Let’s Talk: What to do About Black Panther 2?

See what I did there? And it didn’t even mean to do it! Genius, I am. Anyway, back to our king. “King’s Dead” holds a whole new meaning now and it used to make me sad because they gave Future a Grammy alongside Jay Rock and Kendrick Lamar. It was not earned properly but I digress.

I have talked at length with friends and coworkers about what we want to see in Black Panther 2 and there have been some mixed reviews. Here’s some possibilities.

My best friend’s boyfriend, who I often argue with, said he would like to see T’Challa retire, if you will. His vision includes T’Challa and maybe Nakia deciding to start a family, and after the events of Endgame, wanting to relinquish his role as the warrior of Wakanda. In this instance, someone else could take over. Now, he didn’t feel completely comfortable with naming Shuri as his successor nor did he mention M’Baku. He wants mutants to come forward. Wakanda was where they hid Buckey so it could be possible that more powerful people we don’t know about are in Wakanda but I don’t agree. If we take ourselves out of the greater world, for lack of a better phrase, and act as life we’re just going off of the movie, think about how this would affect you as a viewer. If I’m a person who sees that this man has given up his throne to be a normal person, I would expect to see him again when things got bad enough. Think about it. Clint, although on house arrest, left the Avengers to be a family man and when Thanos came, guess who they had to go get? Clint. So in movie logic, this wouldn’t make sense because of course something dramatic will happen. We don’t know the threat yet but we do know it will be bigger than Thanos.

My coworker, who grew up reading, living and breathing comics, has a different more callous solution. My coworker says just to replace the actor. Now, you may be saying, “How could he?” I said the same thing during the car ride home. How could someone just replace Chadwick Boseman? They can’t and I don’t agree. It’s like replacing Iron Man because RDJ is done playing the character. There is no replacing Boseman so I just tossed this idea out of the window completely.

Here’s what I want. Kill T’Challa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, Amber! What? Yes, I said kill T’Challa. If you do that, this is the advantage we’ll have and by “we” I mean us as viewers, the writers, the director and Kevin Feige. If you kill T’Challa on-screen, you get to do a couple things. One, you get to send the already passed Chadwick Boseman a proper send-off that doesn’t require a montage of pictures, video and dissolving words on a screen before the start of the movie. Two, we get to deal with the actual problem in the movie. Who will take over now that T’Challa is gone? If you recall, in the comics, Shuri becomes the next Black Panther after something happens to T’Challa. Naturally, this is my pick because we’ve already been taking the comics as our foundation and been giving the ideas a twist. Do the same thing here BUT Shuri, as she stands in the MCU, is not ready to defend a WHOLE COUNTRY. She needs someone to train her in the ways of being the protector of Wakanda and the greatest mind in the world and who better to do that than the person who probably cannot stand her–M’Baku. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, M’Baku. Picture it! The Queen Mother making her way back to those cold mountains to ask for their greatest warrior to teach her daughter the ways of warriordom, which is not a word but so be it. Think about M’Baku yelling at Shuri or scoffing at her childlike ways. Isn’t it grand? She will get to learn something from him and she will, hopefully, get him to loosen up a bit. He has a sense of humor that we’ve seen but maybe we get to see more of that.

So who do you agree with? Do you have a completely different idea that does not involve bringing Killmonger back from the dead? And yes, there are some of you, like my best friend’s boyfriend, who believes that because we didn’t really see Killmonger take his las breathe that he is still alive somewhere. Please. Let’s be more original. Everyone doesn’t need to come back from the dead.