At San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel announced that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever would be the final film in Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever hits theaters on November 11, 2022.
The fourth phase of the MCU began with WandaVision, the first of the Disney Plus television shows that were canon in the MCU. The first film was Black Widow, which came out in July 2021. With the company announcing the schedule and release dates for Phase 5 at SDCC 2022, with representatives promising that the next phase will be about “ reset and introduce new characters.”
One of those new characters will be Namor, the King of Atlantis, played by Tenoch Huerta, who was most recently seen in The Forever Purge. As underwater royalty, Namor harbors a grudge against the surface world that often puts him at odds with the superheroes of the Marvel Universe, and he has a very specific rivalry with T’Challa, which will likely be revisited in this version of the history
Also appearing will be Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), the teenage child genius who builds her own Iron Man-style armor to become the hero Ironheart.
Of course, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will feature the biggest returning characters like Shuri (Letitia Wright), M’Baku (Winston Duke) and Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o).
Between the release of the original Black Panther and its sequel, star Chadwick Boseman, who played T’Challa, the MCU’s Black Panther, passed away after a quiet battle with cancer. Marvel president Kevin Fiege has made it clear in the past that T’Challa’s role will not be recast.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever also brings back characters like Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman), Ramonda (Angela Basset) and Okoye (Danai Gurira). The Black Panther sequel will also bring back original film director Ryan Coogler, who also co-wrote Wakanda Forever with Joe Robert Cole, Coogler’s collaborator on the original’s screenplay.
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