Those Two Shocking ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ Cameos Explained
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SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” now playing in theaters.
Plenty of new and returning Marvel characters are back for Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” but there are two major, surprising cameos that avoided being leaked ahead of the sequel’s release.
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Letitia Wright’s Shuri, Angela Bassett’s Queen Ramonda and Danai Gurira’s Okoye help lead the nation of Wakanda, which is missing its Black Panther and King T’Challa after star Chadwick Boseman’s tragic death from cancer in 2020. Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), M’Baku (Winston Duke), Ayo (Florence Kasumba) and Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman) are also back, and the film introduces new faces with Dominique Thorne’s Riri Williams, a.k.a. the superhero Ironheart, Tenoch Huerta Mejía’s underwater villain Namor and Michaela Coel’s Wakandan warrior Aneka.
Toward the end of the movie, “Black Panther” fans were also delighted to see the brief return of Michael B. Jordan’s Erik Killmonger, the fan-favorite villain from the original movie. After Shuri manufactures a synthetic, heart-shaped herb to take on the Black Panther powers, she enters the Ancestral Plane and is expecting to see her brother T’Challa or her late mother Ramonda, who drowned during Namor’s earlier attack on Wakanda. However, she’s surprised to find Killmonger waiting for her.
The scene mirrors T’Challa’s meeting with his late father T’Chaka (John Kani) in the first “Black Panther,” but Shuri and Killmonger are ideologically opposed — or so she thinks. Still reeling from her mother’s death, Shuri wants revenge, and Killmonger eggs her on. He mocks her father and brother’s peaceful and noble outlooks, pushing her to kill Namor the next time she faces him.
During the final battle between the Wakandan warriors and Namor’s forces, Shuri corners a dried-out and de-powered Namor in a desert. She’s hurt badly, but gains the upper hand by blasting Namor with fire from her crashed ship. Then, she must decide whether or not to kill him. Ultimately, she decides to show mercy and forces Namor to yield. She promises him that Wakanda will protect his people from invaders, which Namor appears content with — though in his final scene with Namora (Mabel Cadena), it seems like he’s just biding his time.
In addition to Jordan’s return, Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ shady villain Valentina Allegra de Fontaine is back in a few scenes after last appearing in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” and “Black Widow.” On Friday, Louis-Dreyfus shared a photo from the “Wakanda Forever” set, rocking Valentina’s purple-streaked hair and smiling next to Coogler. “I love this man. #ryancoogler. Have a great weekend,” she captioned the post.
In the film, we learn that Val’s the head of the CIA and Ross’ ex-wife, which puts them at personal and professional odds throughout the nearly three-hour runtime. She leads the U.S. investigation into Wakanda’s vibranium and is much more aggressive than Ross, setting her up as a powerful puppet-master with the CIA at her command.
Val is next confirmed to appear in 2024’s “Thunderbolts,” where she’ll lead of team of villains and antiheroes, including Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Red Guardian (David Harbour), U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen). Her appearance in “Wakanda Forever” makes it clear that she’ll play a major role in the MCU’s future with building an anti-Avengers team like an evil Nick Fury.
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