Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Review: A Good Film Carrying a Great One Inside It

Ryan Coogler had to make a sequel to a movie whose star had died. Chadwick Boseman, who played King T’Challa across four Marvel films, died from colon cancer in August 2020. Marvel chose not to recast the role. So Black Panther: Wakanda Forever opens in mourning, and stays there. The film runs 162 minutes and is the 30th entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is also the rare franchise installment that earns its grief rather than renting it.

Trailer, via Marvel Entertainment.

Shuri Carries the Weight

The plot turns on T’Challa’s illness. He is suffering from a terminal disease that his sister Shuri believes the “heart-shaped herb” can cure. Shuri tries to recreate the herb synthetically after Erik “Killmonger” Stevens burned it, and fails before her brother dies. That failure is the engine of the whole film. Letitia Wright, given a larger role after Boseman’s death, plays Shuri as a person who has buried her talent inside her loss. Wright has said Shuri turns to her technology as a way to grieve T’Challa. You can see it in how the character handles tools — like a person who would rather solve something than feel it.

A year after the king’s death, the world wants Wakanda’s vibranium. Nations pressure the kingdom to share it; some try to take it by force. Queen Ramonda, played by Angela Bassett, pushes Shuri to finish the herb research and build a new Black Panther. Shuri refuses. She believes the Black Panther is no longer needed. That refusal is the film’s central argument, and it is a better one than most superhero movies bother to stage.

Namor and the Ultimatum

Out in the Atlantic, a U.S. expedition team uses a vibranium detector to hunt a deposit underwater. Blue-skinned, water-breathing superhumans led by Namor kill them. The CIA suspects Wakanda. Tenoch Huerta Mejía plays Namor as a king with a grievance, not a villain with a scheme. He bypasses Wakanda’s security and confronts Ramonda and Shuri directly. He blames Wakanda for starting the vibranium race and gives them a choice: hand over the scientist who built the detector, or he attacks.

That scientist is Riri Williams, an MIT student and genius inventor from Chicago, played by Dominique Thorne. Shuri and Okoye find her at the university, then get chased by the FBI and by Namor’s warriors. The warriors beat Okoye and take Shuri and Williams underwater to meet Namor. Danai Gurira’s Okoye pays for that failure. Ramonda strips her of her title as general of the Dora Milaje. Florence Kasumba’s Ayo later becomes general in her place.

Talokan, and What Namor Wants

Namor shows Shuri his kingdom: Talokan, a vibranium-rich underwater civilization protected for centuries from the surface world. He is bitter at the surface for the slavery and genocide of his people. He proposes an alliance with Wakanda against the rest of the world, and threatens destruction if Wakanda refuses. This is where the film is strongest and where it is most obviously stretched. Talokan is a real idea — a civilization that chose the ocean over the people who hunted it — and the film gives it weight without much time to spare.

Ramonda, meanwhile, seeks out Nakia, who has been living in Haiti since the Blip. Lupita Nyong’o has said Nakia has “matured” since both the Blip and T’Challa’s death, that her “priorities have shifted and sharpened,” and that she remains “the one you want to call when you’re in trouble.” Nakia helps Shuri and Williams escape, and accidentally kills two Talokanil guards doing it. That accident matters. It is the kind of detail the film keeps choosing over clean heroics.

The Cast, and Where the Film Slows

Winston Duke’s M’Baku has a quieter job. Duke has said the Jabari are no longer isolated from the rest of Wakanda after the events of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, and that M’Baku is trying to figure out how to move forward in this new world — something Duke compared to what people were doing during the COVID-19 pandemic. That reading lands. M’Baku is the film’s most useful outsider, a man watching a kingdom decide what it is.

Martin Freeman returns as Everett K. Ross, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus returns as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. Michaela Coel plays Aneka, who is romantically involved with Ayo and who takes on the Midnight Angels mantle alongside Okoye. Gurira has said the film explores “many facets” of Okoye’s humanity. It does, though mostly in the back half.

What the 162 Minutes Cost

The film’s problem is length. At 162 minutes, Wakanda Forever carries two movies inside it: a story about a kingdom in mourning, and a story about a war with an underwater empire. The first is excellent. The second is competent. Every time the film cuts away from Shuri’s grief to move pieces around the board, it loses heat. The Talokan sequences are gorgeous and the Namor material is genuinely interesting, but the film never quite earns the size of its own finale.

The Blip, the vibranium race, the CIA’s suspicion, the FBI chase at MIT — these are plot mechanics, and they behave like plot mechanics. They get characters from one place to another. What stays with you is smaller: Shuri refusing to build the herb, Ramonda’s face when she decides Okoye has failed, Nakia’s hands after the guards die.

Where This Sits in the MCU

Wakanda Forever is the sequel to Black Panther, which came out in February 2018. Ideas for a sequel began after that release. Coogler negotiated to return as director in the months that followed, and Marvel confirmed development in mid-2019. Everything changed in August 2020. The cast returned, the title was revealed in May 2021, and filming began that June in Atlanta at Trilith Studios and Tyler Perry Studios before moving to Massachusetts in August. Production was halted that November to allow Wright to recover from an injury.

That history is visible on screen. This is a film built around an absence, and it knows it. The tagline is just “Forever.” That is the whole pitch, and the film mostly delivers on it.

Grief Over Plot Machinery

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a good film carrying a great one inside it. The grief is real, the performances are strong, and the decision not to recast T’Challa was correct — it turns a production problem into the film’s subject. Angela Bassett and Letitia Wright do the heaviest work and do it well. Namor is a better antagonist than the MCU usually gets, and Talokan is a better idea than the film has room to explore.

What holds it back is bloat. At 162 minutes, the film asks for patience it does not always repay, and the plot machinery around the vibranium race is the least interesting thing in it. The parts about a family that lost someone are the parts worth keeping. For a franchise installment, that is an unusual and admirable priority — and it is why the film lands where it does rather than higher.

Black Panther · Marvel · MCU · movie review · Ryan Coogler · Wakanda Forever