God of War (2018) received a PS5 patch that enables the game to run at a 4k checkerboard resolution with 60 frames per second.This news hammers home an important truth about Black Panther – the franchise has become much bigger than just T’Challa. Let’s take a closer look at why there’s still so much ground left to cover even if T’Challa’s story has come to a premature end.
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Even when it seemed Boseman would remain an active part of the MCU post-Avengers: Endgame, many fans assumed it would be only a matter of time until T’Challa’s younger sister Shuri took up the Black Panther mantle. That’s what happened in the comics, specifically in the 2009 Black Panther series. When her brother is severely injured in an attack orchestrated by Doctor Doom, Shuri rises up to fill the void and lead Wakanda in her brother’s place.
Though Shuri’s tenure as Black Panther only lasted a few years, she’s still grown to become as much the face of the franchise as her brother. These days, Shuri has taken on a new, more spiritual role as the leader of the Dora Milaje and the living connection between the kingdom of Wakanda and the Djalia – the afterlife where the dead kings of old gather to mentor the current Black Panther. Whether or not Letitia Wright’s Shuri follows the same arc as the comic book version, it’s clear her story has only just begun in the MCU. There’s no reason Marvel Studios can’t continue to grow the franchise with Shuri as its new center.
Really, the only thing stopping Shuri from stepping into T’Challa’s ugly sandals is Wright’s recent history of social media scandals. We’ll see if that proves to be a deal-breaker for Disney. But fortunately, even Shuri is just the tip of the Wakandan iceberg.
2016’s Captain America: Civil War and 2018’s Black Panther introduced MCU fans to the Dora Milaje, the “Grace Jones-looking” bodyguards who protect the king and the land at all costs. Which raises a compelling question – if T’Challa is gone, where does that leave the women who devoted themselves to his safekeeping?
We already got a taste of this conflict in Avengers: Endgame, where we learned Danai Gurira’s Okoye effectively became the steward of Wakanda after T’Challa and Shuri were blipped away by Thanos. That’s five years of Wakanda existing without a true monarch. Who’s to say everyone wants things to go back to normal post-Endgame? With T’Challa (presumably) being killed off permanently this time, or otherwise taken off the table, will the throne automatically transfer to Shuri, or will a power struggle develop between Shuri and Okoye? And what of T’Challa’s *other* bodyguard force, the Hatut Zeraze? We have yet to even meet them in the MCU.
The Black Panther and the Dora Milaje have a complex relationship that the MCU has only barely begun to explore. As we saw from the romance between T’Challa and Lupita Nyong’o’s Nakia, not all of the Dora Milaje are willing or able to put their personal desires above their duties. In fact, the comics have established the Dora Milaje as ceremonial brides to T’Challa, basically a way of keeping the peace between the various Wakandan tribes. Nakia herself undergoes a very dark turn and becomes a villain known as Malice, all after T’Challa is tricked into kissing her and “consummating” what’s meant to be an entirely symbolic relationship. The MCU may not follow that exact path, but it’s easy to see the Dora Milaje as a whole and Nakia in particular facing a very difficult road ahead once they lose their king and husband.
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The opening of the first Black Panther movie shows us the origins of the Wakandan kingdom, as we learn the nation is made up of five tribes. Four of those tribes have united around the Black Panther and enjoy the prosperity only a mountain full of vibranium could provide. Only the fifth, the Jabari Tribe, have chosen to live apart from the others and worship the White Gorilla rather than the Black Panther.
While these tribes may have been mostly divided before, it’s easy to imagine the loss of T’Challa sparking a new wave of civil unrest. How does a kingdom choose a new monarch when the old one isn’t around to participate in the usual rites? The question may become whether Wakandans still want to exist as a monarchy or evolve into a democracy instead. That question has been at the heart of writer Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Black Panther comic in recent years.
The silver lining to losing T’Challa in the MCU is that it opens the door for other leaders from other tribes taking on more prominent roles, either in the sequel movie or the TV series. As it is, Winston Duke’s M’Baku was one of the breakout characters in the first Black Panther movie. Who would complain about seeing more of him, or the other ambitious figureheads who see T’Challa’s fall as an opportunity? Will M’Baku renew his quest for the throne, or will he support someone like Shuri or Okoye?
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Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger is widely regarded as one of the best villains in the MCU. His bloodthirsty actions are contrasted by his tragic background and clear set of motivations. Though it certainly seemed as though his story came to an end in the first Black Panther movie, that hasn’t stopped fans from speculating about Killmonger’s return in the sequel. Even Jordan himself seems amenable to the idea.
“Being in that world in a character that I loved playing, and working with [writer/director Ryan Coogler] and all that good stuff, it’s family. We created a family over there,” he told People Magazine in January 2021. “So to be able to be in that world again is something that, I think, will always be on the table in some capacity.”
