Marvel’s Black Panther, anchored by Chadwick Boseman’s stellar performance as King T’Challa, achieved immense critical and cultural acclaim in 2018. It earned over $1 billion at the box office and tallied seven Oscar nominations — including Best Picture — with wins for score, production design, and costume design.
As a result, the Ryan Coogler film was bound to have a follow-up. However, Boseman’s death in August 2020 after a battle with cancer meant that his last live-action appearance as T’Challa would be in the 2019 hit Avengers: Endgame. (Boseman also lent his voice as Black Panther for the Disney+ series What If…?, for which he won a posthumous Emmy for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance.)
Now, with Coogler returning to direct the sequel effort, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, questions have been raised about who will follow in the footsteps of Boseman in this closing chapter of the MCU’s Phase Four, coming out November 11th.
Here’s everything you need to know about the future of Black Panther.
What Will Happen to T’Challa’s Character?
Disney has already confirmed that King T’Challa has passed away, issuing a press release that summarized the plot of the sequel. Revolving around the characters of Shuri (Letitia Wright), Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), M’Baku (Winston Duke), and Okoye (Danai Gurira), the plot is said to see these heroes “fight to protect their nation from intervening world powers in the wake of King T’Challa’s death,” according to the logline.
The first official trailer for Wakanda Forever begins with the country in a period of mourning for the loss of T’Challa, including a procession carrying of the Black Panther mask and the reveal of a T’Challa mural.