3 / 10
Official trailer
I’ve watched Black Panther: Wakanda Forever once. The 3 is for a film that worked under difficult production circumstances and that the franchise mishandled despite those circumstances. Chadwick Boseman’s death in August 2020 required the production to work around the loss of its protagonist. Ryan Coogler returned as director and the script was considerably rewritten to address T’Challa’s death within the narrative.
The result is an incoherent story that attempts to function as Boseman tribute, MCU continuation, Shuri succession launch, Namor introduction, and Wakandan political drama at the same time. Each function dilutes the others. The film also extends considerably beyond its sustainable runtime and includes decorative political content that doesn’t serve the wider narrative. The 3 is for the structural problems despite acknowledgment of the difficult production circumstances.
This one left me annoyed. I wanted a proper goodbye to Boseman and a proper start for Shuri, and what I got was two hours and forty-one minutes of a film that keeps interrupting its own grief to set up the next product. Coogler clearly cared about this material. The script never decides what it’s for, and I could feel every competing agenda tugging the story in a different direction.
The Setup
The film opens with the off-screen death of T’Challa from an unspecified illness. Shuri attempts to use Wakandan technology to save him and fails. The narrative then jumps one year forward. Queen Ramonda has been managing Wakanda’s international position following T’Challa’s death. The Western powers want access to Wakanda’s vibranium reserves. Wakanda maintains its sovereign refusal to share the resource.
A separate vibranium discovery in an underwater location alerts the Talokan civilization, an ancient hidden society descended from Mayan refugees who developed their own underwater empire after Spanish colonization. Their king Namor demands that Wakanda help him locate and kill the scientist who developed the vibranium-detection technology. The scientist is revealed to be Riri Williams, a young MIT student. The middle act involves Wakanda’s protection of Williams and the political conflict with Talokan that escalates into open warfare.
The third act features the deaths of Queen Ramonda during Talokan’s attack on Wakanda, Shuri’s adoption of the Black Panther mantle through a synthesized heart-shaped herb, the climactic battle between Wakandan and Talokan forces, and Shuri’s eventual peace agreement with Namor.
The Boseman Situation
Chadwick Boseman died on August 28, 2020 from colorectal cancer that he had been treating privately during his MCU work. His death created the production circumstances that Wakanda Forever had to work within. Marvel Studios and Ryan Coogler decided not to recast the T’Challa role and to address his death within the narrative. The decision was respectful of Boseman’s legacy and avoided the awkwardness that recasting beloved characters typically generates.
The decision also created structural constraints that the film couldn’t entirely overcome.
T’Challa had been the franchise’s primary Black Panther character and the focal point that the original Black Panther film had built around. His absence from this film required considerable narrative compensation. The script attempted to provide compensation through multiple simultaneous developments: Shuri’s grief arc, Queen Ramonda’s leadership challenges, Namor’s introduction, Riri Williams’s debut, Talokan’s political conflict with Wakanda, and the wider Wakandan succession question.
The result is a film that attempts too much, because nothing could fill the hole T’Challa’s absence left. Coogler handles individual sequences with real commitment, and I don’t blame him for trying. The flaw is that nobody in the room seems to have said no to anything. The Boseman situation explains the structural problem without resolving it, and the film ends up as an honest tribute buried inside a compromised production.
For Writers
Wakanda Forever shows the structural cost of attempting to fulfill multiple incompatible requirements within a single production. The film is Boseman tribute, MCU continuation, Shuri succession launch, Namor introduction, Riri Williams debut, and Wakandan political drama at the same time. Each function requires heavy screen time and dramatic development. The film can’t provide adequate development to all functions within its runtime. The lesson for writers facing unexpected production challenges is that compromised situations require focused responses instead of ambitious responses.
Wakanda Forever attempted to address the Boseman absence through ambitious narrative expansion. The expansion diluted the tribute, undermined the succession, and overcomplicated the political drama. A focused response that committed more fully to a single primary function would likely have produced a more successful film. The decision to attempt everything generated the incoherence that characterizes the released version. Difficult production circumstances are real constraints that require difficult creative trade-offs. Attempting to honor all stakeholders usually fails. Choosing one primary function and executing it well usually succeeds.
