Movie Trailer – Black Panther 2 Chadwick Boseman (Marvel Comics).
The first trailer for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever has arrived to show the future of the MCU’s most advanced nation. The trailer, which debuted at San Diego Comic-Con 2022, showed off Black Panther’s most important returning characters, like Shuri played by Letitia Wright, M’Baku played by Winston Duke, and Nakia played by Lupia Nyong’o.
The Black Panther: Wakanda Forever trailer opens on a shot of Lupita Nyong’o’s Nakia staring mournfully out at the ocean. Some fans are superstitious and think the first shot is the one that gives away the ending. Nakia was the lifelong love interest of King T’Challa, and so she would definitely be inspired to take up his mantle. The first Black Panther movie also opened with the sequence of T’Challa’s Black Panther aiding Nakia in one of her undercover humanitarian aid missions, shutting down a human trafficking ring. Nakia’s spirit for heroism is already established in the franchise, so her becoming the new Black Panther would make sense – while still being a twist that Marvel fans don’t see coming.
Additionally, Tenoch Huerta joins the cast as Namor, and the trailer sees him rising from the ocean. Namor isn’t the only new character coming to the MCU with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; Dominique Thorn joins as Riri Williams — aka Ironheart — as well.
Then again, we could be in for something different altogether…
Between the original Black Panther and its sequel, star Chadwick Boseman, who played T’Challa, the MCU’s Black Panther, passed away after a quiet battle with cancer. Marvel president Kevin Fiege has made it clear in the past that the role of T’Challa will not be recast.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever also brings back characters like Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman), Ramonda (Angela Basset), and Okoye (Danai Gurira). The Black Panther sequel will also bring back original-movie director Ryan Coogler, who also co-wrote Wakanda Forever with Joe Robert Cole, Coogler’s collaborator on the script for the original.
There’s also the running theory that this final shot from the trailer is a classic Marvel misdirect. We know that Wakanda Forever will have substantial conflict in it between Wakanda and Atlantis – there could be a point where someone tries to take up the Black Panther mantle, but doesn’t quite last long in the job. It could be Shuri finds the Black Panther isn’t the way she wants to protect her homeland (when she can mentor genius minds like Riri Williams), and only briefly uses the suit – or it could be a point of the movie that T’Challa was so much more than just a powerful suit in his role as Black Panther that someone else can’t simply slip it on as a replacement.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever hits theaters on November 11, 2022.
I can’t wait for this movie…