It remains to be seen if Coogler will opt to bring back Killmonger for the sequel. There are certainly plenty of ways to explain that return, what with Wakanda’s advanced technology and close link to the spiritual plane. The comics even offer a novel solution, with the current volume of Black Panther introducing a new Killmonger who rules the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda 2000 years in the future.
Whether or not Killmonger returns has less to do with the how than whether there’s another good story to tell with the character. The first movie established him as a man who dreamed his entire life of living in Wakanda, only to grow into a hardened killer who nearly destroyed the thing he coveted most. What happens if he’s given a second lease on life and a chance to prove himself worthy of his ancestral home? If he is still alive, does that technically give him a better claim to the throne than Shuri? Will we see Killmonger recast as a reluctant hero this time? Anything’s possible, which may be the best argument for making the character one of the driving forces behind the franchise.
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Wakanda is an Afrofuturist utopia – a kingdom where advanced science and widespread prosperity make it the world’s greatest and most mysterious superpower. But in the comics, Wakanda is one of several kingdoms ruled by superhuman monarchs. T’Challa is a man whose only true peers are other kings like Doctor Doom, Namor and Black Bolt. We’ve already met the latter character thanks to the critically reviled Marvel’s Inhumans TV show, but the hope for many fans is that both Doom and Namor will begin to take on major roles in the MCU over the next few years. And if that’s the case, there’s plenty of room for them to appear in Black Panther 2 and/or the Wakanda series.
Avengers: Endgame may have already set the stage for a Black Panther vs. Namor conflict. Okoye references strange seismic activity off the coast of Africa, a seemingly random non-sequitur that may well have been foreshadowing the return of Atlantis. And given both his enduring popularity and the fact that a new Fantastic Four project is in the works, it goes without saying Doom will be making his grand MCU debut at some point.
It’s a shame we’ll never get to see these characters interact with Boseman’s T’Challa. But even so, there’s no shortage of gold to be mined from pitting characters like Shuri and Okoye against arrogant kings like Namor and Doom. The MCU could be well on the way to a superhero-flavored Game of Thrones scenario. Who wouldn’t tune into that series?
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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
The Super Bowl has historically been a big moment for movie studios, where the biggest movies get 30 seconds of air time in front of the eyes of the entire nation. This year, though, studios are scaling back Super Bowl movie trailers by quite a bit.
News comes via Variety and Deadline, both of which report that the Super Bowl ad lineup will have much less in the way of movie trailers this year compared to previous years. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any trailers, though. Amazon Prime Video is expected to show off Eddie Murphy’s Coming 2 America. According to Deadline, Disney will have two to four trailers, and Universal plans to show M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming thriller Old.
That’s a big drop from last year’s list. The 2020 Super Bowl was host to a bunch of blockbuster trailers, including Fast and Furious film F9, Marvel’s Black Widow, Mulan, James Bond’s No Time To Die, A Quiet Place II, Sonic the Hedgehog, Top Gun: Maverick. and others. Within weeks of the big game, though, much of the country went into various stages of lockdown. Of those films, only Sonic the Hedgehog made it into American theaters, and Mulan went straight to Disney+ to pilot its premium-viewing model.
With Episode 4 in the books and Episode 5 right around the corner, we’ve officially hit mid-season in WandaVision, the first ever MCU TV show–and, surprising no one, the show’s core mysteries are only getting more and more complex as more information is revealed.
While fans of the MCU are no stranger to wild speculation and conspiracy theory building, WandaVision has presented us with an unusual challenge. Not only are we getting new clues doled out on a week-to-week basis, leaving plenty of room for red herrings and false starts, we’re also trying to piece together the very first official entry into Phase 4, meaning we’ve got to try and figure out where the pieces we’re putting down might fit in a mostly obscured bigger picture. After all, with all the status quo changes in Avengers: Endgame, it really does feel like anything is possible for Marvel movies going forward.
Of course this is exciting, but it’s also a bit overwhelming–especially if you’re trying your best to figure it out as you go along, rather than waiting for all nine episodes to be available for bingeing. We get it–we’re in the same boat. And that’s exactly why we’ve compiled a list of our favorite working theories for the show, ranging from absolutely bonkers off-the-wall improbabilities to involvement from the actual, literal devil.
It takes all kinds here in Westview.
Let us know your favorite WandaVision theories, no matter how bizarre, in the comments below.
The mystery of who, exactly, is responsible for Westview sits at the core of WandaVision. Monica, following her ejection from the “bubble,” claimed that it’s “all Wanda,” which certainly seems plausible–Wanda obviously has a degree of control over who gets to stay inside–but it also seems like Wanda herself is just as confused most of the time.
We know concretely that SWORD didn’t put Wanda inside to neutralize her or keep her contained, which narrows the list of suspects down considerably. And everyone in Westview has been accounted for as a civilian except two–Wanda’s neighbors Agnes and Dottie. If, hypothetically speaking, Agnes actually is the MCU incarnation of Agatha Harkness, a witch who mentored Wanda briefly in the ’80s, it’s entirely possible that her powers are at play here too.