Letitia Wright As Shuri
Letitia Wright takes on the Black Panther mantle following T’Challa’s death.
The performance is professionally committed within the limits of the material. Wright was a supporting character in the original Black Panther (2018) and the wider MCU appearances. The transition to lead role required real expansion of the character’s dramatic range. Wright handles the expansion with suitable professional execution.
The character development problems are structural instead of performance-based.
Previous appearances had established Shuri as a brilliant but emotionally young technologist. The film requires her to develop into Black Panther across the runtime, which involves both technological achievement (synthesizing the heart-shaped herb) and emotional growth (accepting the leadership role after her brother and mother both die). It compresses the development arc into a single film’s runtime when comparable development arcs for previous MCU lead characters had received multiple films of foundation work.
The compression produces specific problems. Shuri’s grief over T’Challa sits in the background when it should be driving the film, and her acceptance of the mantle feels obligated. Her new strength arrives in a handful of quick scenes, and that lost me. She goes from the lab genius of two films to the warrior king in the space of a few cuts, and I’m supposed to cheer. The succession is announced, and I never once felt she’d earned it.
The Shuri succession also works inside the wider pattern discussed in The Emasculation Of The MCU.
Boseman’s death forced T’Challa’s death on the film. That makes this specific case structurally distinct from the wider replacement pattern. The franchise nevertheless used the transition to position Shuri as part of the wider Phase Four-Five replacement structure. The marketing emphasis on Shuri’s emergence worked similarly to other Phase Four-Five female-successor introductions. The pattern is the franchise’s broader trend, even when this specific case had different proximate causes.
Tenoch Huerta As Namor
Tenoch Huerta plays Namor with serious physical presence and Mesoamerican-influenced character work. The decision to reimagine the comic-source Atlantean character as a Talokan king descended from Mayan refugees who had transformed underwater after Spanish colonial conquest is one of the film’s more interesting creative choices. The reimagining gives the character a distinct cultural identity instead of generic ocean-king characterization.
The performance is strong within the limits of the material.
Huerta brings specific physical capability, ideological coherence, and emotional accessibility to the role. Namor works with clear motivation tied to protecting Talokan from the surface world’s exploitation. His willingness to ally with or against Wakanda based on strategic calculation gives the character political intelligence beyond standard MCU villain motivation.
Huerta is the best thing in the movie, and I’d happily have watched a whole film about Talokan. He plays Namor like a king who’s sized up the surface world and doesn’t like the answer, and his scenes have a pulse the Wakandan scenes lack. It frustrates me that the film found its most interesting character and then kept cutting away from him.
The character development limitations are primarily structural. Namor must function within the film’s multiple competing demands instead of as central focal point.
His introduction requires sufficient screen time to establish Talokan, his backstory, his motivations, and his political position. The screen time available can’t fully develop these elements while also addressing Boseman’s death, Shuri’s succession, and the wider Wakandan political situation. Namor receives professional but incomplete establishment as a major MCU antagonist. The character has potential that this film couldn’t entirely develop.
Dominique Thorne As Riri Williams
Dominique Thorne plays Riri Williams in her MCU debut. Williams is a teenage MIT student whose vibranium-detection technology becomes the central plot driver for the wider Wakanda-Talokan conflict. The character would receive standalone development in the Ironheart Disney+ series scheduled for later release.
The performance is professionally committed and Thorne brings specific youthful intelligence to the role. The wider film’s structural constraints limit the character development. Williams receives the development that her plot function requires without the dramatic depth that would establish her as vivid protagonist on her own terms.
The character works as plot mechanism (her technology drives the conflict) and as Stark-legacy successor (her armor builds on Stark technology). She isn’t a fully realized character within Wakanda Forever’s runtime.
Williams’s broader role within the Phase Four-Five succession structure discussed in the emasculation essay is more visible than her characterization within this film.
The character was clearly being positioned to inherit Stark’s technological legacy in the post-Endgame MCU. The Ironheart standalone series will determine whether Williams develops as convincing protagonist or remains primarily as Stark-legacy inheritor. The Wakanda Forever introduction didn’t establish her sufficiently to determine the outcome.
