but too harsh. [Side note: please get rid of Martin Freeman. Is anyone watching this franchise for him? Through him, we get some backstory, which ties him to an interesting uncredited character, but I’d rather have Bucky (Sebastian Stan) at the cookout.]

As a cohesive story, the framing of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” is to get Shuri to address her spiritual crisis and stop disassociating by immersing herself into work/technology after experiencing loss. For all intents and purposes, her loss makes her an atheist because her prayers were not answered. She has no faith that there is something more after death so she neglects tradition, the idea of the ancestral plane and the concept of Wakanda’s champion. Even though the audience knows that she has lost a lot in each of her appearances (as has Wakanda with an alien invasion), I felt that Shuri as a three-dimensional character was underdeveloped in the first two thirds through no fault of Wright’s performance and needed to play less of a passive Princess Jasmine role where she takes a back seat as a witness, not an active player. With repeat viewings, it is easier to appreciate Wright’s performance. Wright surprises by delivering a very adrogonous. Though clearly a petite woman, I was surprised that someone as straight laced as Wright was also embracing her masculine energy. It makes her complementary to Bosman in unexpected ways.

Shuri copes by compartmentalizing her roles as a sister/daughter to her family, a scientist as her comfort zone and a princess to others. When Shuri confides her instinctual reaction to T’Challa’s death to her mother, her desires did not make sense within the context of the sequel’s story as reacting to an illness. It would have felt like a prose dump and not been elegant, but Coogler could have broadened that fireside chat to remind the audience of all her losses. Her reaction does make sense in the denouement as she deliberates over the most effective way to confront Namor. When Coogler depicts her, it is usually as a wide-eyed, spirited, young, inventive, inquisitive genius so the denouement can feel abrupt despite Wright chronicling Shuri ‘s emotional journey throughout the film. Maybe Coogler believes that his audience is emotionally intelligent enough to pick up on Wright’s nuanced prediction that he does not need to spell out to viewers that Shuri is angry for failing her brother as a scientist and not being there as his sister. Queen Ramonda, King Namor and General Okoye are such power players that it is easy to forget that Shuri is even in the room albeit at the edges. One entire action sequence, for practical purposes, had her in a helmet so it is easy to forget that she is even in the scene. It was a missed opportunity to get viewers accustomed to her physicality before the transformation. We need more about her maturation. It also does not help that Coogler borrows turning points from “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (2021) and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” (2022) to speed up the process.

When Shuri’s technology fails her, she is forced to revisit her spiritual side for practical purposes, to have a feasible option to beat Namor and save Wakanda. Because she uses the spiritual world without exploring her motivations, her shadow self emerges and demands to finally take center stage. It is provocative, exciting, and abrupt. I do wish that we had more opportunities to see a gradual transformation, but Wright is a solid enough actor, and Coogler conveys more in his visual language than the script does, so it works. We need more time with Shuri, but Wright makes the most of the time that she has.

Unlike “Black Panther,” “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” had some predictable elements, and Coogler revisited some moments from the first film with mixed results. Okoye in the US with a car chase scene was still exciting, but felt a bit rote and as if she was the butt of jokes. When Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) reappears, it ties the two films together in an urgent and effective way. M’Baku (Winston Duke) has matured in a way that will endear him more to viewers—gentle masculinity. Nyong’o and Duke are magnetic actors, but they have an organic way of reflecting their light to showcase  Wright’s work. Audiences are aware of the history between Shuri, Nakia and M’Baku, so scenes with them show Shuri’s transformation more.

