Posted in: Marvel Studios, Movies | Tagged: black panther, black panther: wakanda forever, film, marvel, mcu

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Star Talks T'Challa's Son

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever star Lupita Nyong'o recently discussed her character's unique role regarding T'Challa's legacy and bloodline.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was one of Marvel's best phase four films, offering viewers plenty of major fight sequences that felt equally balanced with character-driven plot points. As a whole, the film also had a lot to tackle too, given real-life circumstances and new key characters to bring into the fold, making Black Panther: Wakanda Forever a heartfelt yet still game-changing moment for the MCU.

What moved fans most? Well, that would likely be the confirmation that Lupita Nyong'o's Nakia and Chadwick Boseman's T'Challa actually have a child together who has taken his name and offered the world a glimmer of next-gen hero energy.

In a new interview with IGN, the actor recently discussed her role in leading the young T'Challa, explaining, "Nakia is uniquely poised to show him the ways because she is his link to his father, and they've chosen to raise their son in the outside world. And so, that vision of a Wakanda that is open to the outside world is what he's uniquely poised to assume — you know, the Wakanda of tomorrow, not the Wakanda of yesterday."

How Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Originally Planned to Explore the Duo

In another interview between director Ryan Coogler and The Direct in late December, Coogler explained how the titular character's son was going to be incorporated into the original script as a family-focused story, explaining, "In the [original] script, T'Challa was a dad who'd had this forced five-year absence from his son's life. The first scene was an animated sequence. You hear Nakia [T'Challa's love interest, played by Lupita Nyong'o] talking to Toussaint [the couple's child, introduced in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever during a post-credits scene]. She says, 'Tell me what you know about your father.'"

The Black Panther director noted that after T'Challa returned from the blip, he would have had to meet his son for the first time after Nakia had remarried, jumping through various points in time to highlight the father-son dynamic. How does that early idea for the film end? "For his eighth birthday, they do a ritual where they go out into the bush and have to live off the land. But something happens, and T'Challa has to go save the world with his son on his hip. That was the movie."

Obviously, the two films (the early draft as opposed to the final version) are very different. However, the notion of keeping his legacy alive in this capacity offers fans a really sincere hope for future Black Panther stories.

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