2018’s “Black Panther” wasn’t just a wild success, it was an axis-shifting historically significant moment — the first major comic book movie featuring a Black superhero, it was the first superhero movie to be nominated for Best Picture, and it won three Oscars, for its score, production design and costumes. But after star Chadwick Boseman died in 2020 following a private battle with cancer, where do you go from there?
Director and co-writer Ryan Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole went back to the drawing board for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” writing a script that addresses the death of Boseman’s character T’Challa, and turns its focus to T’Challa’s mother, Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), who takes over leadership duties in Wakanda, and sister, Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright), the tech-oriented scientist who is more comfortable in her lab than out in front of Wakanda.
Ultimately, “Wakanda Forever” becomes a film about Shuri stepping into her power as she grapples with grief and loss, and the tension between science and spirituality, the balance of which has always ruled the culture of Wakanda. Wright steps up to the plate, and proves her chops and gravitas as an actor, carrying the emotional weight of this film, which is as much a bittersweet sendoff to Boseman as it is for T’Challa.
