Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

Starring: Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta Mejía, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Angela Bassett, Winston Duke, Dominique Thorne, Martin Freeman, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael B. Jordan, Trevor Noah, Lake Bell, and Robert John Burke, with cameos from Anderson Cooper and Kamaru Usman
Grade: B

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was not the franchise-killer I thought it was going to be, but it pales in comparison to the first film.

Summary

In an elevator, Shuri (Wright) prays to Bast and promises to never question his existence again if she is able to cure her brother T’Challa’s illness. She frantically works in her lab as time is running out and continues to try and figure out how to create a synthetic version of the Heart-Shaped Herb. As we know, in the first Black Panther, Killmonger (Jordan) destroyed all traces of it. Trying to get it done in time, a saddened Queen Mother of Wakanda in Ramonda (Bassett) interrupts.

T’Challa, the Black Panther and king of Wakanda, is dead.

The nation of Wakanda is in mourning and everyone attends the funeral including the general of the Dora Milaje in Okoye (Gurira) and the leader of the Jabari Tribe in M’Baku (Duke). However, T’Challa’s ex and Wakandan spy Nakia (Nyong’o) is noticeably missing.

One year later at a United Nations meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, Queen Ramonda is drilled for not participating in the world’s problems like they promised, as well as being fully cooperative concerning anything to do with vibranium. The French pipe in and talk about how vibranium is a threat to global security because it can be used in weapons of mass destruction. Ramonda assures them their policy has always been to never trade vibranium because of the dangerous potential of other countries and she accuses the other leaders of trying to sneak attack them because T’Challa is dead. This is when we see an attack at a Wakandan Outreach Center in Ansongo, Mali. There, an unknown group of soldiers break in looking for vibranium tools. They are led to believe they have the situation under control, but Okoeye and the Dora Milaje see it coming and take everyone out. During the fight, she tells Aneka (Michaela Coel) to use her spear instead of the dual knife weapons Shuri designed for her. Ramonda talks about this attack on their outreach center from the previous night and says the soldiers who were captured are affiliated with a member of the UN. Then, the Dora Milaje bring in the captured soldiers to the meeting for everyone to see, with Okoeye implying they are French. Ramonda is aware of other countries’ attempts to find vibranium outside of Wakanda and wishes them all the best of luck.

In the Atlantic Ocean, Dr. Graham (Bell) is flown in to investigate a vibranium deposit in the bottom of the ocean from a vibranium detector. She stays on the boat with Smitty (Burke), as they direct some divers on what to do underwater. They find the detector, so Graham wants them to grab it because it’s the only one they have. When they find it, the power goes out. Not thinking anything of it, Graham tries to fix it with her computer. As a lovely humming sound surrounds the outside of the ship, with a solider on deck looking around to see what’s going on, one of the divers sees an oddly-colored phantom jellyfish. Right after, both divers are killed. The humming gets louder, and all the soldiers on the ship become stuck in a trance and jump off the boat towards a group of unknown people in the water. Seeing what’s going on, Graham and Smitty put in ear plugs and go on the deck to investigate. As Graham calls in a helicopter for backup, she assumes they are under attack from the Wakandans. They run out, but Smitty stops to save a fellow soldier about to jump off the ship. Once he fires his gun in the air, the soldier wakes up from his trance, but it doesn’t matter. A group of blue, Mayan-like tribal warriors from the ocean kill him and Smitty. Graham rushes to the helicopter and is able to escape momentarily, but once she reports back that they are not Wakandans, the entire helicopter is taken down by the flying Namor (Mejía).

