Black Panther spoilers: where next for T'Challa? And what do the post-credits scenes mean?

Wakanda, as seen in Marvel's Black Panther
Wakanda, as seen in Marvel's Black Panther

Warning: contains spoilers

Having clawed its way to a $300 million-plus box office opening, Black Panther has surely confirmed its status as the cat’s pyjamas of comic book adaptations. But has director Ryan Coogler succeeded in his wider mission to give us a costumed crimefighter fit for the troubled times in which he emerges? And how effectively does the movie set up Avengers: Infinity War, the gang’s-all-here superhero smörgåsbord arriving in April?

Grab the nearest chunk of Vibranium and hold tight as we grapple with the big questions raised by Marvel's latest smash:

How did T’Challa become Black Panther prior to the death of his father?

In Captain America: Civil War, it is implied the future King of Wakanda (Chadwick Boseman) has already inherited the Black Panther mantle of feline guardian of the hidden African wonderland. But in Coogler’s movie it is made explicit that the role is passed down through the royal bloodline – and that T’Challa’s transition to Black Panther is sealed only when he imbibes the heart-shaped herb and communes with the spirits of his forbears.

Are we to conclude T’Challa cheekily borrowed his dad’s Vibranium power-suit during Civil War? Or are the laws of succession too complicated to explain in a two-hour comic book movie? On the subject of Wakandan current affairs: as inhabitants of the world’s most advanced society, are the citizens happy living in an autocratic monarchy in which change of government is determined by waterfall-adjacent slug-out?

Is T’Challa the last Black Panther?

After seemingly defeating the incumbent and tossing him over a waterfall – Wakanda may be an earthly paradise but its politics are distinctly roughhouse –  Erik Killmonger (Michael B Jordan) orders the burning of the leftover heart-shaped herbs, which enable the transition from mortal to Black Panther. Following the internal logic of the movie, it should thus be impossible to mint new Black Panthers. T’Challa’s family has the foresight to save one last herb for him – but when time comes to anoint an heir, will Wakanda be required to scour eBay for a replacement batch?

Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa
Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa

Why is Killmonger in cahoots with Klaue in the first place?

As Afrikaner super-villain Ulysses Klaue, cackling Andy Serkis arguably brings much-needed levity to an often serious film. But why has Killmonger struck an alliance with the international criminal in the first place if his ultimate plan is to kill Klaue and present the corpse to the Wakandans as a token of his legitimacy? Far more straightforward, surely, to bump off Klaue immediately and avoid all that noisy nonsense in London and Busan?

Is there anything Vibranium can’t do ?

Until now, all we knew about Vibranium is that it was the indestructible substance from which Captain America’s shield was forged. Yet in Black Panther Vibranium is presented as the ultimate Deus ex machina. Shuri (Letitia Wright) uses it to heal Agent Ross’s shattered spine  – “another white boy” she says, an oblique hat-tip towards her tending of Bucky Barnes (see below) – and the mineral is depicted sustaining an entire advanced economy / keeping Wakanda’s considerable hipster population in the luxury to which they are accustomed.

Vibranium
Vibranium

Vibranium also apparently helps out no end when house-training giant rhinos (a wink to a 1988 limited run Black Panther series in which T’Challa rumbles with combat-ready pachyderms). Forget the Infinity Stone MacGuffins of previous Marvel instalments. By Black Panther’s telling, Vibranium contains the key to human happiness.

Does Black Panther have anything to do with Infinity War? And who is the White Wolf?

Marvel movies roughly divide into two categories: those that advance the saga’s overall storyline and those that exist in their own self-contained mini-universes. Black Panther unapologetically belongs to the second group, to the point where it barely acknowledges events in the broader Marvel cosmos.

Fans hoping to learn of the location of the final Infinity Stone may be especially disappointed –  one theory is that the hallowed item is buried beneath Wakanda, infusing the heart-shaped herb garden with extra-planar powers. The only concession is the post-credit scene in which it is implied that Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes is being nursed to recovery by Shuri. The big reveal here is that he is that Captain America’s one-time bestie is referred to by the locals “White Wolf”. ​

The Winter Soldier/White Wolf
The Winter Soldier/White Wolf

One theory is that Bucky will take on the mantle of Captain American if and when actor Chris Evans steps away from the MCU (Sebastian Stan, who plays Barnes, is only three films in to a nine-picture deal with Marvel). But “White Wolf” hints at a murkier future: in the comics, White Wolf is the superhero moniker of T’Challa’s adopted older white brother – who initially tangles with Black Panther (a storyline perhaps fulfilled by Killmonger) before becoming head of Wakanda’s secret police, the Hatut Zeraze. Either way, it looks like we’re about to get a lot more Barnes for our buck.

Is Winston Duke’s M’Baku the best thing in the film?

As leader of the gorilla-fancying Jabari tribe, the Yale-educated Tobagonian steals every scene he’s in. He delivers the funniest lines and communicates convincing ambivalence in his attitude towards T’Challa and the King’s fellow snooty low-landers. It requires true talent to imitate a gorilla’s grunt in a superhero movie and still be the most magnetic presence on screen.

