Black Panther 2: Wakanda Forever is the newest Marvel film and it is a direct sequel to the 2018 Black Panther that was lead by Chadwick Boseman. The film’s events are set sometime after Endgame. Ryan Coogler has returned to write and direct the sequel. The film stars Letitia Wright, Angela Basset, Lupita Nyong’o, Martin Freeman, Winston Duke, Tenoch Huerta, Danai Gurira, etc. Letitia Wright’s Shuri is the real protagonist of the film as Chadwick Boseman has tragically passed away. The film was pretty much marketed as something that addresses grief everyone was experiencing after Boseman’s passing. The film just like any other Marvel had great first reactions but more than anything the one that caught my attention was that it was a mature film unlike other MCU ventures.
The last few Marvel films have deeply disappointed me to the point where I questioned my choice of films. However, I deeply respect and believe in Ryan Coogler as a filmmaker. So, I wanted to see what he had to bring in this array of disappointments that Marvel is churning out. The trailers for the film looked absolutely stunning and heart pounding. I conjured a lot of hope as I stepped into the theatres to watch Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, hoping that the film is good, as I knew this would be my breaking point if I saw another mediocre venture from Marvel and it seems like Ryan Coogler has just managed to make this film work. Black Panther 2 is effective and does leave us with certain questions, one of the most prominent ones – What did Shuri’s scene with Killmonger signify? Well, thankfully we have the film’s writer here to offer us a clarification.
What Does Killmonger Represent in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever?
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Joe Robert the writer of Black Panther 2 discussed the importance and significance of Shuri’s scene with Killmonger as she meets him in the ancestral plane after consuming the Heart-Shaped Herb. Robert said,
“We always wanted to have Michael return, and I feel like it was always going to be in the ancestral plane with Shuri having taken the potion. The question was always like, how do you achieve the thing I think that you’re talking about? How do you make it more than just more than just, everyone’s excited because Michael’s amazing, and the character’s amazing? How is it relevant to Shuri’s journey and become a pivot point for her character?”
The writer continued, “Then if you think about it, (Black Panther 2018) his journey was about vengeance as well, and anger and frustration. That’s a part of what we tried to lay in with her early on, the anger of losing someone, the sense of loss. And then how losing her mother would escalate her feelings of wanting vengeance. We just tried to build on that, so that he is presenting her with a choice of: Is she going to move towards the direction that Killmonger would move? Or is she going to do something different? The idea was to successfully build the stakes for her so that would resonate. So it would feel earned that she would feel that sort of [yearning for] vengeance.”
Robert concluded with “But one thing I also really loved about the Killmonger scene that we found was his point of view about how he changed Wakanda. Killmonger came in and spoke to the question of, Am I my brother’s keeper? And how Wakanda had not looked out for the globe. Here you have Ramonda the Queen, who is diametrically opposed — she was much more isolationist than T’Challa was — who saves RiRi, this African-American teenager. There is an argument that prior to Killmonger, that might not have happened. So were able to make that scene not only relevant to Shuri’s character, but also relevant to the nation of Wakanda.”
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is playing in theatres near you.
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