Ramonda and Okoye make it back to Wakanda, and Ramonda goes straight to a hard-at-work Shuri. After showing Ramonda the Exo Suits she’s been working on for their army, Ramonda asks if Shuri has recreated the Heart-Shaped Herb, but they are interrupted by a phone call from Nakia. Shuri refuses to take it. Then, Shuri says they don’t need the herb, they just need new technology. Ramonda stresses the importance of the Black Panther and how it has united their country for centuries, but Shuri counters with how she just wanted to save her brother. She doesn’t give a fuck about the Black Panther. Ramonda brings up how today is the one-year anniversary of T’Challa’s death, so she takes Shuri somewhere out in the jungle to mourn. Shuri thinks she has come to accept her brother’s death, but Ramonda knows she hasn’t really taken the time to grieve. She talks about a ritual she performed when T’Challa died. Now, she wants to show Shuri to help her. Ramonda says that she felt his presence when it happened, but Shuri insists that what she felt was a construct of her mind. Changing the subject, Ramonda brings in the funeral garments from T’Challa’s ceremony and proceeds to lay them in the fire because this act marks the end of the mourning period and the “beginning of a new relationship with our loved ones that have passed on”. This is too hard for Shuri, who argues that if she sits and thinks about her brother for too long, she won’t want to burn the clothes. She’ll want to burn the world and everyone in it. Hearing this, Ramonda says she has to tell her something about her brother. Before she can proceed, they are interrupted by the nearby elephants being disturbed. The two run over to see what the commotion is all about and are shocked to see Namor.

He gets out of the water and hovers over to them, with Ramonda demanding to know how he got into Wakanda. As he talks calmly, Ramonda demands to know who he is. He tells them that his people refer to him as K’uk’ulkan, but his enemies call him Namor. Namor tells them that the American military detected vibranium under his nation’s domain, so he was forced to stop them from mining it. Even so, he wants Wakanda’s help from preventing it from happening again. The machine is also designed by an American scientist. Ramonda refuses to believe vibranium is anywhere but Wakanda, but Shuri notes that Namor is covered in it. Continuing, Namor tells them that T’Challa’s decision to expose vibranium to the world brought in eyes from every direction in search of the precious resource, and it compromised his people’s way of life because of it. Because of this, he wants Wakanda to find the scientist behind the machine to bring directly to him. Ramonda tries to act tough with him, but Namor explains how he has more soldiers than they have blades of grass, and they have incomparable strength to boot. He implies he may come back to attack if his demands aren’t met. Before going back into the water, he leaves a seashell and tells them to blow into it and put it in the water once they have the scientist. His parting message is for them to not mention his existence to anyone outside of Wakanda. After noting the wings on his ankles allowing him to fly, they look over and see the vibranium detector he brought to them.

The next morning, the Council meets, and M’Baku walks in and starts criticizing the Wakandan soldiers for failing to protect their borders as soon as he walks through the door. As all the other leaders discuss what to do, with most being okay with delivering the scientist to Namor because they don’t have the Black Panther to protect them, M’Baku again criticizes their handling of the situation because they were at fault for letting Killmonger destroy the Heart-Shaped Herb. Clearly having enough, Ramonda asks M’Baku what he wants to do, so he plainly states they should find the “fish man” and kill him. Though this is obviously a stupid suggestion, he brings up an excellent point. What would stop him from coming back and asking for more?

Ramonda and Okoye show up to Shuri’s lab, and Shuri admits that the vibranium detector is accurate and whoever built it must have been a genius. This scientist needs to be found. Okoye isn’t worried about the mission or Namor, so she suggests to Ramonda that Shuri come with her. Though Ramonda isn’t too keen on it, Shuri is down.