M'Baku
M'Baku

M’Baku, it is interesting to note, has been tweaked considerably from the source material. In the comics he is the second most powerful warrior in Wakanda, after Black Panther and is referred to as “Man-Ape”. He’s also an unambiguously rotten apple. He signs up with the Lethal Legion – a posse of obscure villains – and kidnaps the Black Panther’s then girlfriend Monica Lynne (who survives an assassin attempt by Nakia, who, in an inversion of the relationship depicted in the new movie, is obsessed with T’Challa).

However, the Wakandans are tight bunch and he still wangles an invite to the wedding of T’Challa and Ororo Munroe. His ultimate sticky fate is death at the hands of Spider-Man foe Morlun (yet to be seen in the movies).

“We don’t call him Man-Ape, we do call him M’Baku,” explained Black Panther producer Nate Moore. “Having a black character dress up as an ape, I think there’s a lot of racial implications that don’t sit well, if done wrong. But the idea that they worship the gorilla gods is interesting because it’s a movie about the Black Panther  who, himself, is a sort of deity in his own right.”

Is the American government happy to have a Wakanda outreach centre bang in the middle of California?

Captain America: Civil War makes clear Washington’s increasing unease about unlicensed superheroes smashing up cities with impunity. How will the backlash tally with the arrival in downtown Oakland of a Wakandan airship – and the opening of what T’Challa vaguely describes as an “outreach” centre in a building supposedly scheduled for demolition? More generally, what will be the response to the revelation that, in the heart of Africa, a country with boundless natural resources has been merrily keeping to itself for centuries?

Wakanda
Wakanda

On the subject of T’Challa’s big address to the United Nations in the first of two post-credit sequences… Surely it's no coincidence that Wakanda choses to reveal itself to the world in much the same fashion as Tony Stark informed us he was Iron Man at the conclusion of the very first MCU outing in 2008. It’s the 10th anniversary of Marvel’s foray into multi-film storytelling – and the two scenes appear to be winking at one another from across the decade.

Was anyone surprise when Daniel Kaluuya’s character was revealed as a turncoat?

As to W’kabi’s future in Wakanda now that’s he’s come back around to Black Panther’s side… the portents from the comics are not positive. He is ultimately killed alongside loyal Zuri (Forrest Whittaker in the film) in an attack by Morlun  while preparing Shuri for her transition to Black Panther.

Chadwick Boseman and Daniel Kaluuya
Chadwick Boseman and Daniel Kaluuya

Shuri as Black Panther? It’s true: in the comic books she temporarily takes over the mantle of guardian of Wakanda when T’Challa is put into a coma after rejecting an invitation from Doctor Doom to join an elite society of super-villains. It’s fertile territory for an inevitable sequel, with the Disney take-over of Fox opening the way for the introduction to the MCU of Doctor Doom and other members of the Fantastic Four extended family.

Kaluuya was fantastic in Get Out but as T’Challa’s iffy best friend and rhinoceros whisperer-in-chief, W’Kabi, he’s broader than Saturday night on ITV. “Is he a baddie?” inquired the eight year-old who accompanied me to a weekend screening of Black Panther, 10 seconds after W’Kabi's entrance. “Yes,” I nodded, knowing there really wasn’t much of surprise to ruin.

John Kani as King T’Chaka 
John Kani as King T’Chaka

Why did King T’Chaka leave his brother’s body for the future Killmonger to discover?

For a supposedly wise ruler, T’Challa’s father mucks up spectacularly on his visit to Oakland in 1992. He declines to clean up his dead brother’s remains – and inexplicably abandons the nephew who will eventually come in search of revenge. These are unforgivable fumbles from an allegedly enlightened monarch.

T'Challa and Killmonger
T'Challa and Killmonger

Interestingly, on the page he’s a more straightforward character. In the comic books, T’Chaka is killed by Ulysses Klaue after refusing to surrender Wakanda’s precious Vibranium. There’s a good explanation, however, for Coogler’s decision to introduce T’Chaka in Oakland before showing us his son T’Challa. He wanted to establish the Black Panther as part of a continuum – not just a crime-fighter in natty clobber.

“If you meet Chadwick first in that helmet, you think, “Oh, the Black Panther is just this guy,”” he told Io9. “But to be somebody else, [you think] ‘Oh wait, this thing has been around. It’s ancient. It’s been passed down.” So that scene was a way to square all those things. Quick. Fast. It kind of served the language of the movie.”

Did T’Challa really plan on taking on the whole might of Wakanda on his own?

Black Panther regains the throne largely thanks to a late-in-the-day cavalry dash by M’Baku and his Jabari. But initially it is just T’Challa versus Killmonger and the entire apparatus of the Wakandan state (he can’t have been certain, for instance, that the elite Dora Milaje would rally to his side). Is this a suicide mission – or does T’Challa, realising he is in a Hollywood movie, anticipate the tide eventually turning in his favour?

What, moreover, is the fate of Killmonger? He is shown expiring after T’Challa drags him out to watch the sunset over Wakanda. But in the comic books he is resurrected by the Mandarin (the Ben Kingsley villain unmasked as a hoaxer in Iron Man III).

His follow-up attempt to undermine Wakanda is remarkably subtle by MCU standards – he tries to wreck the local economy by triggering a run on its stock-market. Could Michael B Jordan return as star of Marvel’s version of the Big Short?

Related: Danai Gurira Appreciates The Authenticity Of African Culture In "Black Panther"