Black Panther: Wakanda Forever director Ryan Coogler opens up on the sequel looking different from the first installment. Phase 4 is reaching its end in 2022, with She-Hulk: Attorney at Law season 1 only having a few episodes left to air on Disney+ while Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will serve as the last film before Phase 5 begins in 2023. However, unlike any MCU TV show or film that has come in the last few years, the Black Panther sequel will be Phase 4's most emotional one.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY While Chadwick Boseman brought T'Challa to the big screen, the 43-year-old actor sadly passed away on August 28, 2020 from colon cancer. Despite his death, the Black Panther franchise is moving forward after the first film collected $1.3 billion at the worldwide box office and became a smash hit with critics.
"I think this film has the fog of loss over it, and anamorphic lenses warp the image a little bit. Sometimes when you go through profound loss, it can warp how you look at the world. What we were after was just making it feel tactile, even though it felt like a dream. The film should feel like a really wild dream that you would have, but where everything felt like it was really there."
Why Loss Is A Main Theme In Black Panther 2 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever putting loss as a core theme in its story is warranted not just for the MCU, but also the real world. Boseman's portrayal of T'Challa became synonymous with the character, especially as the comic book movie genre is still lacking the representation of diverse superheroes.
Given the severity of what happened to Boseman in real life, it feels fair to assume that Coogler, Kevin Feige and the entire creative team behind Black Panther: Wakanda Forever did the best they could to end T'Challa's story in an honorable way. Since they didn't want to recast T'Challa, it's safe to say that the MCU will likely never revisit the character through Multiverse Variants.