Shuri and Okoye head to Alexandria, Virgina to surprise CIA Agent Everett K. Ross (Freeman) while he’s jogging in a forest area. They ask Ross about the scientist who created the vibranium detector, so he assumes they were behind the attack in the Atlantic Ocean. However, seeing that they have no idea what he’s talking about, he lets them in on what happened and how their combined team of CIA agents and Navy SEALS were all killed. He asks who it could have been, but Shuri, knowing what Namor demanded, tells him she can’t tell him out of their own safety. Even so, she says Ross owes her and T’Challa. Stressing the secrecy of what he’s about to say because the new CIA Director in Valentina “Val” Allegra de Fontaine (Dreyfus) has been watching him like a hawk, he says they have to act fast in finding this “kid” because she’s the only person who can build the machine and the U.S. wants another one badly. This kid is MIT student Riri Williams (Thorne). They travel to Cambridge, Massachusetts to find her on campus. After seeing Riri collect a payment from a fellow student because she helped correct some algorithm for his project, Okoye and Shuri report back to Ramonda. She wants the kid brought back to Wakanda. Shuri acts like a student, goes into the dorms, and is able to talk to Riri in her dorm room. She talks about how she’s here regarding the vibranium detector she built for the CIA, but a confused Riri explains she built it for her metallurgy class. Though shocked, Shuri says they need to leave immediately because she’s in a lot of danger. Riri tries to escape through the bathroom, but Okoye is waiting there to stop her. She tries to throw a speaker at Okoye, but she slices it in half with her spear. Realizing things are much more serious than she thought, Riri relents and willingly takes the two to the sanitation garage where she works on her projects.

They allow her to work there because she fixed a few trucks for the head of sanitation.

After showing them some of her projects, they get surrounded by the FBI. To escape, Okoye takes a car out of the garage, and Shuri remote pilots it because she wants the three of them to split up, despite Okoye not wanting this. Riri, takes a supersuit she’s been building that is reminiscent of Iron Man and flies out of there. Shuri takes the motorbike. A high-speed chase ensues. During it, Riri is able to take out a drone and passes out mid-air while doing it. She regains consciousness just before she hits the water. On the verge of escaping on the bridge, all three women are stopped in their tracks by an attacking group of the blue Talokanil warriors. Riri and Shuri are both knocked out, forcing Okoye to try to fend them off by herself. She does a great job at first but starts getting her ass kicked by Attuma (Alex Livinalli). Namor’s cousin Namora (Mabel Cadena) comes towards them once she’s done fighting off the American authorities and wonders what’s taking so long. She throws a water grenade towards Attuma, so he directs it towards Okoye. She slices it in half with her spear, but the explosion of water sends her flying off the bridge and into the body of water below. This water splashes onto Shuri, waking her up. Shuri demands they take her to Namor. They agree and take her and Riri down to meet him. The next day, Ross shows up to the crime scene on the bridge and is told that the authorities think this was the doing of the Wakandans because they got a tip from Langley they were coming. Ross wonders who made the call, and it’s Director de Fontaine, his ex-wife.

Following some light flirting from Fontaine to Ross, Fontaine is shown what they know about what happened on the bridge. While looking around, Ross finds Shuri’s Kimoyo Beads and pockets them. Next, Fontaine asks Ross for a ride back to Langley. Back in Wakanda, Okoye reports what happened with the Council and seems particularly shook at what their blue enemies are all about. Infuriated, Ramonda strips Okoye of her position as general and fires her for losing Shuri. Privately, Ramonda asks Griot (Noah) to track Shuri through her Kimoyo Beads. Meanwhile in Langley, Fontaine questions how the Wakandans found out who built the vibranium detector because of how classified this information was. Once the beads start going off in the car, Ross acts like it’s his phone, so Fontaine leaves him alone for the time being. He answers it and speaks to Ramonda directly. Ramonda tells him what’s going on but doesn’t tell him exactly who took Shuri and Riri. Even so, she asks Ross to alert her if the CIA decides to act on their suspicions by attacking Wakanda. He agrees and offers his help in anyway because he owes Shuri his life. Following this call, Ramonda asks Griot if Shuri had her earrings on her because they can track it, but Griot says he lost track of her around the North Atlantic. However, the people that took her spoke Yucatec Mayan.

The clues are starting to come together for Ramonda as she tries to save her daughter.

The next step is going to Haiti to enlist the help of Nakia to somehow infiltrate the underwater city to save Shuri and Riri. Even then, Namor and his plans may get in their way, with war potentially being on the horizon.

