Saving Black Panther

With very special guest stars, the Muppets

Chadwick Boseman elevated the Black Panther. It was very much a right-actor, right-role situation, like Hugh Jackman as Wolverine or Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man. Boseman absolutely nailed it. His T’Challa combined dignity, humanity, intelligence, and even some humility, creating a great role model for kids and an aspirational character for fans of all ages.

But he died in 2020 at the tragically young age of 43. Marvel and Disney then needed to decide which would be more respectful to his memory: recasting or not recasting.

They chose the latter, but after watching Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, I have to disagree. Choosing to kill T’Challa off-screen does a disservice to the character and all the kids who look up to him.

Boseman’s superb performance began to cement T’Challa/Black Panther as a permanent fixture of pop culture. Now someone else needed to pick up that torch and carry it across the finish line—and do it for the character of T’Challa, not just the mantle of the Black Panther.

Some DC superheroes work as legacy characters, but Marvel superheroes typically don’t. You can have multiple Green Lanterns and Flashes and Robins, but Tony Stark is Iron Man, Steve Rogers is Captain America, Sam Wilson is the Falcon, Natasha Romanov is the Black Widow, Thor is Thor, and T’Challa is the Black Panther. Ant-Man appears to be an exception until we look more closely. The Hank Pym version of the 1960s was a dud. The Scott Lang version, introduced in the 1970s, was the second draft that got the concept right, making him an ex-con and single dad and thereby giving the character his soul.

But the question of when legacy superheroes work and don’t work merits its own post some other time. The main point for now is that T’Challa is the character who captured the public’s imagination and led one of the most successful movies of all time (14th-best worldwide box office as of this posting and 6th-best domestic). It wasn’t the costume. It wasn’t the powers. It was the character.

And yes, in the world of the story, the Black Panther is a mantle passed down from monarch to monarch, so T’Challa is hardly the first. But at this particular point in time, T’Challa is the man for the job. He trained for it and earned it. Special herbs make him stronger, but as we saw in the first movie, Wakandan tradition required T’Challa to prove himself without those powers, in a challenge that tested his cunning and natural strength.

T’Challa’s Black Panther is an aspirational superhero. He’s a king, and he takes that responsibility seriously. He demonstrates courage, fortitude, resiliency, kindness, and mercy. He sets an example of positive masculinity.

He’s not perfect and shouldn’t be. We see him almost go too far in Captain America: Civil War, but he restrains himself in the end. Killmonger initially defeats him in the first Black Panther movie, but for the sake of his kingdom, T’Challa recovers and refuses to yield. He does so with the help of loved ones and allies, which is also part of positive masculinity, and with that support, he triumphs.

Recasting T’Challa and introducing a new actor would have been difficult, but it could have been handled in a respectful manner. Back in 1990, the Muppets showed us how.

Jim Henson performed numerous Muppets over the years, but Kermit the Frog will always be the one he’s most closely associated with. He imbued Kermit with so much life, creating a timeless character who appeals to all ages. How could anyone else truly do the role justice?

Henson’s death at only 53 was a tremendous loss. But retiring Kermit would only have compounded that loss. Someone needed to pick up that Muppet and keep Kermit alive, no matter how much criticism he faced for not being Jim Henson, and he needed to do it for the children most of all.

The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson aired several months after Henson died, and Kermit was notably absent until the very end.

That time without Kermit showed the void left in a world without Jim Henson, and it gave fans space to mourn.

But then, at the end, while the Muppets are singing “Just One Person” (a favorite of Henson’s), Kermit enters. He silently watches the assembled Muppets, the product of one man’s brilliant creative vision.

“What a good song,” Kermit says, his first words performed by Steve Whitmire.

As he joins his friends, Kermit commends them on a great tribute to Jim and asks if they “have something silly to end with.” The message is clear: Death is sad and needs to be acknowledged, but life must go on.

In accordance with Muppet tradition, Kermit closes out the show. At the very end, he adds, “And we’ll be seeing you soon with more Muppet stuff because that’s the way the boss would want it.”

Perfect.

So how could something like that have worked in a Black Panther movie?

Perhaps we spend the first half of the movie without T’Challa. He could be away mourning the passing of a dear friend or mentor. Meanwhile, the supporting cast tries to protect Wakanda from some looming threat. They hold down the fort for a while, but as they’re losing ground and defeat seems likely, T’Challa returns.

He saves lives. He struggles. He sets things right. He triumphs. And the character of T’Challa lives on, inspiring more kids and young adults to be the best they can be.

We’re about to get into SPOILERS for Wakanda Forever, after this image from the Black Panther’s first appearance way back in Fantastic Four #52 (1966).

Wakanda Forever tries to do something similar to what I outlined by having Shuri (Letitia Wright) assume the mantle of the Black Panther. But she’s not the Black Panther—she’s Shuri, a great supporting character who was already a role model in her own right. In previous appearances, her scientific genius complemented T’Challa’s physical skills nicely.

By killing T’Challa and making his sister the new Black Panther, Marvel is essentially collapsing two great role models and aspirational characters into one.

Plus, you don’t defeat Namor the Sub-Mariner on your first day.

Part of what makes the first Iron Man movie so wonderful is that it shows us Tony Stark building himself into a better man, literally and figuratively. We see growth and change throughout the film. Shuri, however, needs only to recreate the special herbs to become an amazing Black Panther. Recreating the herbs indeed requires hard work and perseverance, so that part’s good, but considering how much of her life she’s spent working in labs, Shuri is then a bit too instantly adept with her new Panther powers.

She doesn’t immediately defeat Namor, true, but she should have flat-out lost their first fight, like Luke Skywalker getting his hand chopped off by Darth Vader in his second movie. She should have learned from that defeat, then returned stronger and wiser.

Shuri nearly loses. Namor impales her in what looks like a fatal strike, but we have no idea how she recovers so quickly because the movie glossed over her Black Panther development and never established clear parameters for her abilities.

Nevertheless, the seeds of a good arc are there. The filmmakers could have achieved a very moving story about Shuri struggling to work through her grief and nearly letting it destroy her, until the memory of her brother’s example pulls her back on track. And it could have been especially poignant because Shuri is someone who’s reluctant to let any religious faith help her through this difficult process. Unfortunately, this arc doesn’t come into focus until the second half, by which point it’s been shortchanged.

The movie needed to focus squarely on Shuri throughout. Supporting characters are fine and necessary, but this was not the time to introduce Riri Williams to set up another Disney+ series. Likewise, Martin Freeman and Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s characters did not need to be in this movie. Cameos at the most.

Still, this would have resembled T’Challa’s arc in Civil War, but it could have justified any repetition by making good use of the extra breathing room that a less crowded movie affords.

For me, Wakanda Forever is too long and unfocused, though your mileage may vary. It’s not in She-Hulk territory. Plenty of people are enjoying it, and I can see why. The movie features strong performances, especially from Angela Bassett, and it is indeed very respectful of Chadwick Boseman. The movie is strongest when it’s directly paying tribute to him and his character.

But it could have paid tribute to his memory by keeping the character alive to inspire new fans with each successive movie.