The Two-Hour-Forty-One-Minute Runtime
The film runs two hours and forty-one minutes. The runtime is among the longest in MCU history and isn’t justified by the actual narrative content. The Talokan political subplot, the Shuri succession arc, the Riri Williams introduction, the wider Wakandan political situation, and the combat sequences all require considerable screen time. The film provides time for each element without finding the structural connections that would make them cohere into unified narrative.
The pacing problems are severe. The middle act in particular feels extended beyond what the material can support. The Shuri-Namor conversations in Talokan work at extended duration without advancing the wider plot proportionately. The Wakanda political-strategy sequences receive major screen time without generating proportionate dramatic stakes. The cumulative effect is a film that audiences experienced as overlong despite individual sequences operating with suitable craft attention.
A disciplined edit could have produced a far better film at one hundred and fifteen to one hundred and thirty minutes. I’d have started by holding Riri Williams back for her own series, then compressed the Talokan introduction and cut the political-strategy sequences down hard, since they’re the dullest stretch in the picture. As released, the film spreads its material across a runtime the material can’t support, and I felt the drag in every scene of that middle act.
Craft: The Tribute That Could Not Be A Film
Craft Note
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is the production that showed that some creative situations can’t be resolved through additional ambition. Chadwick Boseman’s death in 2020 created a structural void that this film attempted to fill through ambitious narrative expansion. The expansion didn’t work. The film couldn’t be both adequate Boseman tribute and adequate MCU continuation and adequate Shuri succession launch and adequate Namor introduction and adequate Riri Williams debut and adequate Wakandan political drama. The simultaneous attempts diluted each function.
The decision to not recast the T’Challa role was respectful of Boseman’s legacy but also creatively constraining in ways that the production couldn’t entirely overcome. A film that had been planned around Boseman’s central performance had to work without that performance. The narrative compensation strategies introduced their own structural problems that the original screenplay hadn’t anticipated.
The lesson for franchise filmmaking is that some production challenges can’t be solved through creative effort.
Wakanda Forever couldn’t have been as good as the original Black Panther regardless of execution quality, because the structural foundation that the original film had built was no longer available. The franchise should have accepted this constraint and produced a focused tribute film instead of ambitious continuation. The choice to attempt continuation generated the incoherence that defined audience response.
The 3 ratings are for the structural problems despite acknowledgment of the difficult circumstances. Ryan Coogler’s direction handles individual sequences with suitable craft attention. Tenoch Huerta’s Namor introduction is one of the more successful Phase Four-Five antagonist debuts. Letitia Wright’s Shuri performance is professionally committed within the role’s limitations. The film doesn’t work despite these individual elements. The 3 honors both the craft attention and the structural failures that prevent the production from cohering as unified film.
For analysis of the wider Phase Four-Five collapse, see How The Multiverse Destroyed The MCU. For the wider emasculation pattern this film works inside (with the structural caveat that T’Challa’s death wasn’t a creative choice), see The Emasculation Of The MCU.
Should you skip Black Panther: Wakanda Forever?
A 3. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is the production that showed some creative situations can’t be resolved through additional ambition. Chadwick Boseman’s death in 2020 created a structural void that ambitious narrative expansion couldn’t fill.
The film attempts to function as Boseman tribute, MCU continuation, Shuri succession launch, Namor introduction, Riri Williams debut, and Wakandan political drama at the same time. Each function dilutes the others. Tenoch Huerta’s Namor introduction is one of the film’s more successful elements.
Letitia Wright’s Shuri succession is compressed beyond what the runtime can support. The two-hour-forty-one-minute runtime isn’t justified by the actual narrative content.
I’ve watched it once and I don’t plan to watch it again. The 3 is there because of Boseman and Huerta. The tribute moments are sincere, and Namor deserved a better movie around him. Everything else is a studio trying to honor a dead man and launch four products in one film, and I think the people in charge should have seen that mistake coming.
Other viewers may rate it higher for the tribute or for Huerta. For me it attempts both jobs and does neither well.