My Thoughts:

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever did as good as it possibly could without Chadwick Boseman. It tried everything. It brought back virtually everyone from the first film to ensure it wouldn’t be too drastically different without him, it elevated all the women who surrounded T’Challa life, it retained one of the most underrated directors working today in Ryan Coogler, and we got another villain who reaches the highest of tiers within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With all of this being said, my main thought as the film came to a close was, “Man, this would have been amazing if Chadwick Boseman starred”. Without him, the hole was too noticeable. Though the cast did an admirable job in his absence, this franchise just wasn’t ready for the responsibility of carrying the momentum of its iconic predecessor. With Boseman’s death still so fresh in our consciousness, it just felt too soon for us to feel okay with Letitia Wright taking over the Black Panther mantle. We needed more time. Sadly, the MCU waits for no one.

Here’s the thing, this sequel is still actually pretty good. It’s well-acted, the action is gripping, the scenery and CGI-created landscapes are still a sight to behold, and the main cast does a respectable job in trying to make a film as memorable as its predecessor. Thought it won’t have the staying power Black Panther had, it was still a very entertaining endeavor for superfans who will watch everything Marvel produces.

One criticism I’ve seen a lot has been the length. However, you have to consider where we are at in the MCU and how tall of a task it is in moving forward in a franchise without having the main character. This sequel had to be longer to ease the transition of this new phase in the eyes of the audience. In doing so, the film can be separated into three different sections:

1. The grieving period and moving on from T’Challa.
2. Figuring out how the characters will immediately respond to this and how they will find their footing in a T’Challa-less world.
3. What the rest of the film will mean for the future of the MCU.

When you realize how necessary all three are, the length of the film is pretty appropriate. Each section is handled with serious thought and care, and it’s noticeable.

Though I still find it hard to let go of Boseman’s T’Challa, seeing how hard it is for the characters is actually comforting for us fans. No one wanted this to happen. Boseman was very young, and with so many stars moving on following Avengers: Endgame, Thor and the current incarnation of the Guardians of the Galaxy being on their last legs, and Black Panther being so popular with audiences, Boseman was surely on path to be one of the leaders of the next few phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Along with the overarching “Multiverse Saga” being the next end goal, loads of individual sequels and stories were already being talked about involving the famed king of Wakanda because of the popularity, professionalism, and star power of Boseman. This is what bothers me the most about all of this. His future was so damn bright, and the Black Panther series was one franchise we were leaning on to save our interest in the MCU, as it has been starting to wane recently. Besides Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, this is all we really had left because of the hit-or-miss streak of the MCU’s most recent crop of productions. With refocused energy on a property like Black Panther, the excitement was there to continue this franchise’s potential legacy. With Boseman gone, it’s hard to say what they should do now. Personally, even after watching this sequel (which was better than I thought it was going to be), I can’t really say that I want to see the next two or three sequels in theaters. Without Boseman, and him not getting as much time as he deserved as the titular character, it just won’t feel right. It almost feels sacrilegious in a way.

Honestly, I don’t think it will ever feel right.

As you can see, Boseman’s T’Challa meant too much to me and the fans worldwide. However, this is one major positive coming out of Wakanda Forever. These characters felt exactly how we felt regarding the young star’s death, with the narrative being rewritten to work-in T’Challa’s death and how it impacted the kingdom of Wakanda. The shock, the horror, and the feelings of no one knowing what to do but being forced to move on really resonated for us fans of the first film and the other ensemble movies the character appeared in. It makes us feel much closer to the supporting cast than we did in the first film because the grief they feel is authentic. Much like Chadwick Boseman in real life, anyone who crossed paths with T’Challa had admiration for the man and was deeply affected by his death. There’s Queen Ramonda, played mightily by Angela Bassett, who has the unfortunate duty of being reinstated as queen following her son’s death and being forced to lead the most powerful nation in the world against its many detractors while still grieving in private. Nakia fled to Haiti because the finality of her former love was too difficult to behold, and even the arrogant M’Baku has kept an eye on the family because of how much respect he had for T’Challa.

