Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Director Reveals Original Story With Chadwick Boseman

11/01/2022 07:30 pm EDT

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was always going to be about grief. But returning filmmaker Ryan Coogler — whose first Black Panther focused on T'Challa's succession to the throne as king of Wakanda — never imagined making the sequel without leading man Chadwick Boseman. The T'Challa actor died of colon cancer at age 43 in August 2020, when Coogler was drafting his script for Black Panther 2. He said at the time: "I spent the last year preparing, imagining and writing words for him to say, that we weren't destined to see." As Coogler and the cast mourned Boseman, they poured that grief into Wakanda Forever, now set one year after King T'Challa's death.

In an interview with Inverse, Cooger revealed what Wakanda Forever was about before T'Challa's death: grief and the loss of time. The original version of Black Panther 2 took place in the immediate aftermath of Avengers: Endgame, which saw Wakandan king T'Challa — and half the universe's population — "blipped" back to life five years after Thanos (Josh Brolin) snapped them out of existence. 

King T'Challa's Role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

"The tonal shift, I will say, was less of a shift than in [casting]. The tone was going to be similar," Coogler said. "[T'Challa] was going to be grieving the loss of time, you know, coming back after being gone for five years. As a man with so much responsibility to so many, coming back after a forced five years absence, that's what the film was tackling. He was grieving time he couldn't get back. Grief was a big part of it."

After the loss of Boseman, Coogler and co-writer Joe Cole reworked Wakanda Forever to center on the aftermath of T'Challa's death. Instead of T'Challa mourning time lost to The Snap, the royal family and their kingdom would mourn T'Challa as a new Black Panther — and a new enemy — surfaced within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Namor the Sub-Mariner (Tenoch Huerta), ruler of the hidden undersea kingdom of Talokan, "was always the antagonist," Coogler said. "There were other characters, for sure, that we considered including. Namor was always there."

What Is Black Panther: Wakanda Forever About?

In Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), Shuri (Letitia Wright), M'Baku (Winston Duke), Okoye (Danai Gurira) and the Dora Milaje (including Florence Kasumba), fight to protect their nation from intervening world powers in the wake of King T'Challa's death. As the Wakandans strive to embrace their next chapter, the heroes must band together with the help of War Dog Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o) and Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) and forge a new path for the kingdom of Wakanda.

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Marvel Studios' Black Panther: Wakanda Forever opens only in theaters November 11th.

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