S

P

O

I

L

E
R

S

So everyone’s pre-release prediction that Shuri would be the next Black Panther was correct. Up to now, she has been a creator and healer. Also she was the moral core in earlier appearances so while I understand how Shuri is finally ready to lose her shit, I needed that developed more. Her scene on the ancestral plane was the real surprise of the film with a shocking cameo even in a screening with hardened critics. That scene instantly denotes how her champion is so different from her brother, but I wish that the foundation was embedded in the story earlier. Would Shuri want to burn the world down just because her brother got sick? No, but maybe after losing her father, crossing paths with a man that murdered her brother, hunts her and her family down and tries to kill her, gets robbed of five years, and the multiple invasions of Wakanda, absolutely. It was like Hawkeye killing the Yakuza. “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” is missing some connective tissue until Namor kills Ramonda. 

I missed in the initial viewing that Ramonda orders the rescue of Shuri knowing that Namor threatened to kill her specifically after she calls him on the beach with her shellphone. Namor’s priorities shift throughout the movie, and he is transparent with his followers about his errors and course corrections, which is unusual for a leader. It does not make him seem erratic, but practical. He wants to grab the scientist then shifts to trying to get Wakanda to ally with him. He knows Shuri is his best bet.

Shuri’s reaction to Namor’s ultimatum in Taloka was the sign that she could flip, and before she became Black Panther, she gets in air support and tries to kill him immediately. So when Black Panther Shuri is merciless and brutal, it is consistent. She is still a young woman in her early twenties, and young women may not fight first, but when they do, they have no rules and can be nasty. When she rips Namor apart and is fine with roasting him, I believed it. We know that super serums can change a person so it makes sense that even sweet and wise Shuri after years of loss may finally and epically lose her shit. I also liked that her most vengeful moment also immersed in community, especially the laying of hands scene. At the funerals, she is hiding away so while she is on the path of destruction, by revealing her worst self, by being in the open, she can also dissipate that impulse.

I am really glad that Shuri did not have any romantic story line though the potential feels latent and possible with either Namor or Ironheart. I did not want to talk about Ironheart, aka Riri Williams (Dominque Thorne), earlier, but the image of Wakandans protecting an American genius black young woman was a nice tie to the first movie, and their commitment to make up for isolation. She feels like she could be Shuri’s sister from another mother, but with the introduction of a lesbian couple in the Dora Milaje, it is possible. During the initial viewing, Ironheart felt like an excuse to make a commercial, but I changed my mind in the second viewing because she does play a crucial role in all the fight scenes. Images of repatriation and belonging are essential. Also while there was no equivalent of a casino/car chase, the Cambridge scene may resonate less because Coogler did not want it occur to viewers who is getting destroyed and keep it generic. Williams in the lab was a much needed equal and friend for Shuri. 

After Shuri returns to the lab as herself after her first fight in the field as Black Panther, Coogler and Wright evoke the same sense of ease and joy that Boseman did in the original. It is another subtle moment that is easy to miss, but the shift in mood and the ease that Shuri’s presence bestows on other people should not be overlooked.

Side note: if even the Black Panther ordered me to go in the middle of the ocean on the home turf of some superpowered people, I would respectfully decline. The Wakandans did better than I expected, but hell no. The Talokans’ siren scene is just stunning—“Midsommar” vibes, and the Talokans would have won if they decided not to listen to K’uk’ulkan. Can you imagine how shook ordinary Wakandans felt to get snatched out of ferry boats by some random blue people? TF. What is happening to the neighborhood?

The most understated, but sentimental moment in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” may be during the fight scene when the movie rewinds to erase all the conflict that Namor and Shuri experienced, and they were just left with the face of their mothers. Obviously they cannot turn back time and erase pain, but it makes it more believable that as their lives flashed before their eyes, they could find peace with those memories at the forefront. It was a great visual moment to reflect the characters’ psychological frame of mind. 

I also keep thinking about Namor. When he saw the Conquistadors, he was a grown man in a child’s body. It reminds me of Claudia from “Interview with the Vampire” (1994), and the innate frustration of losing everyone, not having any equals and not being seen as who you really are. There was something unyielding and playful that Huerta brought out in Namor. I love how Huerta seems thrilled to be doing press and how he contributed the Talokan hand gesture.