Most importantly, the focus is on Shuri. T’Challa’s sister has balled up her emotions and has become a shut-in of sorts, preferring to stay focused on her work at the lab. We know how much she loves her brother, but Shuri is not one to be out and proud about her feelings. Privately however, the devastation and desperation to save him was very real. In a heart-pounding opening, we hear Shuri praying in private in hopes that she will be given the ability to save her brother from his illness. Though he’s survived some of the most outrageous battles any superhero has ever witnessed, his body is failing him and he’s on his death bed to open the film. The lab is in a frenzy, and we can see the panic in the eyes of Shuri as she races against time to try anything humanly possible to save his life. In a way, it felt like Letitia Wright was channeling the energy she may have felt when the real Boseman died. This is how well-crafted the scene was in showing us how important Boseman was to this franchise. It was very meta in the way it was presented because of its real-life implications.

Now remember, Shuri is Wakanda’s resident genius and creates things on the regular to help her fellow citizens and family. Her IQ knows no bounds. However, for the first time, she’s faced with saving her brother, and we see her in panic mode for the first time ever. Yelling at everyone to leave so she can think, she tries to not lose hope. Then, the bombshell is dropped. Ramonda walks into the room, and we know it before she says it. You can tell Shuri knows it too, but she waits to hear it from her mother first. After she relays the news of T’Challa’s death, Shuri pauses, almost not believing it at first, but subsequently falls apart. It’s such a heartbreaking scene to open the film, but it’s a necessary one. Later, she even explains to Namor how she wonders why she was given such gifts but couldn’t save her brother, with Namor admitting he doesn’t have an answer for her. Sometimes, this is just life. You can try your hardest to avoid certain things in life, but death is inevitable. Despite Shuri being as intelligent and gifted as she is, she was still powerless in stopping her brother’s death and she hates life because of it.

What makes these sequences and emotional moments so enjoyable is because of how it honors the legend. T’Challa meant too much to the people of Wakanda and the fans to take place years after his death timeline-wise, or for him to be written out entirely and mentioned in a throwaway line. Director Ryan Coogler and producer Kevin Feige knew this and decided to face it head on in the opening out of respect, and this tribute translated well. Despite not being there in the flesh, T’Challa’s presence was felt throughout. We even see it in the opening “Marvel” graphic where we get small, silent clips of Boseman’s T’Challa in previous films in before cutting to his funeral. It was very touching stuff and was a great way for us to come to the acceptance of a world without T’Challa. This was the beginning of the grieving process section and why this heartbreaking opening sequence got things off on the right foot. It honored the fallen star, it hit us right away with some emotion without being gratuitous, and we felt a deeper connection to two characters who will take a much more important role this time around in this sequel compared to how they were portrayed previously. It’s especially important for the characterization of Shuri. Though Letitia Wright can’t live up to what Boseman did in such a short time span, she did considerably well in the role of a loved sister still coming to terms with her brother’s death a year after the fact.

There’s a lot more to her that meets the eye in this sequel compared to the first Black Panther. She might be the only person in Wakanda who scoffs at tradition, questions the religious aspect of their culture, and doesn’t seem to believe the same way the others do. When the kingdom is let in on the fact that there is vibranium somewhere other than Wakanda, Ramonda and Okoye are in shock because this essentially confirms that the stories they were told about how their ancestors came to be, along with their purpose in general, may all be a myth. Their world is in shambles. However, Shuri isn’t bothered by it because not only does it seem like she doesn’t care, but we are led to believe that she never bought into these stories in the first place, a stark contrast from literally everyone else in the country. In fact, it’s noted that she doesn’t even believe in the Ancestral Plane, the basis of the Black Panther’s existence. Despite recreating the Heart-Shaped Herb, she never believed it had the powers it did. She goes through the process because it’s expected of her, but she takes the mantle of the Black Panther purely because they needed a superhero to go to war with Namor. In addition, she’s out for revenge and wants Namor’s head on a platter. She didn’t want it for the right reasons, prompting Killmonger to show up in the sequence instead of a family member. This was a wonderful twist too. Rightfully avoiding a CGI recreation of her brother because it would take away from the emotion of his death in the film, they decided to go into a different direction by bringing in the previously dead Killmonger and making sense of it by adding a viciousness and unpredictability to Shuri’s personality and motivations.

