‘Black Panther’ Reveals More About Ulysses Klaue’s MCU History

Black Panther is finally in theaters and in addition to smashing box office records for the best four-day President’s Day weekend gross, the film is also deepening the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s history, giving fans a bit more information about how events of the past have shaped the world and will continue to shape future MCU films. A significant part of that history involves Ulysses Klaue.

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for Black Panther. Read on at your own risk!

Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) isn’t exactly a new face in the MCU. The black market arms dealer was first seen in Avengers: Age of Ultron when we saw him supply Ultron with Vibranium Klaue had stolen from Wakanda. Klaue isn’t exactly happy to be giving Ultron the Vibranium, though, and tells the villain — who wants it to build himself a new body — that not only is the Vibranium worth billions, but it came to him at high personal cost. Klaue reveals a brand on his neck marking him permanently as a thief. In response, Ultron dumps billions into Klaue’s bank account but things get tense almost immediately when Klaue compares Ultron to Tony Stark leading Ultron to cut off Klaue’s arm.

The next time we see Klaue is in Black Panther where he has a new, prosthetic arm that he created using Vibranium mining technology from Wakanda, but that new arm isn’t the only new thing we find out about Klaue. In the movie we discover a bit more of Klaue’s history. It turns out that Klaue originally stole the Vibranium he ultimately “sold” to Ultron with the assistance of N’Jobu (Sterling K. Brown), King T’Chaka’s brother who had been sent to Oakland, California as a War Dog Wakandan spy. However, after seeing the hardship black people were experiencing outside of the secretive utopian Wakanda, N’Jobu wanted to arm his community so they could act to change their circumstances. This lead him to reach out to and work with Klaue sometime in the early 1990s, providing the information the arms dealer needed to enter Wakanda and steal from the nation. Klaue is, at some point, captured Klaue and branded him as a thief, but Klaue escaped — killing W’Kabi’s (Daniel Kaluuya) parents in the process.

T’Chaka learns of N’Jobu’s betrayal in 1992 and confronts his brother, a confrontation that ends in N’Jobu’s death and the abandonment of N’Jobu’s young son, Erik.

As for Klaue, his infiltration of Wakanda for N’Jobu is what lead to his personal stash of Vibranium as well as explains how he had the Wakandan mining tech that he used to create his prosthetic arm. It also ties back into how Klaue ended up on SHIELD’s radar in Avengers: Age of Ultron with Klaue claiming to be the only person from the outside world who had seen Wakanda and knew its secrets. A quick look at Klaue’s SHIELD file in Avengers: Age of Ultron also confirms that Klaue’s history with the Wakandan nation goes back even further. According to the file, Klaue was hired as an assassin to kill King T’Chaka, but Klaue had deeper personal reasons for wanting to assassinate the king. The file indicates that Klaue’s great-grandfather was killed by the Black Panther during a 19th century attempt to annex Wakanda.

Of course, in Black Panther, Klaue’s complicated relationship with Wakanda finally comes to an end. N’jobu’s son teams up with Klaue under the guise of stealing and selling artifacts. However, Erik, who has become Killmonger, was playing Klaue the whole time. Knowing the dealer’s significance, he murders Klaue and takes his body to Wakanda, using the capture of the nation’s most-wanted criminal along with his secret War Dog tattoo as entry to the African nation.

Black Panther is now in theaters. It will be followed by Avengers: Infinity War on May 4th, Ant-Man and the Wasp on July 6th, Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019, the fourth Avengers movie on May 3, 2019, the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming on July 5, 2019, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in 2020.