The MCU Wasn't Built for This

Grief and colonization can’t be dealt with like just another supervillain.

- ANGELICA JADE BASTIÉN

BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER carries a series of burdens no one film should ever bear. Its director, Ryan Coogler, must grapple with the challenges and expectations born of and influenced by the tragic loss of star Chadwick Boseman while crafting an entertaining sequel to a billion-dollar blockbuster in the constricting Marvel Cinematic Universe. He must balance the expectations of Black folks who have elevated the movie to celestial status-a pinnacle of Afrofuturistic desires for a specific kind of Black power and representation onscreen. The film is called to respectfully introduce a new Black Panther and push the MCU forward with the introduction of Namor (Tenoch Huerta), an Indigenous Mesoamerican god-king of the isolationist undersea kingdom Talokan-which has its own cache of vibranium and a superhuman strength that makes Wakanda buckle. Perhaps most crucially, the cast must act out their grief while mired in the emotion themselves; this is especially true for Letitia Wright's Shuri, who is tasked with shouldering the film's most dramatic moments.

To say the sequel is overtaxed is an understatement. Regrettably, Wakanda Forever tries to do so many things that it comes across as threadbare and pallid—a failure less of imagination and more of circumstance, time, and narrative limitations.

I have mixed feelings about the original Black Panther, which was released to great acclaim in 2018. I've never gravitated to the mythos, primarily because T’Challa is a person of such noble stature that he can come across as too perfect and lacking the human foibles that let a character take root in your memory. (In a surprising moment of self-awareness for the franchise, someone in Wakanda Forever says as much.) But Boseman imbued T’Challa with a sweetness toward his loved ones, making the actor’s absence even more profound. Without him,