Will she be the noble person T’Challa was, or will she go through with her goal of vengeance in the vein of Killmonger?

It was a very nice surprise and added a lot of drama to the development of Shuri. Seeing her evolution through each MCU production has been entertaining to watch and scenes like this one show us how much different she will be as the Black Panther compared to her brother. It’s possible she may be just the right amount of “spice” that this franchise needs to stay afloat.

Plus, Michael B. Jordan making an appearance in anything will always be a positive.

Namor was fantastic. Though it’s frustrating that he looks nothing like how he was portrayed in the comics (a recurring theme in these later Marvel films), the presentation of this “theatrical version” of the famous character was done impressively well, with an understated fierceness from newcomer Tenoch Huerta Mejía. Tenoch had a lot to live up to going into this film because of how well Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger was in the first film, but he may have been the best thing coming out of Wakanda Forever. Not only is his reasoning for his actions written well enough to where you understand where he’s coming from (much like Killmonger), but he explains everything in such an eloquent way, you want to see him in every scene. He never raises his voice, but he speaks with such confidence in his delivery that he can utter the simplest of threats and still demand the attention of the audience. This is why the summit between him and Ramonda on the beach was easily one of my favorite scenes of the film. It was all business, with two actors reveling in their roles as the leaders of their respective peoples. It was teetering on being redundant, but it was such an awesome detour that I didn’t even mind.

Mejía has this calm delivery when he talks, and when complimented by his smooth accent and pure conviction about why he needs to kill all these people, you can’t help but sit there and think, “It’s wrong and everything, but I get it. I still kind of want to be friends with you”. He tries to create this alliance with Wakanda, and you can’t really argue with his reasoning. He’s not being manipulative like other antagonists. Namor genuinely believes in what he’s saying. He tells Shuri how Wakanda is on the verge of being at war with the world’s other superpowers and furthers his point by adamantly explaining how there isn’t a single country that wouldn’t jump at the chance to snatch their resources. Yes, striking first to ignite a war may be wrong, but this statement is completely right, which is why every scene between Namor’s earnest beliefs and Shuri’s misplaced anger, and unsure demeanor is such delectable content. Going along with this, there’s this terrific scene where he tells Shuri how he came to be and the day his mentality changed about the surface people. It leads to this excellent cut, back-and-forth between himself as a dead-eyed child watching the people on land having to serve as slaves, and the current Namor with his crooked smile, as he explains his name being “The child without love” once he destroyed the camp he ran into. It’s filmed and edited in such a haunting way, making Namor the larger-than-life figure his people see him as, that I actually leaned back and said to myself, “Woah”.

This is Tenoch Huerta Mejía’s coming out party. Thankfully, Our Feathered Serpent God is an antihero and the film ended in the manner it did because he needs a continued role in the MCU moving forward. Regardless of comic book accuracy, we have found our Namor. Also, everyone involved in this production gets extra points for managing to give this mutant his winged ankles and elf ears and presenting it well enough to where it’s not unintentionally funny. Going into this movie, I was sure this would be an impossibility. As we know, not everything can be translated in a serious fashion from their comic book counterparts, and winged ankles and elf ears would surely be two of them. However, they managed to make it cool. I can’t commend them enough for this. This takes some serious talent in front of and behind the camera to make this possible.

