One year ago today, the world lost Chadwick Boseman. The news of the Marvel Studios' Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman had died at the age of 43 due to colon cancer took almost everyone by surprise. Boseman played King T'Challa, the hero known as the Black Panther and the ruler of the technologically advanced African kingdom of Wakanda, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. When the film opened in 2018, Black Panther instantly became a superhero icon, especially for Black fans. On the anniversary of Boseman's death, fans are taking to social media to praise the actor and lament his loss. You can see what some fans are saying below.
In September 2020, Ta-Nehisi Coates, the award-winning author who wrapped his run writing Marvel's Black Panther earlier this year, penned a tribute to Boseman. He began with the Black anther quote, "Death is just a different kind of journey…to the land that I am king of," from Secret Wars #7 by Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic, published in November 2015. He then wrote a personal remembrance of Boseman, ending with the following paragraph:
"I got to watch him through the years — advancing out of student theater, on to TV and film, and then finally cast as T'Challa. He was perfect. He had T'Challa's royal spirit, the sense that he did not represent merely himself, but a nation. And this is how I am understanding his death. It is personally sad to lose him at such a young age. But for those of us who so needed him right now, in these dark times, those of us who went to war with him, the loss is unthinkable. We simply cannot afford to be without Chad. My recourse is inadequate, but it's all I have to make meaning of this tragedy. It is the idea of ancestry. It is the notion that when someone like Chad wields their weapons as fiercely as he once did, they are remembered. It is the idea that Chad's wisdom and power are still with us in ancestral form. It is the thought that just as Chad once walked into the City of the Dead and harnessed the energy of those who'd gone before him, so he too may be harnessed, by all those warriors to come."
Boseman starred as T'Challa in Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers; Endgame. Each of those films is streaming now on Disney+. He also voiced T'Challa in the second episode of Marvel's What If…?, also streaming on Disney+.