Agatha’s role in the comics hasn’t always been entirely on the up-and-up, but she’s never actually been a full blown villain, which leads us to wonder: What if Agnes is responsible for Westview, but she’s doing it to protect Wanda from something much more dangerous?
Dovetailing nicely from the “Agnes is a good guy, actually” theory comes one about who, exactly, could be posing a threat to Wanda great enough to necessitate hiding her like this–and there’s a fairly short list of possible suspects.
One of the big ones that actually does relate back to Wanda’s comics history is Immortus, AKA Kang the Conqueror, who at one point was in the running to “steal” Wanda’s “temporal nexus energy” (don’t ask). He was thwarted, obviously, and it’s unlikely that the MCU will literally try and use the phrase “temporal nexus energy,” though stranger things have happened. Either way, Immortus/Kang is definitely in the running as we already know he’s on his way to an MCU debut–Jonathan Majors is playing him in the third Ant-Man film. And he’s powerful enough that keeping Wanda off his radar could require some genuine magical intervention.
Another prime candidate if not Immortus is Mephisto, otherwise known as the actual, literal devil in Marvel Comics (or one of them–the most traditional looking of the bunch). Mephisto has also had beef with Wanda in the past and played a tertiary role in the birth of her kids the first time around.
With the twins having been introduced in the show back in Episode 3, the potential for a demonic influence is not out of the question–though if Mephisto is the big bad here, it’s unlikely that Agnes is trying to protect Wanda. It’s not entirely out of the question, but it does feel a bit less likely.
However, Mephisto seems to be a major fan favorite in terms of theory crafting on the show’s subReddit, even becoming something of a meme. So, if nothing else, at least bringing him in would make a lot of fans very happy.
While it would be a departure from most of her comic book stories (assuming she is indeed a version of Agatha, that is), having Agnes be the villain–or perhaps in league with the villain–does seem just as viable an option as anything else.
There’s also the possibility that Agnes is not a version of Agatha and instead is borrowing inspiration from an entirely different corner of the Marvel universe. It wouldn’t be the first time the MCU has pulled a fast one and there are no hard and fast rules governing what does or does not end up in this show. Agnes could represent a version of, or combination of, any number of magical entities in the MCU, or an entirely new character who just has it out for Wanda for reasons that we’ve yet to discover.
Dottie, the mean-spirited queen bee neighbor, is another chaotic variable in the equation. She’s been less active in Wanda’s life than Agnes has, but she’s also yet to be identified as a civilian. And, given her prominence in the social hierarchy of Westview, it seems like she’s going to be important in one way or another.
The question then becomes: Are she and Agnes working together? Against each other? Are they even aware of each other’s motives?
In Episode 4, Jimmy Woo spells out an interesting question on his own conspiracy-chasing whiteboard: why the hexagonal pattern? The shape of the Westview “bubble” seems to be hexagonal, the credit titles in Episode 2’s animated opening were hexagonal, and so was the SWORD emblem on the Beekeeper’s sitcom-ified uniform–not to mention the shape of beehives themselves. It’s a shape that keeps cropping up in mostly innocuous ways, but there’s clearly something there–otherwise, Jimmy’s note on the whiteboard wouldn’t have made it into the shot, right?
There’s admittedly not a lot to work with on this one yet. Users on the WandaVision subreddit have submitted theories ranging from possible connections to the cosmic cube (AKA the Space Stone)–because a cube at a certain angle in a 2D view is hexagonal–to relationships between hexagonal patterns and honeycombs creating a possible link to Ant-Man (because bugs and also the hexagonal patterns used in the Ant-Man logos and posters.)
Written out, it sounds a bit flimsy, but there may actually be something to that last one. Reddit user smacksaw pointed out that at the end of Ant-Man, HYDRA makes off with Yellowjacket’s knock-off Pym particles. This has prompted some debate about whether or not shows like Agents of Shield should be considered part of MCU canon–but regardless–the possible connection to Ant-Man, given the Immortus theory, may still be something to keep in mind.
Of course, we can’t discount Occam’s Razor here–the simplest explanation for Westview and the events of the show is that Wanda is just out of her mind with grief over Vision’s death and created the Westview anomaly as an escapist fantasy.
The brief glimpse of Vision’s corpse in Episode 4 seems to even imply that she may have taken Vision’s lifeless body into the town to “reanimate” him.
This doesn’t exactly explain the question of “Why a sitcom?”–something that Darcy asked directly in Episode 4–nor does it explain the whole hopscotching-through-American-pop-culture-history conceit, but it definitely shouldn’t be written off. Monica, who thus far is the only outsider with any perspective on the inside of Westview, seems adequately convinced Wanda’s the one behind it, afterall.