The Mayan influence on the Talokan people was very intriguing and another solid highlight of this sequel. The tribal designs, the costuming (especially of Namor), and the city of Talokan were all done very well. Now, I have seen some minor commentary on the Talokan sequence not being as fruitful as some may have hoped, but I disagree. First of all, I enjoyed the sequence in which Shuri and Namor travel in the water to the heart of the city. The music gave it this cool, underground club-like feel to it, but also a sense of wonderment that you should feel when discovering a new world. Think about how in awe you would be in seeing an entire civilization of people no one knew existed beforehand. We the audience feel just like Shuri in this moment in time. It’s a striking sequence. On top of that, the darker design and underground feel, with vibrant blues and dimly-lit scenery fit the vibe of the people. Despite Namor being an eventual antihero, he and his people are the clear antagonists of this film. Talokan shouldn’t look like how the underwater locations of Aquaman or the Gungans’ city under Naboo in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phanton Menace do. It needed to give off the antihero vibe Namor gives off. It can’t feel too cheery nor too antagonistic. It needed to be right in the middle, which I felt they reached. It’s not a lack of imagination. It’s just that you can only be so different from the countless other films that have explored the “underwater city” location. At this point, people are demanding too much. They did a solid job.

Again, it wasn’t comic book accurate, but when Mejía speaks with such conviction about his people, where they come from, and how important their way of life is, we believe every second of it. The backstory he explains to Shuri to try to explain why he needs to kill Riri didn’t drag either, despite it being such an elongated detour in an already large film. Again, despite its length, Wakanda Forever never felt like a bloated production. The time devoted to the story and character development was necessary to make this more than just a transitional feature full of expository information on where the MCU is headed. It needed all of this time to be a good sequel. There was too much going on and too many characters to worry about for the film to be any shorter. It needed its length for us to care about everyone involved, and they succeeded for the most part.

The lone exception was Riri Williams. Though Dominique Thorne’s Riri is being looked at as one of the future, long-running characters of the next phase in Marvel as Ironheart, she didn’t impress at all. They made sense of her inclusion within the narrative and why it’s imperative to get her, but she didn’t have the likability, charisma, or performance anywhere close to Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, or Danai Gurira have done in these films. They seem to hold hope that they’re effortless chemistry with each other will rub off on Thorne and make us like her more, but her performance sticks out like a sore thumb. They tried to make her funny, but that didn’t seem to work either. Then, out of nowhere, she’s taking out FBI agents in a suit that rivals Iron Man? You can’t see it through this review, but I’m currently rolling my eyes. By the time the third act comes around, not only is she totally unimportant, but she becomes a complete afterthought. Despite her being so “important” to the characters in the first act, none of us give a fuck about what she’s doing by the time the movie ends. She may have been one character too many. At the very least, she was better than Xochitl Gomez’s America Chavez in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but Gomez set the bar so low that Thorne crossed over it within five minutes of screentime.

Angela Bassett did one hell of a job as well. Her rant after firing Okoye was the stuff of legends. Amongst a sea of characters old and new, Bassett’s Queen Ramonda still made it known that this franchise is still her kingdom when she wants it to be.

*If the mid-credits scene was going to be as long as it was, why didn’t they just extend the ending another couple of minutes and include it there? Why stretch things out for no reason?*

This may be a minor note because we come to expect this sort of thing out of superhero films, but the action sequences are fantastic, especially the Talokan attack on Wakanda and the ferocious third act war between both groups, with Shuri and Namor going head-to-head in a brutal one-on-one fight.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was a lot better than I thought it was going to be. It succeeded in saving the franchise from falling off completely, with a new creative direction and the phenomenal insertion of the newest superhero/supervillain/antihero in Tenoch Huerta Mejía’s Namor. My biggest issue, which is one the film never overcomes, is that it still feels like a film captained by a group of bench players. It’s a great team effort and they still win a lot of games, but the team just can’t get over the hump without the franchise star. Letitia Wright put together a fine performance, and Shuri has grown to become a very likable character through her actions in this story as a result. Sadly, she’s just not T’Challa and never will be.