Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – A Kingdom Without Its King

🌌 Introduction

This review is part of the MCU Watch Order – explore all Marvel movies and shows in timeline order!

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever had an impossible task: honor the legacy of a beloved actor, continue one of the MCU’s most original worlds, and launch a new path forward—all without its central hero. And while it tries valiantly, the result is a film that feels bloated, directionless, and emotionally uneven.

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🧩 The Story – Grief as a Plot Device

The story begins in tragedy. T’Challa has died off-screen due to an illness, and Wakanda mourns its fallen king. His sister Shuri (Letitia Wright), mother Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), and the people of Wakanda face not only their own sorrow but new global tensions as nations seek vibranium.

Enter Namor (Tenoch Huerta), the ruler of the underwater civilization Talokan, who emerges as a new threat—or potential ally—in a world that sees Wakanda as weakened.

This narrative should feel monumental. Instead, it meanders. The grief is real, but the plot often feels mechanical, and the pacing drags through politics, exposition, and new introductions that fail to truly land.

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⚔️ Namor – A Complex But Underused Villain

Namor is one of the film’s most compelling elements: a mutant god with wings on his feet, ruling over an ancient civilization. His motivations—to protect his people from colonization and exploitation—mirror Wakanda’s own past.

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But his character development is shallow. His menace never fully builds, and his choices don’t always feel earned. The underwater world of Talokan looks beautiful, but its introduction is rushed and lacks the depth of Wakanda’s original portrayal.

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🎭 Performances – Powerful but Overburdened

Angela Bassett delivers an outstanding performance—regal, emotional, commanding. Her scenes are the film’s emotional peak. Letitia Wright tries admirably to carry the torch, but Shuri’s arc is not quite strong enough to anchor the movie.

Supporting characters like Okoye (Danai Gurira), M’Baku (Winston Duke), and newcomer Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) add moments of levity and spark—but they’re often underused or pulled into side plots that don’t fully resolve.

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⌛ A Tribute That Never Becomes a Story

The tribute to Chadwick Boseman is heartfelt, especially in the silent Marvel logo and the final scenes. But the film feels caught between honoring the past and launching something new.

It introduces too much: new tech, new characters, new conflicts, and new mythologies—all without time to let them breathe. It’s ambitious, but bloated.

Instead of telling a powerful story with the tools it has, it feels like the movie is setting up future Disney+ shows and sequels.

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🎬 Visuals and Direction

Visually, Wakanda Forever is stunning. The production design, costumes, and cinematography are all top-tier. Ruth E. Carter’s work continues to shine.

Action scenes are well-choreographed, but few feel truly memorable. The final showdown between Namor and the new Black Panther is impactful—but comes too late to truly save the narrative.

The underwater visuals are impressive but can’t escape the feeling of déjà vu after Aquaman.

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👨‍👧‍👦 Family Viewing & Accessibility

This movie is heavy—dealing with death, politics, and war. For older kids, it may be meaningful, but it’s not the kind of Marvel movie that excites younger viewers. There’s little fun, little wonder, and very little humor.

For families, it might serve as a reflection on grief—but not an entertaining ride.

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🕯️ The Tribute vs. the Movie

The kindest and most honest way to think about Wakanda Forever is to separate two things that the film never quite manages to: the tribute to Chadwick Boseman, and the movie built around it. The tribute is genuinely moving. The silent Marvel logo that opens the film, the restraint in how T’Challa’s death is handled, Angela Bassett channeling real grief into Queen Ramonda — these land with a weight few blockbusters ever reach, because the loss behind them was real. You can feel a cast and crew mourning a friend, and that sincerity deserves respect.

The problem is that mourning isn’t the same as storytelling. Ryan Coogler was handed an impossible brief — say goodbye to your lead, who was also the franchise, while simultaneously launching a successor, a new world, a new villain, and three or four future spin-offs — and the seams show everywhere. The film keeps stopping to grieve, then lurching into franchise-management mode, and the two modes never fuse into a single propulsive story. The result is a movie that’s easy to admire scene by scene and hard to love as a whole.

That’s the core of why we landed where we did. It’s not that Wakanda Forever does anything offensively wrong; it’s that a film carrying this much emotional and cultural weight needed a tighter, braver script, and it didn’t get one.

🌊 Namor and Talokan: The Squandered Potential

If there’s one missed opportunity that stings most, it’s Talokan. Tenoch Huerta’s Namor is a legitimately great idea for an antagonist — an immortal mutant god-king whose people, like Wakanda’s, hid from a world that would have enslaved and looted them. The parallel between two nations protecting themselves from colonization is rich, thorny material, and for stretches the film seems to know it. Huerta plays Namor with a calm, wounded authority that suggests a far better movie hovering just out of reach.

But Talokan gets a fraction of the loving world-building Wakanda received in 2018, and Namor’s heel-turns feel dictated by plot necessity rather than character. By the time the climactic clash arrives, neither side’s position has been developed enough for the conflict to ache the way it should. It’s a villain and a civilization that deserved the depth the first film gave Killmonger — and didn’t get it.

🔁 Rewatch Value & Home Viewing

We’ll be honest: this isn’t a film that begs to be rewatched. At nearly three hours, weighed down by grief and exposition with little of the wonder or humor that made the original such a joy, it’s very much a one-and-done experience for most viewers. The emotional tribute lands hardest the first time; on a second pass, the structural problems are harder to ignore.

Where it does still impress is the craft. If you do want it on the shelf, the 4K Ultra HD release is the way to capture it — Ruth E. Carter’s Oscar-winning costumes, the bioluminescent Talokan, and the Wakandan vistas are genuinely beautiful in HDR, and the underwater sequences benefit from the extra clarity. It streams on Disney+ as well, which for a film this rewatch-resistant may be the more sensible option for most families.

Bottom line: Wakanda Forever is a film we wanted to love and simply couldn’t, at least not as a movie. As a tribute to Chadwick Boseman it’s dignified and genuinely moving; as a story it’s overstuffed, unfocused, and far longer than its thin plot can support. The craft is impeccable and the performances — Bassett especially — deserve a better script. For us it lands as one of the MCU’s most disappointing entries, not because it lacks heart, but because all that heart never found a story worthy of it.

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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (4K Ultra HD) (opens in a new tab)

The emotional sequel honoring T'Challa's legacy in stunning 4K.

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📌 FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions

What happens in the post-credit scene of Wakanda Forever?

In the post-credit scene, Shuri meets Nakia in Haiti and is introduced to her nephew—T’Challa’s son, Toussaint, whose Wakandan name is also T’Challa. This reveal hints at the legacy continuing through the next generation.

Is Namor the villain in Wakanda Forever?

Namor is more of an anti-hero than a villain. He opposes Wakanda out of fear and protection for his people, but his methods are extreme. He remains a complex character who may return in future MCU installments.

Who becomes the new Black Panther?

Shuri, T’Challa’s sister, takes up the mantle of the Black Panther. She creates a synthetic heart-shaped herb and dons a new suit, becoming Wakanda’s new protector.

Is this film necessary for the MCU timeline?

It introduces key political tensions, the character of Riri Williams (Ironheart), and Namor. However, its core story remains largely self-contained and skippable for those not invested in Wakanda’s future.

Is Wakanda Forever as good as the first Black Panther?

In our view, no. It’s a respectful, visually stunning tribute to Chadwick Boseman, but a bloated, unfocused script keeps it from matching the original’s storytelling. We rated it among the weaker MCU entries despite its strong craft and performances.