Black Panther’s Michael B. Jordan Explains How He Kept His Wakanda Forever Cameo a Secret

By now it’s public knowledge that Michael B. Jordan made a return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe via a surprise cameo in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. SPOILERS! Jordan’s appearance comes at a pivotal point in Black Panther 2, where Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright) takes the synthetic Heart-Shaped Herb she creates and has to go through her own spiritual vision to obtain the powers of the Black Panther. Instead of her brother T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) or father T’Chaka (John Kani), Shuri’s dark feelings of grief and rage lead her spirit to commune with the ghost of Erik Killmonger. 

That Killmonger scene of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever certainly sparked a certain amount of controversy in the Marvel fandom, as the villain that nearly destroyed Wakanda serving as a sacred spiritual guide felt kind of like blaspheme. However, more fascinating thing for a lot of fans was that Killmonger’s appearance stayed a secret all the way through production, and actually managed to catch viewers by surprise. 

Any longtime MCU knows just how near-impossible it is for the franchise to keep its secret cameos an actual secret. Spider-Man: No Way Home will never be able to escape the ‘what if?’ discussion about how it would’ve been received, had all the big casting leaks never happened – so how did Black Panther 2 pull it off with Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger? 

“It’s tough, you know? I think this time around, you know, because we lost our brother Chadwick, rest in peace Chadwick Boseman – and it was so much weight and so much just trying to power through. And Ryan Coogler had such a tremendous task in front of him to evolve the script and the story in a way that still kind of honored Chadwick but move the franchise forward as well,” Jordan explained to Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show. “So for me to be able to come back, and I really had to keep it under wraps, I had to grow my hair out. You know, I got the locks back in and stuff like that. And I’m traveling a lot of places, so I’ve got to wear a hat, a hoodie, fly private, which isn’t too bad of a thing. But being able to keep it under wraps was really a tough thing.”

Michael B. Jordan does touch on something important there: it’s even more of a miracle that his return as Killmonger wasn’t spoiled early, as his hair would’ve been a dead giveaway to anyone who came looking and/or speculating about his return. Jordan wasn’t exactly low-profile during the time of Black Panther 2’s production, either: he was arguably in the spotlight more than ever, as his personal life became a major media focus, while he dated Steve Harvey’s adoptive daughter, model/entrepenuer Lori Harvey, from 2020-2022. 

So again, the fact that no one figured out or spoiled Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger return in Wakanda Forever is a small miracle. Then again, the biggest aid to that secrecy may have been fans’ own belief that Killmonger’s death in the first film would disqualify him from the sequel. 

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will stream on Disney+ in February.